Fehim Čurčić drowned out the bomb. Gavrilo Princip managed to assassinate Ferdinand and his wife in the second attempt, an event that sparked the First World War that changed the world. Fehim Čurčić Fehim Effendi Čurčić (1866 – 12 February 1916) was a Bosnian politician who served as the 5th Mayor of Sarajevo from 1910 to 1915. On 28 June 1914, Mayor Čurčić welcomed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg to Sarajevo and was present later the same day at their assassination, the event that sparked World War I. He died aged 30 in an Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria employed a staff of sixteen. His authority was reinforced in 1907 when he secured the retirement of the Emperor's confidant Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky as Chief of the General Staff. Beck's successor, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, was personally selected by Franz Ferdinard. Franz in 1913, as heir-presumptive to the elderly emperor, had been appointed inspector general of all the armed forces of Austria-Hungary ("Generalinspektor der gesamten bewaffneten Macht"), a position superior to that previously held by Archduke Albrecht and including presumed command in wartime. In 1894 Franz Ferdinand met Countess Sophie Chotek, a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, wife of Archduke Friedrich,