Leone Wollemborg

Who was Leone Wollemborg?

Leone Wollemborg was an Italian economist and politician. He made significant contributions to the spread of cooperative enterprises, specifically rural credit unions and agricultural cooperative banks.

Leone was born in Padua on March 4, 1859. At fifteen, he enrolled in the University of Padua and graduated 4 years later in law with a thesis on autonomous tax municipalities. He had memorized all of the poems of Heinrich Heine and was studying the works of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen. Leone Wollemborg and a group of about 30 farm workers and small landowners founded Italy's first cooperative bank in Loreggia in 1883. The intent of the bank was to help tenants, small landowners, and agricultural workers to rise from poverty by granting loans at low interest and with long deadlines. In 1885, he established the monthly publication Rural Cooperation, which was published until 1904.