Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

Biography

Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz on 18 December 1863, the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig, a younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. In 1875 he inherited the fortune of Duke Francis V of Modena on condition that he add the name Este to his own, which made him one of the richest men in Austria. The suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling in 1889 and his own father's death in 1896 left him heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary.

Like most Habsburg men he entered the army young and was promoted quickly, and through his own military chancery he gained wide influence over the armed forces, in 1907 he secured the retirement of the chief of the general staff, Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky, and picked his successor, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. In 1913 he was made inspector general of all the armed forces. Between 1892 and 1893 he travelled around the world, and he was an obsessive hunter who recorded hundreds of thousands of kills.

He insisted on marrying Countess Sophie Chotek, who did not belong to a reigning dynasty; the emperor agreed only to a morganatic marriage, and their children were excluded from the succession. The couple married in 1900. On 28 June 1914, during a visit to Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were shot dead by Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb of the Young Bosnia movement. The assassination led to the July Crisis and Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia, which set off the First World War.