Gavrilo Princip

Gavrilo Princip was born on 25 July 1894 in Obljaj, a remote village east of Bosansko Grahovo in Canton 10 of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The second son and the fourth child of his parents, Petar and Marija, he was named Gavrilo by a local Eastern Orthodox priest who insisted that naming him after Archangel Gabriel would help him to avoid infantile death common in those times, and due to which, his parents would lose six of their nine children.

The Princips, a Serb family, who lived off the land by farming, were very poor. Since Petar’s income from the farm after paying one-third to his landlord was insufficient to feed the family, he worked as a mailman and also transported passengers across the mountains separating Bosnia from Dalmatia to supplement his income.

In 1903, at the age of nine, Princip began attending primary school, despite opposition by his father and proved to be extremely good in studies

At the age of 13, Princip went to Sarajevo invited by his elder brother, Jovan, who wanted him to enroll in an Austro-Hungarian military school. However, he ended up joining a merchant school instead as a friend convinced Jovan not to make Gavrilo "an executioner of his own people". After studying for three years, Princip enrolled in a classical high school in Tuzla in August 1910 and graduated from there the next year.

In 1910, he came to know and admire Bogdan Žerajić, a Bosnian Serb revolutionary who unsuccessfully attempted to kill the Austro-Hungarian Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Marijan Varešanin, before killing himself. Fired with enthusiasm, Princip joined ‘Mlada Bosnia’ (Young Bosnia), a society that was working to free Bosnia from Austria-Hungary and unify it with the neighboring Kingdom of Serbia.

Princip and his fellow conspirators planned to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand when he visited Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 to oversee military training in Bosnia.

A little before 10 A.M. in the morning, the royal couple was taken in a six-car cavalcade from the Sarajevo station to the city. They were in the second car with Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach and Oskar Potiorek while the mayor of Sarajevo, Fehim Čurčić, and the city's Commissioner of Police, Dr. Edmund Gerde were in the front car. The car of Archduke had the top rolled back to permit the crowds to have a better view of the royalty.

Six conspirators, including Princip, lined the Appel Quay, the route of the vehicles, spaced out so that each could attempt the assassination as best possible. Standing by the ‘Austro-Hungarian Bank’, the first conspirator, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, became scared at the last moment and allowed the car to pass.

Nedeljko Čabrinović, a 19-year old student, hurled a bomb at the Archduke's car as it passed the central police station a few minutes later. However, the driver spotting the thrown object accelerated and the bomb with a 10-second delay exploded beneath the fourth car, seriously injuring two occupants while a dozen bystanders were hit by the shrapnel.

Because of the speed of the cars and the presence of the crowd, the other conspirators could do nothing. Preferring death over arrest, Čabrinović swallowed a cyanide pill and leaped into the Miljacka River, however, he failed to die and was arrested as the cyanide capsule had lost its potency and the river had hardly any water.

Princip’s tried to shoot himself on the spot but his plan was foiled. He was arrested and tried to swallow a cyanide pill in custody but it was out of date. He received a sentenced of 20 years in prison as he was too young to receive a death sentence, being 27 days short of the minimum age of 20 years required by law.

With the conditions in Theresienstadt prison being extremely harsh, he contracted tuberculosis and died three years and 10 months after the assassination, on 28 April 1918. Weak and malnourished, he weighed a mere 40 kg at the time of his death. His right arm had been amputated earlier due to extreme skeletal tuberculosis.

Afraid that his remains would become relics for Slavic nationalists, he was secretly buried in an unmarked grave by the prison guards, however, a Czech soldier present on the occasion made it possible for his body, with that of other "Heroes of Vidovdan", to be exhumed in 1920 and brought to Sarajevo to be buried beneath a chapel at St. Mark’s Cemetery.