Edoardo Agnelli (industrialist)

Edoardo Agnelli

Edoardo Agnelli (January 2, 1892 – July 14, 1935) was an Italian industrialist and principal family shareholder of the Italian car company Fiat.

Life and career

Born in Verona, he was the son of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat, and married Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte (1899–1945), a daughter of the Prince di San Faustino and his Kentucky-born wife Jane Campbell. They had seven children:

• Clara (b. 1920, wife of Prince Tassilo zu Fürstenberg, mother of Egon von Fürstenberg and Ira von Fürstenberg)
• Gianni (1921–2003)
• Susanna (1922–2009)
• Maria Sole Agnelli (born 1925)
• Cristiana (1927), wife of Count Brandolino Brandolini d'Adda
• Giorgio Agnelli (1929–1965)
• Umberto (1934–2004)

President of Italian giants Juventus from 1923 to 1935, Agnelli was one of the most important men in the Old Lady's history, and the one to whom credit can be given for transforming the Turin side into the most successful Italian football club.

Agnelli's oldest son Gianni Agnelli became the head of Fiat from 1966 to 2003 and made the company into the most important company in Italy and one of the major car builders of Europe. Agnelli's daughter Susanna Agnelli is the only woman to have been Minister of Foreign Affairs in Italy.

Agnelli died in a plane accident in Genoa, aged 43, when the seaplane he was traveling on and was about to abandon accidentally hit a floating log and caused his head to hit the still revolving propeller of the plane.