Drafted on 22 October 2023, updated on 10 February 2024
Great-grandfather Bernardo against his brother Emilio.
The constant alternation of love and hate, balance and rivalry.
History is the teacher of life. And it repeats itself, because few learn.
“Great-grandfather Bernardo has three brothers and with one of them, Emilio, three years younger (he was born in 1871), relations often prove not to be easy. (…).
In fact,Bernardo realises that Emilio is about to take over the management of the business and wants to attempt what their father would never have imagined possible: to found a company competing with the Caprotti family, while continuing to work in the original company.
Thus a parallel adventure to the Manifattura developed, to which, however, was reserved ‘a fate perhaps even more unhappy than that of the old Albiate company’ (p. 28): the Manifattura di Valle Camonica (…) avoided bankruptcy only because it was absorbed by another company (…).
Great-grandfather Bernardo Caprotti’s adventure in the Orobian Alps lasted (…) nine years, from 1904 to 1913, and had a very special side-effect (…) it competed with the Società Anonima Cotonificio Caprotti, the company that Emilio and Bernardo Caprotti himself had founded in 1907 together with other partners (…).
The Cotonificio would be liquidated in 1923 when it had long existed only on paper. The two brothers will take different paths. Emilio founded a spinning mill (…) in Giussano, which also went bankrupt a few years later.
My great-grandfather Bernardo Caprotti, on the other hand, went ahead with the Albiate plant, revitalising a company of his own around the historic Manifattura Caprotti facilities, which was then passed on to his eldest son, my grandfather Peppino (…).
The balance of the clashes and competition in the family between great-grandfather Bernardo and his brother Emilio is therefore tragic, with two companies sent to ruin and then liquidated and a third bankrupt. (…). (pp. 28 – 32).
The interesting thing, which I learned only in February 2024, is that Bernardo and Emilio, precisely because they alternated hate and love, ended up spending the Christmas holidays of their last years together. The architect of this reconciliation was my grandfather Giuseppe Caprotti, known as Peppino.
The feud was over, the two brothers had learned a positive lesson from their clashes.
Source: Claudio Caprotti but also The Caprotti family archive.
