IDNO 10
Person
Elio Bracco
- Biography / History
- Elio Bracco was born on 3 April 1884 in Neresine, on the island of Lošinj in Istria.
On 25 June 1908 he married Giovanna “Nina” Salata, sister of the senator of the Kingdom Francesco Salata, and at that time became the municipal secretary of Neresine and Ossero, on the island of Cres.
Elio, a leading figure in Istrian irredentism, was arrested in 1914 on charges of high treason and taken to the prisons in Graz, Austria, where he spent two very hard years. His entire family was also arrested and interned in Mittergrabern (Austria). After being tried and found not guilty, Elio Bracco is sent as an aide to the military laundry in Feldbach. And the family was also transferred to the Feldbach internment camp. At the beginning of the 1920s the Bracco family moved to Trieste where the father Elio became sub-prefect in 1921. During this assignment he was called, due to his knowledge of German and Russian, to be part of the Inter-Allied Commissions in charge of defining the borders between states after the end of the First World War. It was on this occasion that he met and became good friends with Bernhard Pfotenhauer, first director of the Dresdner Bank in Katowice and later general director of the pharmaceutical company Merck in Darmstadt. This friendship was to be fundamental for the Bracco family's destiny and laid the foundations for the birth of the company. In fact, Pfotenhauer proposes to Elio Bracco to represent Merck in Italy: the proposal is accepted and Elio leaves the civil service to become an entrepreneur.
The Bracco family is born on June 1, 1927. On 1 June 1927 the Italian company Società prodotti E. Merck was founded in Milan, in a building in Piazzale Susa. Elio Bracco started the business mainly by organising the commercial side: with the import of Merck products, with propaganda, with sales through wholesalers. In 1930 the company changed its name to Italmerck S.A. and the following year it moved to more spacious premises in Via Fucini, in line with its development plans. The years that followed were one of development, with sons Fulvio (1934) and Tullio (1946)
joining the company. Immediately after the war Elio Bracco moved to Rome, leaving the company in the hands of his son Fulvio.
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