Giorgio Napolitano, who died in Rome on September 22, 2023, at the age of 98, was not just one of the most important Italian and European politicians of the post-war period. He was also a confidant of Maestro Daniel Barenboim and a good friend and supporter of the Barenboim-Said Akademie and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. His political career began when he was only 17, as a member of the resistance against Fascism and Nazism. The work of Antonio Gramsci was a major intellectual influence for him, and Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony also formed one of the important impulses for our co-founder Edward W. Said’s groundbreaking study Orientalism.

Napolitano supported the Barenboim-Said Akademie from the very beginning: he donated the prize money of the renowned David Dan Award, endowed with US$ 1 million, which was presented to him in 2011, for the founding of the Akademie, the construction site of which he later visited at his own request—and much to the astonishment of the embassy protocol—during a state visit to Germany. He participated in the opening of the Akademie with the video greeting seen below. He will be missed.