Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand during Yugoslav rule, is currently preserved in the Art Gallery of B&H in Sarajevo. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosniak) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so
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