History of Western civilization heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and he was assassinated on 28 June 1914 by a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip in the city of Sarajevo, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although Serbia agreed to all but one point of the Austrian ultimatum (it did not take responsibility in planning the assassination but was ready to hand over any subject involved on its territory), Austria-Hungary was more than eager to declare war, attacked Serbia and effectively began World War I. Fearing the conquest of a fellow Slavic Orthodox nation, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany responded
Petar Kočić who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. Kočić's cause was also taken up by South Slav nationalists such as Gavrilo Princip, the Young Bosnian who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914, precipitating the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. Young revolutionaries, Butler writes, "learned from Kočić's example that Bosnia could not be freed through the law and the courts." The radical land reforms advocated by Kočić only came to fruition after World War I, following the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which