Causes of World War I corrective." British Diplomat Arthur Nicolson wrote in May 1914, “Since I have been at the Foreign Office I have not seen such calm waters.” On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead, by two gun shots in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, 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 assassination is significant because it was perceived by Austria-Hungary as an existential challenge
Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg and Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Through her grandmother's family, the Berchtolds, she is distantly related to former Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Count Leopold Berchtold and to Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is a great-grandson of her niece, Marie Chotek. Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (; ; 1 March 1868 – 28 June 1914), was the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Their assassination in Sarajevo sparked a series of events that eventually led to World War I. Sophie was born in Stuttgart as the fourth daughter of Count Bohuslav Chotek