Bloodstains on Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s uniform still bear witness to the deed.Īlthough no proof could be found for the Serbian government having been party to planning the assassination, it seemed probable that this had been the case. While on their way to the hospital where the adjutant was being treated, Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot by Gavrilo Princip, who had been trained as an assassin in Serbia. Various groups of assassins lay in wait for Franz Ferdinand, and even before noon a bomb injured the Archduke’s adjutant. The date, St Vitus’ Day or ‘Vidovdan’, was and is a particularly sensitive one, being the anniversary of the fateful battle of Kosovo between the Serbs and Ottomans – and thus a Serbian day of mourning. On 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand represented the Emperor at manoeuvres and at a parade in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo. His friendliness towards the southern Slavs caused Serbia to see him as a threat to their own expansionist plans. He was particularly concerned about the developments in the Balkans.
His distinctive characteristics were his clericalist-conservative general attitudes, pronounced anti-Semitic views, and antipathy to Hungary. Two days earlier, the heir to the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand had been shot in Sarajevo.īorn in 1863, Franz Joseph’s nephew Franz Ferdinand had come into line for the throne after Crown Prince Rudolf’s suicide and became official heir after the death of his own father Karl Ludwig in 1896. ‘Assassination in Sarajevo – heir to the throne murdered with his wife’ ran the headlines on the title-page of the Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung of 30 June 1914.
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