Obituary for Berlusconi: A man with money, influence and headlines

Nobody has been prime minister in Italy longer than he: Berlusconi has had a lasting influence on the country’s politics. The media mogul, who died at the age of 86, also made international headlines for decades. An obituary.

Silvio Berlusconi shaped Italy for many decades and brought political populism and private television to the country, among other things. Born in Milan, he became known and rich as a TV entrepreneur. But Berlusconi became a media mogul more by accident. He earned his first millions as a building contractor.

“It was clear to me that I didn’t want to work for someone else as an employee, but wanted to be self-employed,” he says in an interview from the time of his political rise. “I wanted to be an entrepreneur – and at that time there was a construction boom.”

Wealthy and influential

At the end of the 1960s, Berlusconi built a residential area north of Milan. In order to stimulate the purchase of the real estate, he offered a district television – which later became the stepping stone for him to enter the new private television market in Italy and to quickly dominate it. Berlusconi became one of the wealthiest men in the country. In addition to television stations and newspapers, he owned banks, supermarkets, insurance companies and the football club AC Milan, which he made the most successful in Europe for a few years.

Berlusconi’s entry into politics followed in 1993 – with words that will be remembered: “Italy is the country I love. This is where I have my roots, my hopes and my horizons” – this is how his video message, broadcast by his television stations, began which showed him at a desk in front of a bookshelf with family photos.

Election campaign via their own television stations

At the time, Berlusconi took advantage of a political vacuum in Italy’s center-right spectrum: the Christian Democratic party, which had been in power for decades, collapsed in the early 1990s as a result of a corruption scandal. Berlusconi founded Forza Italia and ran for prime minister. The multi-billionaire used his television station for political advertising and campaigned in the style of American parties, including a self-composed party anthem.

Berlusconi won the 1994 election against a centre-left coalition that had led the polls for months and became prime minister for the first time.

During this time, Berlusconi removed the extreme right in the country from taboos; the Lega Nord and the former neo-fascists of the MSI were part of his electoral alliance. The media mogul, who switched to politics, brought both parties into government after winning the election. In 2008, the current head of government, Giorgia Meloni, became youth minister under him.

Long tenure with many headlines

Later, when the other right-wing parties outstripped his Forza Italia in terms of voters, Berlusconi recalled in a television interview that he had made these parties politically acceptable: “The other parties never allowed the Lega and fascism to come into power. We have brought them in in 1994.”

Berlusconi has been prime minister four times, a total of almost ten years – longer than anyone else in Italy since the end of the war. During this time, Berlusconi repeatedly made headlines, including when he recommended the Social Democrat Martin Schulz in the European Parliament in 2003 for the film role of a concentration camp guard.

Berlusconi was tried several times. Internationally, the procedures for erotic festivals caused a stir, the so-called bunga-bunga parties.

30 trials, one indictment

Berlusconi complained that the Italian judiciary was persecuting him for political reasons: “The de facto sovereignty in this country no longer lies with parliament, but belongs to the left-wing public prosecutors and judges.” Berlusconi won in almost all trials – because he had good lawyers, benefited from tailor-made laws, but often also because his accusers ultimately lacked evidence.

In 2013, Berlusconi was convicted of tax evasion in more than 30 cases. As punishment, the once most powerful man in the country had to do community service in a retirement home.

leukemia disease became known in April

After that, Berlusconi was politically active again as head of Forza Italia. In 2019 he moved into the European Parliament, and in early 2022 he tried in vain for the office of President. A few months later, however, Berlusconi, as part of the right-wing coalition around Giorgia Meloni, was one of the victors and returned to the Senate.

Berlusconi has had to go to the hospital frequently in recent months. In April, his doctors announced that he was suffering from chronic leukemia. Berlusconi was taken to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital again on Friday.

At first it was said that Berlusconi would only undergo routine examinations there. In the late morning, Italy’s largest daily newspaper “Corriere della Sera” was the first to report Berlusconi’s death.