Why did the assassination in Sarajevo happen?
So why did Gavrile Princip kill Frank Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek with a revolver on July 28, 1914? What did the two people do to make this happen?
And was that also the trigger for the First World War?
I’ll answer what I remember.
Austria-Hungary was not only a double monarchy, but also a multi-ethnic state. Internally torn, challenged by sepaeratist movements and in danger to break apart. The emperor was old and stood for the old monarchy, no longer conservative, but solidified, inflexible and without answers to nationalist movements. The successor of the throne, on the other hand, had already looked through before that he would act differently, he would be emperor. He indicated that he would, if necessary, give the individual peoples and regions more autonomy, which would modernize the double monarchy. And there was your ruin. The Serbian Seperatists wanted total independence and their own Serbian state. An emperor, who suddenly had an open ear for the Serbian questions, hötte for the Serbian nationalists means that most Serbs would then like to be part of Austria’s Hungarians. Then the nationalists might have had no chance to realize their dream. A rigid emperor, old-fashioned and hard fit them better because they could play it as a sacrificial role.
Therefore the Austrian successor was shot by a Serbian nationalist. This was a member of the “Black Hand”, a Serbian terrorist organization underway.
I stood in front of his prison cell where the assassin died, in Theresienstadt