Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 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 they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the
Serbian historiography a Macedonian nation was nonexistent and that local Slavs were either Serbian or Bulgarian. The assassin Gavrilo Princip who in Sarajevo (1914) killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand is viewed by Serbian historians as a Serbian hero. A majority of Serbian historians view Austria-Hungary and Germany (Central Powers) as instigating the First World War while the actions of "Mlada Bosna" are presented as being autonomous and not dependent on Serbian government circles. The role of the Russian Empire and the position it took on the eve of war is portrayed favorably within Serbian historiography. Some Serbian historians are of the view that