One Hundred Years Ago Today

So many remembrances of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand have been tossed out there today that I run the risk of disappearing into the snow storm of words.  I am not afraid of storms, so into the drifts I go.

When people take a closer look at the event – the assassination and the “run up” to the event – one can see that, really, based on the innumerable coincidences, synchronicities, and concurrences, the Great War was bound to happen, Franz Ferdinand was destined to be shot, and the 28^th of June had to be the day.

THE MAN

Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was a direct descendant of Maximillian the Great, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.  No one seemed to want the throne in the A-H empire.  Franz’s cousin was to inherit but committed suicide, his father was next in line but immediately passed the responsibility onto Franz.  He stood to hold the seat of the empire in 1896 after the passing of his uncle.  He became the Emperor of Austria, the King of Hungary and much, much more.  He became the richest man in Europe.

And he gave it all up for love.

Who knew?  Ferdinand was not a schmoozer, a people pleaser in an age when diplomacy was the newest means of solving or preventing international crises.  Ferdinand did not suffer fools.  He has been described as brutal, stubborn, impatient, and oppositional.  He did not feel the need to reach out and “make nice” with other leaders.  He was an unapologetic, conservative Austrian who wanted a pure Austrian race without the influence of Germany or any other nation (sound familiar?).

He attended a royal ball in Prague in 1894 – two years prior to his “inheritance” – and his whole world changed.  His eyes fell upon the beautiful Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenberg; a woman from a prominent Bohemian aristocratic family.  He fell in love immediately and proceeded to plan to marry Sophie.  She was, as a lady in waiting to the duchess Isabella, considered a “commoner” by the royals of the Hapsburgs and they were forbidden to marry.  In fact, Ferdinand was expected to marry the sister of the woman for whom Sophie worked.

 Ferdinand’s legendary stubbornness kicked in and he refused to marry anyone else. It was a royal scandal.  So much so that the only member of the royal family who agreed to attend the wedding was Ferdinand’s step-grandmother, everyone else refused to attend the wedding.

On June 28, 1900, Franz Ferdinand married his beloved Sophie Chotek…only after agreeing to several conditions by the Hapsburg family:

1.  Sophie, or any children born from the marriage, did not have any claim to the throne

2.  Sophie was forbidden from sharing any of Ferdinand’s rank or royal priviledges

3.  Sophie was not allowed to be next to Ferdinand in public

4.  Sophie was not allowed to ride next to Ferdinand in the royal carriage or sit next to him in the royal box at the theatre or Opera.

IN OTHER WORDS:

-Ferdinand was forced – expected – to treat the woman he loved as a dirty secret, as someone the family was ashamed of

-Sophie was not viewed as one of the family

-When the royal family entered a room, Sophie was forced to enter last.

This was simply not going to happen as far as Ferdinand was concerned.  He had to find a loop hole so that Sophie, and any children born of them, would be entitled to Ferdinand’s power and riches.  Ferdinand was made the field marshal and Inspector General of the Austro-Hungarian army.  This position allowed Ferdinand to shower his beloved with the entitlements he felt she deserved.

The Austro-Hungarian people believed that all of the controversy around the royal couple was bad luck and would bring a curse on the Hapsburg house and onto the country.

SYNCHRONICITY #1: 

THE DATE:  June 28

For Ferdinand, June 28 represented the day he stood against his family for the woman he loved.

June 28^th also has powerful historical significance for the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his beloved Sophie that Sunday afternoon in Sarajevo. 

To unpack that, let’s take a look at a brief political history of Serbia.

SERBIA, BOSNIA, AND THE 28^TH OF JUNE:  WHY DI D SERBIA WANT FERDINAND DEAD?

Serbia had been struggling for independence for centuries.  They had lived under the oppression of the Ottoman Empire as long as any Serbian could remember and all they wanted was to crawl out from under the thumb of foreign oppressors.  They also wanted to create a country called Greater Serbia which would pull together Serbs from Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Hungary, and other countries in the Balkans with people of Serbian ancestry. 

The most militant Serbians organized to create The Black Hand and use force, if necessary to free themselves from the clutches of foreign oppressors.  In fact, only a year prior to the assassination, in 1913, the Serbs had just been at war with the Turks yet again in the Second Balkan War. 

Serbia found itself in a giant game of international chess – a mere pawn in the game of kings - and was “given” to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an appeasement a generation earlier. 

The lack of consideration for Serbian autonomy, of course, did not sit well with Serbian nationalists and became the battle cry for radicalised young Serbians in the years leading up to June 28, 1914.  The Black Hand vowed to embarrass the Austro-Hungarian sympathizers in their government and assassinate as many foreign leaders as they could.  These assassinations would show the world that The Black Hand was not weak and was not to be trifled with.

When the members of the Black Hand learned that Franz Ferdinand was coming to Sarajevo on the 28^th of June, 1914 to inspect the army’s summer manoeuvres, they had to strike.  For them, the 28^th of June marked the anniversary of the Turks defeat of the Serbian forces and their long history of suffering and oppression at the hands of foreign rulers. 

They warned him not to come – and especially not to bring his wife.  If he chose to not heed the warnings, he would suffer dire consequences.

So, June 28^th acts a point of rebellion and pride for both parties:  for Ferdinand it was about his wedding anniversary, rebelling against his family, and showing this group of "nobodies" that he was not weak.  For the Serbians, the Black Hand, it was about rebelling against their oppressors, showing Austro-Hungary that they were not to be dismissed.  Both parties were “dug in.”

OTHER “COINCIDENCES” (or it’s all just part of the plan):

1.  On the way to Sarajevo, Ferdinand’s car, the car he would die in, overheated.  They almost didn't make it there.

2.  At the last minute, Ferdinand and Sophie were given a “new” driver – one who did not know the original driving route to the stops en route to the barracks.

This famous picture of Ferdinand and Sophie walking down the steps of the home of Sarajevo’s mayor, is taken a few minutes after the first attempt was made on their lives.  A bomb was thrown at the car, missed, and injured someone else when it exploded.  The picture is taken as they are getting back into the car on the way to go to the hospital to visit the person injured in the explosion. 

In a little under ten minutes after that picture was taken, they were both dead.

Gavril Princip, a 19 year old member of the Black Hand, was the only assassin to succeed that day.  There had been three of them.

3.  The new driver made a mistake in direction and was forced to turn around.  He pulled onto the street where the Soho café was located and, because the road was too narrow to allow him to fully turn around, he had to stop in front of the café.  That’s when Princip saw the royal couple, walked out to the open car, and shot Sophie in the abdomen and then shot Ferdinand in the neck.

4.  The license plate of the car in which the royal couple died, also has some mystique around it.  According to legend, the plate number AIII 1 18 was interpreted to predict the end of the Great War on the day it began:  A(rmistice day)  II (11) 11 (11) 18 – November 11, 1918.  Hmm.  Interesting at least.

5.  There is even word of a curse on the car itself.  Legends abound that some of the subsequent owners of the car met with untimely deaths:

·         a doctor crushed on a highway

·         a racing driver thrown over a stone wall

·         a farmer killed while being towed

·         a crash on the way to a wedding.

·         No wonder the car is said to be cursed.

·         There is some doubt over the veracity of the death stories, but the license plate has been matched with photographs from 1914 and is definitely, amazingly true.

So many coincidences.  So many emotional connections to the day.  Add that to the fact that when the threat of war was made in retaliation of Ferdinand’s death, no one wanted to call anyone else’s bluff.  The war machine was too heavy to stop.

The rest, as they say, is history.