Princip, Gavrilo, 1894-1918

Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie, Duchess von Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The killing of the Archduke and his wife set off the July Crisis, a chain of events that within one month led to the outbreak of World War I.

Princip was born in western Bosnia to a poor Serb family. At the age of 13, he was sent to Sarajevo to study at the Merchants' School, before transferring to the gymnasium, where he became politically aware. In 1911, he joined Young Bosnia, a secret local society aiming to free Bosnia from Austrian rule and achieve the unification of the South Slavs. During the First Balkan War, Princip traveled to Southern Serbia to volunteer with the Serbian army's irregular forces fighting against the Ottoman Empire but was rejected for being too small and weak.

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