Portal:World War I/Selected biography/10
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gavrilo Princip (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаврило Принцип) (pronounced (gäv´ri:lo: pri:n´tsip) (July 25, 1894 – April 28, 1918) was a Serb member of the Young Bosnia secret society who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The event, known as the assassination in Sarajevo, prompted the Austrian action against Serbia that led to World War I. He is sometimes nicknamed "The Man That Started World War I". Having been too young at the time of the assassination (19) to face the death penalty, Princip received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, where he was held in harsh conditions worsened by the war. He died of tuberculosis on April 28, 1918 at Theresienstadt.