Fondazione Liborio Mario Rubino
The Foundation
A project born to enhance humanistic culture
and promote the growth of the individual in society.
The ‘Liborio Mario Rubino ETS’ Foundation, which was founded in April 2024 and was registered in the Italian Register of Third Sector Entities (RUNTS) in July of the same year, is based in Palermo (Via Dante 165). It is a non-profit-making organisation, pursuing civic, solidarity and socially useful purposes through the promotion, study and development of culture, particularly, but not exclusively, in the humanities.
The Foundation’s primary objectives are the protection and enhancement of the cultural, bibliographical and landscape heritage; the promotion, development and implementation of projects aimed at the human, intellectual and professional training of individuals in a context of improving the quality of life, also with a view to the inclusion of young people in the social and working fabric; the organisation and management of cultural, artistic and publishing activities; and university and post-graduate education and training. Through an interdisciplinary approach and the establishment of permanent activities, it is engaged in the dissemination and promotion of culture. It provides scholarships and, in order to implement its objectives, signs agreements with research, educational and cultural organisations and with Italian and foreign higher education institutions.
The Foundation was established around the library: this holds just over 13,000 volumes, is divided into numerous sections and subsections and contains a number of rare texts.
In order to make the library’s holdings available to a wider user base, it has signed a agreement with the Superintendency of Cultural Heritage of Sicily: the entire library is being included in the territorial information system, and from this in the OPAC of the National Library Service.
Liborio Mario Rubino
The Foundation is named after Liborio Mario Rubino (1942-2021): he was a Chair of German Literature at the University of Palermo, and contributed significantly to research in various fields of the humanities, including German literature, in particular from the 18th to the 20th centuries. His studies on the cultural politics and activities of Italian and German publishing houses during the time of fascism were both noteworthy and innovative. In addition to German Studies, he was equally interested in other fields of knowledge, and provided significant academic contributions in the fields of Italian Studies, Musicology, the History of Publishing and, more generally, cultural relations between the German-speaking and Italian worlds. He also turned his attention to the way in which Sicily had been seen over the centuries from areas north of the Alps. An excellent translator from German, he collaborated actively with institutions such as the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori in Milan and with publishing houses, especially Sellerio, for which he regularly wrote reviews on contemporary works. From his Chair at the University of Palermo he enthusiastically established lasting cultural relations with institutions and individuals in Germany (where he had studied in Marburg and Frankfurt and had worked at the Italian Cultural Institute in Cologne).