| "Franz Ferdinand" links to here. For its other meanings see: Franz Ferdinand (disambiguation)
Franz Ferdinand (sometimes called Francis Ferdinand in English) (December 18, 1863 – June
28, 1914) was born in Graz, Austria and was a Habsburg Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination by
Gavrilo Princip on June
28, 1914 in Sarajevo, Austrian-annexed
Bosnia-Herzegovina, precipitated the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia which triggered World War I.
Ferdinand was nephew of the Emperor
Franz Josef I of Austria and next in line to the
crown following the suicide of his cousin
Crown Prince Rudolph at Mayerling (January 30, 1889) and the death of his father Karl Ludwig (May 19, 1896). His marriage (July 1, 1900) to
(the relatively low-ranking) Countess Sophie Chotek (henceforth Duchess
of Hohenburg) was permitted only after the couple had agreed that the bride would not enjoy royal status and their children would have no claims to the throne. Franz Josef
did not attend the wedding.
Franz Ferdinand alienated many sections of Austro-Hungarian political opinion: Hungarian nationalists opposed his advocacy of universal male suffrage which would undermine Magyar domination in the Hungarian
kingdom; both supporters and opponents of the Empire's existing dualist structure were suspicious of his idea for a third
Croat-dominated Slav kingdom
including Bosnia and Herzegovina as a bulwark against
what was perceived in Vienna's Ballhausplatz (Foreign Ministry) as
Serbian irredentism; and
non-Catholics and anticlericalists were angered by his patronage (April 22,
1900) of the Catholic Schools Association.
Although Franz Ferdinand was seen outside Germany as a leader of the "war party" within Austria-Hungary, this was in fact
entirely untrue. In fact, the Archduke was one of the leading advocates of maintaining the peace within the Austro-Hungarian
government during both the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-1909 and the Balkan Wars Crises of 1912-1913.
No evidence has been found to support suggestions that his low-security visit to Sarajevo was arranged by elements within
Austro-Hungarian official circles with the intention of exposing him to the risk of assassination so as to remove a potentially
troublesome royal personage from the scene.
The bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip in the Archduke's assassination, sometimes referred to as "the
bullet that started World War I", is stored as a museum exhibit in the
Konopiště Castle near the town of Benešov, Czech Republic.
Franz Ferdinand had three children by Sophie:
-
- m. (1920) Friedrich von Nostitz-Rieneck and had issue.
-
- m. (1926) Maria von Waldburg and had issue.
-
- m. (1936) Marie-Therese Wood and had issue.
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