ALL FOR YOU, FRANZ?

tweeter guide

#KU_WWI Twitter Project:ASSASSINATION OF ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND

About the ProjectPROJECT STAFF

CREES Outreach CoordinatorAdrienne Landryalandry@ku.edu

#KU_WWI Project LeaderSam Moorekuwwi@ku.edu

Project ConsultantProfessor Nathan WoodHistory Department

WWI Planning Committee ChairProfessor Lorie Vanchenavanchena@ku.edu

SPONSORSHIP

Event refreshments donated by:University Honors Program

Books donated by:Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center

Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures

Professor Marc Greenberg, Slavic Languages & Literatures Department

Online analytics provided by:European Studies Program

Technical assistance by:Center for Global & International Studies

Promotion by:Global Awareness ProgramHall Center for the HumanitiesKU LibrariesKU Memorial UnionsSpencer Museum of Art

The #KU_WWI Twitter Project is a Twitter-based e-reenactment of the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the historical incident often cited as the initial geopolitical event that resulted in the First World War.

During Spring 2014, #KU_WWI “Call for Tweeters” will be held on the KU campus where students, faculty and staff can learn more about World War I, and have an opportunity to become Twitter e-reenactors.

Using this “#KU_WWI Guide” participants will develop e-reenact-ment characters, twitter handles, hashtags, and 140-character tweets reenacting the assassination.

Tweets created at these events will form an e-reenactment Mas-ter Script, which will tweet-out live on June 28, 2014, exactly 100 years after the event.

The public will be able to follow the reenactment on Twitter through the hashtag #KU_WWI or through Twitter feeds on the crees.ku.edu and european.ku.edu websites.

The #KU_WWI Twitter e-reenactment will include a creative storytell-ing component utilizing the strengths of the KU community. The e-reenactment will incorporate historical, geographical, literary and art references both past and present, making the project a humanities driven exploration of the events leading up to World War I.

Additionally, select tweets developed at the Call for Tweeters will be translated by KU students enrolled in language classes at KU — showcasing the diversity of the languages and cultures involved in World War I, and the languages and cultures taught at KU. A special thanks to Marta Pirnat-Greenberg and her BCRS 208 In-termediate Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian class for their help!

By inviting students to participate, the #KU_WWI Twitter Project will create an experiential learning opportunity to use social me-dia as a tool for engaging different academic skills; and integrate students and academic units from all over the KU campus for the study of a single, historical event.

This project is part of the University of Kansas centennial com-memoration of World War I, coordinated by the European Stud-ies Program. Learn more about participating units and upcoming programs at www.kuwwi.com. We greatly appreciate the support of the National World War I Museum and strongly encourage all participants to check out their exhibit, On the Brink: A Month That Changed the World, March 15 - September 14, 2014.

Thank you for participating and be sure to watch the reenactment online!

June 28, 2014 @KU_WWI

DOES it matter?—losing your legs?... For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When the others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?—losing your sight?... There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light. Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?... You can drink and forget and be glad,And people won’t say that you’re mad; For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country And no one will worry a bit.

Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

One of the things that drives me to study WWI, among other historical events, is the human drama behind it. Above is a poem from the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, who fought during WWI, entitled “Does it Matter?”, which I think

truly shows the idea of the human drama behind the war. Here was a man that was changed by his wartime experience.

WWI is often overshadowed by the events that would come after it, but it still is an im-portant event. It is the event that begins the 20th century; a century of bloodshed, increas-ing globalization, and hope. Often the human element of history, the experiences of the people involved, are lost. These people lived and went through events that would change their lives. Part of my goal is for people to gain a better understanding of what these people went through.

Sam Moore, Project Leader

#KU_WWI Guide

The First World War officially began on July 28th, 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia. But why did the Austro-Hungarian Empire declare war on Serbia? What sparked this cataclysmic event?

The answer: the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdi-nand, in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914. Franz and his wife Sophie were killed while on a state visit to Bosnia, which was annexed just 6 years earlier by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, shot them on the corner of Franz Josef Street. The assassins claimed to be part of the Black Hand, a terrorist group that called for the liberation of Bosnia from Austro-Hungarian rule. They wanted Bosnia, as well as Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro to join with the Kingdom of Serbia, and form a pan-south slav Greater Serbia, or Yu-goslav nation.

By the way, that’s what Yugoslav means in Bos-nian, Croatian and Serbian languages: Yugo = South, so…you know, “South Slav.” What Princip and other members of his terrorist group wanted was a union of south Slavic peoples in Europe, a union realized in the formation of Yugoslavia a few years later…sort of.

So how did the first world war begin?

John Keegan, The First World War, ( New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 52.

Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a time of nationalism, militarism, and high tensions. The industrial revolution had led to new class divisions and restructuring. There was a great influx of people from rural farms to urban factories, making cities dirty and crowded. Ruling classes were falling out of favor

and new political philosophies emerged that advocated for the proletariat. By 1914, heads of states coupled their fears of social problems at home with fears of geopolitical instability. Seeking security, the European powers formed an alliance system that pitted them against each other in more or less equally matched blocs. Because of this system, a localized conflict could in fact be the cause of a much wider war. The assassination in Sarajevo was the catalyst that set these blocs against each other, resulting in the overwhelming destruction that killed over 9 million people in combat and almost 17 million total.

European climate

Background

TRIPLE ALLIANCE: The only formal alli-ance between more than one nation was the Tripe Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The terms of this alliance deemed that all three would, “go to war together if any one were attacked by two other states.” When Archduke Franz Ferdi-nand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Serb terrorist group, Germany and Italy sided with them in their declaration of war on the Kingdom of Serbia.

A war of alliances: who fought who?

vs. TRIPLE ENTENTE: The other camp was not a formal alliance between three na-tions, but rather a loose system of alliances between Great Britain, France, and Rus-sia. Not as rigid as the Triple Alliance, the Triple Entente was still a system that would guarantee if one of these powers went to war then at least one other would as well. According to historian John Keegan, it is this mechanism that is commonly believed to have legalistically brought these nations together in war. So when Austria-Hungary declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia’s ally Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary and Austria-Hungary’s ally Germa-ny declared war on Russia, and so on and so on…

Definition: na·tion·al·ismnounthe belief that the nation should rule itself; a feeling that people have of being loyal to and proud of their nation, often with the belief that it is better and more important than other nations.

Background SUMMER 1914TIME LINE

June 28Assassination of Archduke Franz

Ferdinand by Serb nationalists in Sarajevo

July 28Austria-Hungary declares war

on Serbia

August 1Germany declares war on Russia

Germany and Turkey sign an allianceFrance mobilizes to support Russia

August 2Germany Invades Luxembourg

August 3Germany declares war on France

August 4Germany declares war on BelgiumBritain declares war on Germany

U.S. proclaims neutrality

August 10France declares war on

Austria-Hungary

August 11Montenegro declares war

on Germany

August 12Britain declares war on

Austria-Hungary

August 23Germany invades FranceAustria-Hungary invades

Russian PolandJapan declares war on Germany

August 27Austria-Hungary declares war

on Belgium

Franz Ferdinand was the Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hun-garian throne. His assas-sination, June 28, 1914, is what precipitated the chain of events that lead to the outbreak of WWI in August. Ferdinand was the nephew of Austro-Hungarian Em-peror Franz Joseph, and became the heir presump-tive when his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide in 1889. Franz was not known for being particularly likeable. Pretty much everyone except his wife hated him. The Emperor and the imperial court disliked him because they thought he was too liberal – a dangerous reformer. The public didn’t like him because they thought he represented the conservative stagnation of the monarchy. Contemporary opinion called him “bigoted,” “overbearing” and “bad-tempered.” So imagine everyone’s surprise when Franzi fell in love, and overthrew the estab-lished order so he could marry her.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Who got shot?

The Archduke’s wife, Duchess Sophie Chotek, was also killed on June 28, 1914. Born into a Bohe-mian aristocratic family, Sophie could count 32 uninterrupted generations of aristocratic descent. Despite this noble heritage, she was still considered too inferior to marry a member of the imperial family. She grew up the child of a diplomat, traveling Eu-rope from Dresden to St. Petersburg. Despite her father’s career, her family was relatively poor, living a simple life without pomp and ceremony. With no fortune or inheri-tance to speak of, Sophie became a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, the imperial matron of Viennese so-ciety. It was then that she met Archduke Franz Ferdinand and after a 5-year courtship, married the heir to the impe-rial throne, sparking the Cinderella story of the century.

Sophie Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg

The Archduke and his wife were in Sarajevo as part of an official trip to inspect army maneuvers. They were also there to meet the subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s newly annexed territory of Bosnia. Franz Fer-dinand had taken his wife Sophie on this trip because she was often denied certain aspects of court life and he thought this might be a good opportunity for her to receive some pomp and ceremony. You see, Sophie was not very popular back in Vienna…

Sophie was from a lower class, and many, including the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, deemed her unfit to be the wife of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. In fact, the Emperor only allowed them to marry after Franz agreed

that their children would have no future claim to the throne – a mor-ganatic marriage.

The courtship between Franz and Sophie didn’t help sway public opinion either. Franz, known as a

bit of a playboy, was thought to be having an illicit affair with a noblewoman or her daughter, nobody was quite certain. This was fairly scandalous at the time and getting a lot of coverage in local newspapers and tabloids. Imagine everyone’s surprise when it was discovered that he wasn’t having an affair with a noblewoman or the noble-woman’s daughter, but rather courting the noblewoman’s lady-in-waiting, Sophie! Given the nuances of Aus-tro-Hungarian social class structure in 1917, dating what many considered a servant was much worse than having an illicit affair. Needless to say, the Emperor was not amused.

You would have thought that their marriage would have added some level of respectability to their love affair, but it only made things worse. Sophie never received the respect the wife of the heir deserved. She was not allowed to sit with him at state dinners and was almost never allowed to accompany him on official visits to parts of the empire.

That’s why the trip to Sarajevo was so special. Since the trip was simply to observe the Bosnian army in the field, and not an official state visit, Franz was given permission to bring Sophie with him. Franz also thought that since it was so close to their anniversary, a mini-holiday would be a nice addition to their very private cel-ebration – nobody else celebrated their marriage, of course. Plus, so far from Vienna, Sophie might get some of the noble treatment she so rightly deserved.

Why were they in Sarajevo?

The Two Lovers

Definition: mor·ga·nat·icadjectiveof or pertaining to a form of marriage in which a person of high rank, as a member of the nobility, marries someone of lower station with the stipulation that neither the low-ranking spouse nor their children, if any, will have any claim to the titles or entailed property of the high-ranking partner.

Greg King and Sue Wool-mans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 32.

In Orthodox ar-eas like Southeast Europe, there are many saint days – days of religious observance and feasting. To the outside observer, St. Vitus Day is one of many. But for ethnic Serbs, St. Vitus Day is fraught with meaning…

On June 28, 1389, The Ottoman Empire destroyed a Serb-led army in Kosovo, ending the

short-lived Serbian Empire. This territory was integrated into the Ottoman Empire, and stayed there for the next 700 years.

In 1913, during the second Balkan War, Kosovo was liberated from the Ottoman Empire. And it was on June 28, 1914, that Kosovo was officially reintegrated into Serbia.

For many ethic Serbs June 28th was a day to celebrate their nationalism, their 700-year ambition to liberate themselves from a foreign empire’s oppression. The arrival of the Archduke, the Austro-Hungarian heir of who many considered another oppressive empire, was a sign of aggression. In his book, The Sleepwalk-ers, Christopher Clark expresses this idea quite clearly, “For Serb ultra-nationalists, both in Serbia itself and across the sympatric Serbian network in Bosnia, the arrival of the heir apparent in Sarajevo on this of all days was a symbolic affront that demanded a response.”

It seems likely that the date for this visit was made in ignorance by the Austro-Hungarian event planners. But for Serbs living in newly annexed Bosnia, the date was a clear message that they were subjects to a foreign power.

Additionally, the location of Sarajevo for an assassina-tion attempt held particular significance. Bosnia had become a point of contention between Austria and Serbia. The two countries used to be friendly, united in their dislike of the Ottoman Empire. But then Aus-tria-Hungary annexed the highly coveted provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 6, 1908, and Serbia’s ambitions for a Greater Serbia on the Balkan Peninsula were thwarted. Tensions continued to rise as each country made moves countered by the other, each vying for supremacy in Southeast Europe.

The most unfortunate day for the Austro-Hungarian Heir to visit Sarajevo

June 28th, St. Vitus’s Day

“’Some damn foolish thing in the Balkans,’ German chancellor Otto von Bismarck predicted, would ‘sooner or later plunge all of Europe into a general war.’”

Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 367.

Greg King and Sue Wool-mans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), xxxii.

Battle of Kosovo, 1389

The Serb terrorist group, The Black Hand, claimed respon-sibility for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 – but was this organization really the one in charge? The Black Hand’s role in the assassina-tion is still a point of contention. There are conflicting ac-counts that The Black Hand takes credit for the assassina-tion after the fact, and may not have played as big a role as they claimed.

The Black Hand was headed by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, chief of Intelligence within the Kingdom of Ser-bia. Most historians are in agreement that The Black Hand supplied the weapons, trained the assassins, and aided them in crossing the Serbian border, sneaking them into Sarajevo.

There are some historians that take it further and claim that The Black Hand was actually responsible for coming up with the idea in the first place.

But as British Historian, Sir Max Hastings, writes, “there is no hard evidence about what further support or direction Gavrilo Princip and his comrades receive in Belgrade.”

Just who was in charge?

The Conspiracy

Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević

Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević was chief of Serbian intelligence and the leader of The Black Hand at the time of the assassination. In 1903, Dimitrijević led a coup that assas-sinated King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia. It’s said that he and a group of his officers stormed the Belgrade palace at dawn, rac-ing through murdering everyone they came across. They found the King and Queen hiding in a closet. They dragged both from their hiding place, shooting King Alexander more than 30 times and shooting Queen Draga at least 20. Both corpses were stripped and thrown off the balcony. It’s said that the Russian’s paid Dimitrijević to lead the coup and install the pro-Russian King Peter I on the Serbian throne. King Peter i hailed Dimitrijević and his assassins as “saviors of the Father-land” and he was promoted to chief of Serbian Intelligence.

Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 368-69.

Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, ( New York: Knopf, 2013), xxxi.

Unsubstantiated rumors claim that the assassination was organized by officials in Austria-Hungary to get rid of an unpopular heir. Most people believed that once he got to the throne, Franz would renounce his promise and crown Sophie as Empress, paving the way for his sons to inherit the empire.

Other rumors claim that military commanders in Austria-Hungary were looking for an excuse to wage war on Serbia. What better way than to provoke an incident in Bosnia that would justify their aggression to-wards Belgrade?

Others claim that the assassination was ordered by Russia, Serbia’s powerful ally, who wanted to eliminate Austria’s influence in the Bal-kans. Many in the Russian government feared that Franz would unite the south Slav’s under Hapsburg rule, denying Russian imperial ambi-tions to expand into Europe through the Balkans. Those who give this theory credence cite Russia’s relationship with Black Hand leader Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević as proof.

Who were the actual assassins?The bolded names indicate the assassins that played a main role in the assassination. Chabrinovitch, Princip, and Grabezh were the main conspirators that were trained in Belgrade, and whom historians generally agree came up with the plot to kill the Archduke. Princip and Chabrinovitch were known to authorities in Sarajevo to be pro-Serbian nationalists.

In the days leading up to the assassination Chabrinovitch, Princip, and Grabezh crossed into Bosnia. As they crossed Bosnia, Chabrinovitch parted ways with Princip and Grabezh and met up in Tuzia, were they stashed their weapons. Their contact in Sarajevo was Donlio Ilitch, who recruited Chubrilovitch, Mehmedbshitch and Popovitch. It was also Ilitch who went to Tuzia to retrieve the weapons. Princip was given a pistol, Chabrinovitch a bomb, and Grabezh both.

Assassins• Muhamed Mehmedbshitch• Vaso Chubrilovitch• Nedjelko Chabrinovitch• Cvjetko Popovitch• Gavrilo Princip • Trifko Grabezh• Danlio Ilitch

At age 19, Gavrilo Princip (below) was too young to be given the death penalty, according to Austro-Hungarian law. He eventually died in prison of tuberculosis.

The other conspirators:

Austrian General Baron Conrad von Hotzendorf (Chief of the General Staff) formally re-quested per-mission from

the Austro-Hungarian emperor to wage a “preventive war” against Serbia no less than 25 times.

Other theories...

Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 162.

On June 28, 2014, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade made it’s way down Appel Quay, a boulevard that runs along the river Milijachka in the heart of Sarajevo. As planned, the 7 assassins had positioned themselves at different points along the boulevard (see map). The motorcade drove past three of the assassins be-fore the first assassination attempt was made.

Nedjelko Chabrinovitch attempted to assassinate the Archduke first. He struck his bomb against a lamppost and hurled it at Archduke’s car. The Archduke’s driver, seeing the bomb, sped up the car to avoid it. The bomb bounced off the car’s folded can-vas roof and exploded under the car behind them, wounding that car’s passengers and several bystanders.

After throwing the bomb, Chabrinovitch shouted ““I am a Ser-bian hero!”, swallowed a cyanide capsule and then jumped into the Milijachka river. His intent was to kill himself rather than be caught, which would have worked except that the cyanide capsule he swallowed was old making him immediately vomit, and the river was only 10 inches deep due to summer heat (it is late June, after all). So there he was, vomiting all over himself and

stuck up to his calves in Milijachka mud. Having watched his suicide attempt dramati-cally fail, the police were quick to apprehend him.

Still confused by what was happening, the Archduke ordered the motorcade to halt and sent an aide to sort out the confusion. After reporting back that there had been an assassination attempt, and that police had already apprehended the attempted

assassin, the Archduke ordered the wounded to be taken to a military hospital. The motorcade then continued along its planned route, driving right past the remaining four assassins without incident.

There are many differing accounts of why Princip and the other assassins didn’t act as the motorcade con-tinued along Appel Quay. The most common assumption is that the other four assassins saw the motorcade speeding by and assumed that the assassination had been successful. They had all heard the bomb go off

and there did seem to be quite a bit of alarm and confusion.

The motorcade arrived on time at Sarajevo’s city hall were they were greeted by the mayor, Fehim Effendi Churchić. Unsure of how to precede af-ter the assassination attempt, the Mayor, simply read a prepared statement about how perfect the Archduke’s

A Comedy of Errors

The Assassination

Greg King and Sue Wool-mans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 175.

visit was going, not mentioning the near assas-sination just a few moments earlier. This breach in decorum angered the Archduke who responded by reading his own prepared notes, now splattered with the blood of one of his aides wounded in the explo-sion. He famously said, “I come here as your guest and your people greet me with bombs.”

After the awkwardness at city hall, the Archduke and his entourage decided to head to the military hospi-tal to visit those wounded from the earlier assassina-tion attempt. Because everyone in the entourage was still a bit shaken from almost dying in an explo-sion, and then watching a guy try to drown himself in 10 inches of water while vomiting cyanide, a close friend and aide to the Archduke, Count Harrach, volunteered to stand on the running board of the Archduke’s car in case there were other assassina-tion attempts.

Having discovered that the first assassination attempt had failed, Princip set up a new position at the corner of Franz Josef

Street. The original path of the motorcade turned onto Franz Josef Street on the way to visit a local museum, and by standing at the corner, Gavrilo thought he’d get a 2nd opportunity to assassinate the Archduke. He didn’t know that the entourage would change their route to ensure the safety of the Archduke and his entourage.

Only, the route wasn’t changed as requested! Or if it was, somebody forgot to tell the lead cars. While traveling down the Appel Quay, the lead cars took the original route and turned down Franz Josef Street as was originally planned. As the Archduke’s car turned General Potiorek realized the mistake and yelled at the driver that he was going the wrong way. The driver, throwing the car into reverse, backed right up to Gavrilo Princip standing at the corner of Franz Josef Street. Now less than 10 feet away from the Archduke, Gavrilo fired two shots. The first shot hit Sophie in the abdomen, and the second shot struck the Archduke in the neck.

Sophie cried out in shock, “for Heaven’s sake what has happened to you,” and then immediately col-lapsed into her husband’s lap. The Archduke held her as she lay dying. His last words were, “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die. Live for our children.” By the time the car reached the Governor’s palace, both the archduke and his wife were dead.

“A crowd immediately surrounded Princip. Baron Morsey rushed forward, cavalry sabre drawn. Spectators were beating Princip; when Morsey saw that he still held the gun, he turned the hilt of his sword against him, hitting him until the pistol clattered to the pavement. Prin-cip managed to pull the vial of cyanide from his pocket and swallow the con-tents before it, too, was knocked from his hand. Like that used [earlier that day] by Chabrinović, it failed to kill him, appar-ently having lost its potency.”

Sean McMeekin, July 1914: Countdown to War, (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 19.

How did this event lead to the death of almost 17 million people, 9 million of those in combat? It’s difficult to wrap one’s head around the fact that the death of one person could ignite such a fire, especially when the initial reaction outside of Austria-Hungary was fairly lukewarm.

The day after the assassination The Times and the New York Tribune pub-lished an article about the event. The New York Tribune’s piece doesn’t showcase any sort of urgency or that event could lead to anything. The Times reports in a similar fashion, but adds that the Emperor is in mourning, and had declared that the court shall have a week of mourning.

To some this assassination just seemed like one in a long string of political assassinations: 1876 Sultan of the Ottoman Empire1881 American President James Garfield Tsar Alexander II of Russia1894 French President Sadi Carnot1896 Shah of Persia1897 Prime Minister of Spain1898 Empress of Austria-Hungary1900 King Umberto of Italy1901 American President William McKinley1903 King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia1905 Grade Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia1908 King Carlos and Crown Prince Louis Felipe of Portugal1911 Russian Prime Minister Peter Solypin1913 King George of Greece

Who cares about a dead Archduke?

Reaction

German Kaiser Wilhelm

The Kaiser was out racing his yacht when he heard news of the assassination. Wil-helm was closer to the Archduke than most, and decided to aban-

don the race to travel back to Berlin.

French President Poincare

At races in Longchamps with his wife. When handed the telegram with the news of the as-sassination, Pocincare thought, like most of his guests at the race, little of the news.

WHERE WERE THEY WHEN...?

No one can agree on the truth

Myths

Over the years there have been a number of myths that have popped up regarding the assassination:

MYTH: The Archduke’s coat was “supposed” to be bullet proof. In 1914? Really?

MYTH: The Archduke was sewn into his coat, which they had to cut off in order to try and save his life. There are many accounts disproving this but somehow it remains in collective memory. Also, the Archduke was shot in the neck so there would be no need to cut his coat off...

MYTH: Gavrilo Princip went to get a sandwich after the first attempt, and just happened to be standing in the right spot when the Archduke drove by him a second time. This is one of the most popular myths and a personal favorite.

However think about it… if you traveled halfway across the country to kill an Archduke and knew his planned route, would you give up that easily and go grab a sandwich? Also, sandwiches weren’t that common in Sarajevo, at the time...so the whole thing just seems unlikely.

Greg King and Sue Wool-mans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), xxxi-ii.

Who cares about a dead Archduke?A Scottish indie-rock band named themselves Franz Ferdinand in 2002. When asked why they named themselves after the assassinated arch-duke, they responded that they liked the name’s alliteration. But there may be more to it, as they do seem to know a lot about the assassi-nation... In their first single “Take Me Out” they indirectly reference the assassination. The B-side of the single “All for You, Sophia” directly references the events of June 28th. At concerts and shows, the band often uses crosshairs in their promotional materials and laser effects. And for a time they did ghost shows under the name The Black Hands,

after the Black Hand group. There’s a rumor that the band has been asked to play in Sarajevo on June 28, 2014, exactly 100 years after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.

Music

The Assassination in Popular Culture

PoetryWWI in Literature

An excerpt from “Ach vojna, vojna!” (The Soldier’s Lot) by Leos Janacek (Czech)

Oh war, war, that evil war,The Queen herself has writtenA letter to MoraviaTo make Johnny go to war.

Johnny stands above the white water,His mind troubled.Get a move on, Johnny. Saddle the horses,You’ll be riding to war.I won’t go, my mind is troubled…

Ach vojna, vojna, nescasna vojna,dyz na nu jit musim.Sama kralovna do Moravy psala,aby Janoska na vojnu dostala.

Four Male Voice Choruses by Leos Janacek, 1885.

An excerpt from “Doubts” by Tristan Tzara (Romania)

You do not know what is real and unreal.You think you see a bandit and you fireand they tell you afterwards that it was a soldier.That’s how it was with me…

Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry ed. by Roy MacGregor-Hastie (London, 1969)

LYRICS TO “ALL FOR YOU, SOFIA”

Bang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, Europe’s going to weepAll for you, all for you, all for you, Sophia (x4)

Bang bang, history’s completeBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me Gavrilo

All for you, all for you, all for you, Sophia (x4)

The Black Hand holds the gunThe devil takes his runUrban, take the Appel QuayIt’s June the twenty-eighthThe seventh was for me

Bang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me GavriloIf I move this could dieEyes move this can dieC’mon...take me out

I know I won’t be leaving here (with you)I know I won’t be leaving hereI know I won’t be leaving here (with you)I know I won’t be leaving here with you

An excerpt from “Mora” (“The Nightmare”) by Antun Matos (Croatia)

A world of weaponry — oh! gods of war!A doctoral degree in the pocket of a fool,old time sinners with clerical faces,gains against syphillis but cultural losses,progressive nations devouring backward ones…

Oruzan mir — oj, davor, davori!Doktorski diplom u dzepu bedaka,Bludnici stari s licem crkvenjaka,Sifilis progres i kulturne bijede,Napredan narod slaboga sto jede…

Antun Gustav Matos by Eugene Pantzner, (Boston, 1981)

An excerpt from “A Man Sings After the War” (1920) by Dusan Vasiljev (Serbia)

I waded in blood up to my knees,and I have no more dreams.My sister sold herslf,and they cut my mother’s grey hair.But I in this sea of lechery and filth,am not looking for prey;oh, I long for air and milk,and the dew of morning.I am not sorry that I waded in blood up to my knees,or that I have survived the red years of slaughter.Yet because of this holy pilgrimageruin has been heaped upon me.

I am not looking for prey.Give me only a handful of air,and a taste of the white dew of morning - -All the rest is for you.

Serbian Poetry from the Beginning to the Present ed. by Milne Holton, (New Haven, CT, 1988)

Dulce Et Decorum Est (1917-18)by Wilfred Owen (England)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

[Note: the Latin phrase means “Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”]

To Germany (1914)by Charles Hamilton Sorley (Scotland)

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And no man claimed the conquest of your land. But gropers both through fields of thought confined We stumble and we do not understand.You only saw your future bigly planned, And we, the tapering paths of our own mind, And in each others dearest ways we stand, And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again With new won eyes each other’s truer form and wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm We’ll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, When it is peace. But until peace, the storm, The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Prose

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav HašekExcerpts from the Intro to the New English Edition by Zdeněk Sadloň and Emmit Joyce

Some writers so capture the soul and spirit of a people that they are identifi ed with them forever after. In England, it was Charles Dickens, in the United States, it was Mark Twain. For the Slavic nations, and to some extent for all Central Eu-ropeans, it is the Czech writer, Jaroslav Hašek.

Hašek’s most important work was centered around a Czech soldier’s experiences in World War One. It’s actual title is The Fateful Ad-ventures of The Good Soldier Švejk during the World War, but it is known by tens of millions of Central Europeans as simply, The Good Soldier Švejk. This monumental, humorous work is acknowledged as “...one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing” by no less a standard and exalted reference than the Encyclopedia Britannica.…The book’s central character is a quintessential, working-class citizen-soldier, often abused by the fates and the forces of the Austrian empire. In both civilian and military life, Švejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certi-fi ed to be an imbecile by an offi cial military medical commission. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his sometimes questionable actions because he’s a certifi ed nitwit!

Yet, Švejk is not a coward, nor is he indolent. He is drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he despises. His method of subvert-ing the Austrian Empire is to carry out his orders to an absurd conclusion. His is an inspired resistance. He holds the foreign authorities, and their Czech fellow travelers, accountable for their ridiculous platitudes and pseudo-patriotic blather.

The Good Soldier Švejk is as entertaining as any book of the 20th century. And, though it is set in World War One and written shortly thereafter, most readers will fi nd it thoroughly modern. There is good

reason for that. Jaroslav Hašek was more than avant garde. He was an iconoclastic revolutionary, both in his life and as an artist. The First World War liberated the Czech Lands and Jaroslav Hašek simultaneously. For the fi rst time, he was free to write and create without censorship or fear of imperial reprisal.

… A host of literary critics acknowledge that Jaroslav Hašek was one of the earliest writers of what we have come to know as modern literature. He experi-mented with verbal collage, Dadaism and the sur-real. Hašek was writing modern fi ction before exalted post-World-War-One writers like Hemingway, Fitzger-ald, and Faulkner, to name just a few. A literary ana-lyst has pointed out that Hašek is one of the few writ-ers of all time to combine political with misanthropic satire. In fact, The Good Soldier Švejk, he says, is the only example of this genre in the 20th century.

It seems unconscionable that Hašek’s work has been inaccessible to English readers for so long. What if Victor Hugo or Leo Tolstoy had been kept from us? It’s hard to imagine literature without them.

Let’s reverse the situation. What if you suddenly became aware that, because of some problem with translation or some other oversight, Mark Twain’s work had been virtually hidden from Europeans for 75 years? Most Americans would consider that a lamen-table travesty. Well, that is what has happened to the Czech people in the case of Jaroslav Hašek. He and his work are practically non-existent in the English-reading world, an infl uential audience of at least 500 million people.

...literary critics agree that Jaroslav Hašek wrote the grandaddy of anti-war novels. According to one critic, only the first two-thirds of The Red Badge of Courage precedes it. The Good Soldier Švejk even predated that quintessential First World War novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. More familiar to today’s readers, perhaps, is Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, set in World War Two. Hašek’s biting satire and humor is its direct ancestor also, as well as that of many others. It might be hard to imagine, but “anti-war” was not “in” before The Good Soldier Švejk. And, it should be noted that Hašek’s Švejk preceded Joseph Heller’s Yosarrian by almost 50 years....

World War One, amplified by modern weapons and techniques, quickly escalated to become a massive human meatgrinder. It has been eclipsed in many memories by World War Two, the most horrendous conflict of all time. However, if you set that debacle aside, World War One would easily dwarf any other in human history. Fifteen million people died, one million of them Austrian soldiers. Jaroslav Hašek

participated in this conflict and examined it in The Good Soldier Švejk.

Hašek knew that a momentous, fundamental change in human history was occurring. For Central and Eastern Europe, it was the end of the old order. It was the demise of a social structure that had evolved from prehistoric times and affected every human life. Tribal and clan chieftains had evolved into Dukes, Counts and Lords, and then into Monarchs and Emperors. These despots caused and lost World War One and suddenly vanished. The decrepit empires were replaced by democratic republics, except in Rus-sia where the bolsheviks instituted their own fatally flawed dictatorship and empire. However, as most historians agree, enough perverse elements and limbic memory of the old order remained in Central Europe to foment and fuel the biggest meatgrinder of them all, World War Two.

So, as you can see, the setting of The Good Soldier Švejk is right there on the cutting edge of histori-cal change. It is Jaroslav Hašek’s peek, a la Charlie Chaplin, at the dawn of truly modern times. …

#KU_WWI Twitter Guide Sources

Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (New York: Harper Collins, 2012).Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013).Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of The Good Soldier Švejk during the World War, transl. Zdeněk Sadloň and Emmit Joyce (www.zenny.com: The Samizdat, 2000).John Keegan, The First World War, ( New York: Vintage Books, 1998).Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, ( New York: Knopf, 2013).Sean McMeekin, July 1914: Countdown to War, (New York: Basic Books, 2013).