Archduke Franz Ferdinand

December 18, 1863 - June 28, 1914

Born in 1863, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of the then Emperor, Kaiser Franz Joseph I. The young Archduke married the daughter of a Bohemian noble family, Sophie Chotek, who he met at a Prague ball in 1894. Their wedding took place six years later in Zákupy, a northern Bohemian town found in today's Czech Republic. The event was snubbed by the Vienna social elite, including the disapproving Emperor Franz Joseph, who referred to Sophia as a scullery maid. The strained relations with the aging emperor, who had held the empire together since the revolutionary year of 1848, did not improve. 

After the suicide of the Crown Prince, Rudolf, in 1889 and the subsequent death of his father, Archduke Karl Ludwig, the brother of the Kaiser, Franz Ferdinand became the heir presumptive of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. However, he would never hold this office as he would be assassinated by Bosnian revolutionaries in Sarajevo, today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. The deadly bullet, fired by Gavrilo Princip, is now on exhibit at the museum of the Konopiště Castle, the Archduke's last residence, now a part of the town of Benešov in central Bohemia. The funeral of Franz Ferdinand and his wife took place in Vienna on July 6th, 1914. The emperor, still holding onto his grudge, did not attend.