As of: April 8, 2024, 10:38 a.m
By: Victoria Krumbeck
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A German-Italian wants to run for mayor for Italy's Prime Minister Meloni's right-wing alliance. His candidacy is unusual.
Florence – The long-standing museum director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Eike Schmidt, wants to become mayor of the Italian city in Tuscany. The German-Italian announced his candidacy for the June election on Saturday after months of speculation. The 56-year-old is running for the center-right camp of Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The city of 360,000 inhabitants is currently governed by the left. But according to the polls there could be a change.
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Schmidt was director of the Uffizi, one of the most visited museums in the world, from 2015 until the end of last year, but was then unable to renew his position. The trained art historian then moved to the National Museum in Naples in the same position.
The German-Italian Eike Schmidt is running for mayor of Florence. © Luca Bruno/dpa
German stands for Meloni Party in Italy: Governing in Florence as an “Aristotelian centrist”.
In an interview with La Repubblica–Florence,
Schmidt described himself
as an “Aristotelian centrist”, a “democrat” and an “anti-fascist”. However, this description rarely applies to a Fratelli d'Italiai candidate. “He is an unusual candidate in terms of the coalition that would support him,” Alessandro Chiaramonte, a political science professor at the University of Florence, told the
New York Times
.
Typical voters would be less likely to vote for “a polyglot man of culture” like Schmidt, he added. But “this is exactly what could appeal to undecided and centrist voters,” explained Chiaramonte. The Freiburg native is married to an Italian and has also had Italian citizenship since last year. His previous positions also include museums in Washington and Los Angeles. He holds an honorary professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
dpa