Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Ferdinand and his wife with a lying in state aboard SMS "Viribus Unitis". On Sunday, 28 June 1914, at about 10:45 am, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The perpetrator was 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins organized and armed by the Black Hand. Earlier in the day, the couple had been attacked by Nedeljko Čabrinović, who had thrown a grenade at their car. However, the bomb detonated behind them, injuring the occupants in the following car. On
Otto Merz in an official motorcade in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand toured Sarajevo, and may have witnessed the assassination of the Archduke by Gavrilo Princip. According to the story told later, Merz reacted quickly to the gunshots. One of the first to reach Franz Ferdinand, he lifted the rather stout Archduke from his seat and carried him to a nearby house. However, that day there were "two" attempts on Franz Ferdinand's life; in the first one, Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb with a 10-second fuse at the archduke's car; the driver accelerated when he saw something thrown at them, and the