Would Franz Ferdinand really have prevented the First World War?

Was Archduke Franz Ferdinand truly a tragic ‘prince of peace’? Should Gavrilo Princip be remembered as a reckless killer? More than a century after these two men were united by one Earth-shattering event on the streets of Sarajevo, Annika Mombauer asks if it’s time we reassess their reputations On 28 June 1914, a 19-year-old man stood on a street corner in a bustling European city and awaited his chance to commit murder. This was no ordinary murder, for the teenager was Gavrilo Princip, member of a group of would-be assassins known as ‘Young Bosnia’. His target was ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand, the 50-year-old heir presumptive to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And what unfolded that morning in Sarajevo would send Europe spiralling towards catastrophe. It took Princip just a matter of seconds to discharge his bullets, yet in the blink of an eye, he immortalised both his own name, and that of his victim. The consequences of the murder led to both Gavrilo Princip and Franz Ferdinand becoming indelibly linked with one of the great disasters of the 20th century – theFirst World War. Their characters, motivations and reputations have been debated endlessly since the summer of 1914. Their names have been invoked in any number of political battles stretching into the 21st century. Yet does that debate – the 112 years of argument, scrutiny, reassessment and revision – mean we have lost sight of the real men? The fact is that, had events evolved differently on 28 June 1914, one of those men – Princip – would barely have been known to history at all. That’s because, earlier that day, another member of ‘Young Bosnia’ had tried, and failed, to kill the archduke. His name does not come to mind as readily: Nedeljko Čabrinović had thrown a hand grenade at the archduke’s open-top car, which bounced into the following vehicle, injuring several people. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shocked, but unscathed. A few hours after this attempt on their lives, the couple travelled once more through the streets of Sarajevo. When their car came to an unscheduled stop right in front of Princip, the assassin seized this opportunity, killing both the archduke and his wife with two bullets. Princip, along with his fellow conspirators, was seized by outraged crowds, arrested and placed on trial. He only escaped the death penalty due to his age, and was sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour and kept in dreadful conditions. In conversation with a psychiatrist who visited him in prison, Princip – who was at this point dying of bone tuberculosis – reflected on what had motivated him and his friends. He had been inspired to act by a hatred of Austria-Hungary, which had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 and which stood in the way of the wish of some Bosnian Serbs to become part of a Greater Serbia. His ideal had been “the unity of the south Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but not under Austria”. He described those who had attempted earlier assassinations as “heroes to our young people”. Princip himself “had not thought of becoming a hero. He wanted merely to die for his idea.” He succumbed to TB in prison in 1918, just 23 years old. Political assassinations were not uncommon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And the death of Franz Ferdinand need not have been more memorable than other such crimes, were it not for the calamitous events that it set in train. The Austro-Hungarians strongly suspected the Serbian government had supported the plot to murder the archduke: the weapons with which the young assassins had travelled to Sarajevo from Serbia had been supplied by members of the Serbian army. Beyond this, however, no hard evidence was found to link the Serbian government to the teenage assassins. Nonetheless, the government in Vienna considered the murder of the heir to the throne a provocation that could not go unpunished. It took steps to seek retribution from the Serbian government, including a deliberately unacceptable ultimatum. Even though the Serbian government accepted all but one of the Austro-Hungarian demands, their reply was rejected by Vienna and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. This triggered mobilisations and declarations of war across Europe as the other Great Powers came to the aid of their respective allies. Within a few days, a Balkan conflict had turned into a European war. In the Anglophone world and beyond, Princip has widely been saddled with the blame for knocking over the first domino that led to a continental conflict. Although he did not target bystanders – and was deeply upset that he had unintentionally murdered the archduke’s wife – some of his critics have gone as far as to compare him and his fellow members of ‘Young Bosnia’ with 21st-century terrorists. But not everyone agrees with this view. In Yugoslavia after 1918, members of ‘Young Bosnia’ were considered freedom fighters and celebrated as national heroes. Their act of violence became the founding moment for the South Slav movement. The bodies of the assassins (some had died in captivity, and three had been executed) were exhumed and transferred to Sarajevo where their new graves in the ‘Chapel of the Vidovdan Heroes’ became a site of pilgrimage. In 1930, a commemorative black marble plaque was unveiled above the spot from which Princip had fired his fateful shots. The plaque did not mention the world war with its countless victims. Instead, its inscription read: “At this historical site Gavrilo Princip brought liberty.” In the socialist Yugoslavia that emerged after 1945, the cult of Princip reached even greater heights. Streets and schools were named after him. Footprints were added to the spot from which Princip had fired the fateful shots. Franz Ferdinand’s killer was celebrated as a revolutionary hero. All that changed after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Muslim Bosniaks made up newly independent Bosnia-Herzegovina’s largest identity group, and they were far less inclined to engage in Princip hero worship. In fact, they tended to view him as a Serb terrorist whose murderous act had spelt disaster. For Bosnian Muslims, the period of Austro-Hungarian rule before theFirst World Warhad been largely positive. Every major ethnic group had been represented by a political party and been granted a degree of autonomy. The period after 1918 was characterised by far fewer freedoms: Bosniaks lost these privileges, and in communist Yugoslavia many Muslim institutions were abolished. Following 1990, freed from the official Yugoslav view, plaques commemorating Princip were removed and the (unofficially named) Princip Bridge in Sarajevo became once more the Latin Bridge. During the Bosnian War (1992–95), Princip’s alleged courage was employed to motivate soldiers fighting on the side of the army of Republika Srpska (the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina). A new medal for bravery was minted and named after Princip. The soldiers who laid siege to Sarajevo for 1,425 days, committed war crimes and destroyed much of the city, invoked Princip and the other ‘Young Bosnians’. Unsurprisingly, Princip’s association with the enemy only strengthened the Bosniaks’ opposition to his hero worship. Because the two sides disagreed on how to interpret the past, they also could not agree on how to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. And so, in the summer of 2014 – as the world’s eyes focused, once more, on Sarajevo – they organised separate events. In Sarajevo itself, commemorations attended by delegates from across the European Union and drawing international crowds highlighted the tragic nature of the events of 1914. Republika Srpska’s president, Milorad Dodik, and prime minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, turned down their invitations to join the Sarajevo commemorations. Instead, they attended a celebration held, with financial support from Serbia, in Andrićgrad, a theme park city two hours east of Sarajevo. Here, crowds enjoyed a dramatic reconstruction of Franz