Gavrilo Princip

Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb student who, as a teenager, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand—the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne—and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. That killing triggered the July Crisis, which within a month led directly to the outbreak of World War I.

Princip was born on 25 July 1894 in the remote hamlet of Obljaj, in western Bosnia, then administered by Austria-Hungary but still formally part of the Ottoman Empire. He was the second of nine children; six died in infancy. His mother wanted to name him Špiro after her late brother, but a local Orthodox priest insisted on Gavrilo, after the Archangel Gabriel, hoping the name would help the sickly baby survive. The family were poor Serb farmers who had lived in northwestern Bosnia for centuries, originally emigrating from Montenegro in the early 1700s. They belonged to the Jovićević clan and were Serbian Orthodox Christians. His parents, Petar and Marija, farmed about four acres of land and were forced to give a third of their income to their Muslim landlord. Petar had fought in the Herzegovina Uprising against the Ottomans and later supplemented the family income by transporting mail and passengers across the mountains.

Princip started primary school at age nine, despite his father’s initial objections—he needed a shepherd for his sheep. He did well, and his headmaster gave him a collection of Serbian epic poetry for his academic success. At thirteen, he moved to Sarajevo. His older brother Jovan first planned to enroll him in the Austro-Hungarian Military Academy, but a shopkeeper warned against making him “an executioner of his own people,” so Princip instead entered the Merchants’ School. Jovan paid for his education with money earned from manual labor, like hauling logs. After three years, Princip transferred to the Sarajevo Gymnasium, where he became politically aware.

In 1911, he joined Young Bosnia, a secret local society that wanted to free Bosnia from Austrian rule and unify the South Slavs. After attending anti-Austrian demonstrations in Sarajevo, he was expelled from school and walked to Belgrade, Serbia, to continue his education. During the First Balkan War, he tried to volunteer with Serbian irregular forces fighting the Ottoman Empire but was rejected for being too small and weak.

In 1913, after Serbia’s unexpected success in that war, the Austrian military governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek, declared a state of emergency, dissolved parliament, imposed martial rule, and banned Serbian cultural and educational societies. Inspired by assassination attempts against imperial officials by Slavic nationalists and anarchists, Princip persuaded two other young Bosnians to join a plot to kill the Habsburg heir during his announced visit to Sarajevo. The Black Hand, a Serbian secret society with ties to military intelligence, gave them weapons and training and helped them get back into Bosnia.

On Sunday, 28 June 1914, during the royal couple’s visit, Princip fired a pistol into their convertible car, mortally wounding both. He was arrested immediately. At his trial, he said: “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria.” Because he was only nineteen, he was spared the death penalty and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was held at the Terezín Fortress. The Serbian government itself did not inspire the assassination, but the Austrian Foreign Office and Army used the murders as a reason for a preventive war, which led directly to World War I.

Princip died on 28 April 1918 of tuberculosis, worsened by harsh prison conditions that had already led to the amputation of his right arm. His legacy is controversial: many Serbs see him as a hero who fought colonial oppression, while Bosniaks and Croats often view him as a terrorist.