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His wife was deemed totally unsuitable for the dynastyĬountess Sophie Chotek of Bohemia - a lady-in-waiting when the two met - was just below the level of princess, and according to Habsburg rule, ineligible to marry the archduke. You had to be careful walking down the halls to avoid getting impaled by antlers, said Cohen.Īt the estate, “(t)he foot of a giant elephant, shot by the Archduke in Kalawana in 1893, serves as an ashtray the foot of another such colossus from Ceylon as a wastepaper basket,” wrote a government official from Prague. Hunting trophies - an estimated 100,000 - cluttered his estate at Konopischt.

The grand sum of pheasant, partridge and ground game that he shot was 272,511, according to calculations published in “Archduke of Sarajevo.”Įmperor Franz Joseph described his nephew’s hobby as mass murder, said Cohen, while others considered it a mania. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commonsįranz Ferdinand tallied his kills in a massive journal. “I cannot describe my joy,” he wrote of the kill. His personal record was reportedly 2,140 kills in a day.įranz Ferdinand shot his first tiger on a six-week trip to India in 1893. “Anything that moved, he was ready to shoot,” said Lebow. Tigers in India, kangaroos, emus and wallabies in Australia and stag and deer in the forests of Austria all met their demise at the end of the archduke’s rifle. Cohen says that this readiness to dismiss the vulnerable nephew as a viable heir planted in him a seed of resentment toward the Habsburg Imperial Court (one that would grow). The coterie who surrounded the emperor - his uncle, Franz Joseph - at one time assumed that Franz Ferdinand would not live to inherit the throne. A whirlwind tour of the Mediterranean, a voyage to Asia and a sightseeing cruise down the Nile all helped to dampen the disease until his lungs healed for good in the late 1890s. The upside of weak lungs? He was sent all over the world for treatment. Many said this was due to his mother, Princess Maria Annunciata, who died of the disease at age 28. He had bad lungsįranz Ferdinand suffered bouts of tuberculosis during his 20s and early 30s.

Cohen is a history professor and director of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Geoffrey Wawro is the author of “A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire” and Richard Ned Lebow is the author of “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I.” We also drew from the book “Archduke of Sarajevo: The Romance and Tragedy of Franz Ferdinand of Austria” by Gordon Brook-Shepherd. So who was Franz Ferdinand? We asked three experts who have studied that era. The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand would trigger one of the most brutal wars in modern history, eventually pulling in the Russian Empire, Germany, France, Italy, China, the U.S., Japan and beyond into World War I. One month later, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. This section provides you information about the life and works of famous people who were assassinated.One hundred years ago, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire and his wife were assassinated by a gunman during a drive through Sarajevo. Throughout history there have been several political leaders as well as human rights activists who have been assassinated. More recently, in 2007, the then-leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party was assassinated after a political rally at Liaquat National Bagh. His assassination gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories and made the headlines for weeks.

Kennedy, the 35th President of United States was on a political campaign in Dallas where he was shot dead in one of the century’s most shocking assassinations. Gandhi, known as the man responsible of gaining independence for India and preacher of peace, was shot dead by a frenzied man called Nathuram Godse. Years later, in a different continent, another world-shaking assassination took place-M. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in 1914, the incident triggered off events that led to the World War I.

Assassinations are murders of a political nature, and their impacts often have far-reaching consequences that affect not just the immediate family of the deceased person but far beyond that.