The Trigger (36 page)

Authors: Tim Butcher

BOOK: The Trigger

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184

Postcard written by Princip in Sarajevo to a female relative, Persa, at home in Obljaj, circa 1913, courtesy of National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina

209

Bosnian Muslim fighters who escaped on foot from Srebrenica when it fell to the Bosnian Serb army in July 1995, courtesy of organisers of Marš Mira peace march

210

The 2012 burial of Bosnian Muslim victims of the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995

235

The only known photograph taken of Princip during his time in Belgrade, 1914, courtesy of Belgrade City Museum

236

Police sketch of the Drina River crossing used by the assassination team to smuggle themselves into Bosnia, 1914, courtesy of National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina

263

Archduke Franz Ferdinand posing as a pharaoh in 1896 in Egypt, courtesy of Artstetten Museum

264

The last moments of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as his car turns off the Appel Quay, his killer, Princip, in the crowd in front of Moritz Schiller corner café, courtesy of the Sarajevo Historical Archives

285

The plaque commemorating Franz Ferdinand’s assassination is presented to Adolf Hitler, courtesy of Bavarian State Library in Munich

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The last known photograph of Princip, circa 1915, serving his 20 year jail sentence, before dying from tuberculosis in a prison hospital, April 1918, courtesy of National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina

For more photographs, video and historical material go to: www.tim-butcher.com

Every effort has been made to trace and contact all holders of copyright in illustrations. If there are any inadvertent omissions, the publishers will be pleased to correct these at the earliest opportunity.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Over the past hundred years much has been written about Gavrilo Princip and the Sarajevo assassination, often in dramatic detail. We have been told that: Princip jumped on the running board of the Archduke’s limousine to take his shot, the Archduke’s wife was pregnant when she died, the shooting happened on the anniversary of their marriage, the car did not have a reverse gear so was incapable of correcting the driver’s error, the Archduke caught the grenade thrown earlier at the couple and tossed it away safely, and Princip stopped to eat a last sandwich at the corner café before emerging to take his shot.

The problem is that these details, and many more besides, are not true. Some might appear unimportant, ignorable perhaps as fanciful trivialities. The ‘sandwich’ was concocted for television, entering historical orthodoxy to such an extent that the ingredients used for its filling became a subject discussed by schoolchildren studying the origins of the First World War.

But other errors are much more important. The extent to which Princip was, or was not, under the influence of the Serbian authorities when preparing the assassination speaks directly to any meaningful assessment of who was to blame for starting the First World War, a question that today remains far from settled. Austria-Hungary had a clear political motive in representing Princip as an agent of Serbia, so historians must tread carefully when assessing claims about Princip that could have been made for political reasons.

Panning away a century of muddle and misinformation was the challenge I faced when researching The Trigger. My strategy was to go back, as much as possible, to primary sources, not least because familiarity with them would allow me to assess the reliability of works of history that have been published subsequently.

The discovery of Princip’s school reports at the archives in Sarajevo, Tuzla and Belgrade provided, for me at least, a series of goosebump moments, bringing alive the young boy sent to study in the big city. They allowed me to prove what other historians had only been able to infer: it was during Princip’s schooling that he lost his way. This was charted clearly in the worsening grades logged by teachers, blissfully unaware of the bloody impact their failing student would have one day.

Documents from the initial police investigation into the assassination were enormously useful, kept at the National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. No police work can provide the whole picture but it can give important and reliable information. Similarly, the transcript of the court hearing, put together from the stenographers’ notes held at the same archive, allowed Princip’s voice to be heard clearer than anywhere else with the exception, perhaps, of the clinical notes of the psychiatrist who visited him in prison.

Some of the books I used for research are given below but special mention must be made of Vladimir Dedijer’s great work, The Road to Sarajevo. In its wide scope, grasp of detail and historical rigour, I found it without equal.

There was one final aspect that needed to be considered when researching Princip, the very powerful and occasionally toxic nature of Balkan nationalism. The war of the 1990s in Bosnia taught me how dangerous ethnic loyalties can be, a lesson that had to be borne in mind when dealing with any local assessment of Princip, whether by his ethnic kin from within the Bosnian Serb community, or from the rival groups of Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Objectivity is difficult to maintain if you have lived through the siege of Sarajevo, say, or the fall of Srebrenica.

This was brought home all too clearly in February 2014, the centenary year of the assassination, when mobs took to the streets of Sarajevo angry at the ongoing failure of government structures created in Bosnia at the end of the war in the 1990s. Fires lit by the protestors damaged badly the National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the place where I had carried out some of my research.

After surviving two world wars and a civil war, original documents concerning Princip were destroyed. History does not rest easily in Bosnia.

SOURCES ON GAVRILO PRINCIP

The school reports – original records from Princip’s secondary education in Bosnia are held at the Sarajevo Historical Archives www.arhivsa.ba and at the Tuzla Cantonal Archive www.arhivtk.com.ba

From Princip’s schooling in Serbia some reports are held at the Belgrade Historical Archives www.arhiv-beograda.org

The police investigation – original paperwork from the Austro-Hungarian investigation in 1914 was lost, last seen in a chest with serial number IS 206-15 around June 1915 in the custody of the Habsburg imperial commandant in Vienna

Copies of some documents are held today at National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. A more complete collection of copies is held at the Austrian State Archive in Vienna www.oesta.gv.at

The trial – original stenographic notes from the 1914 trial of Gavrilo Princip
et al.
are today held at the National Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo

In 1930 they were abridged and published by Albert Mousset as Un Drame Historique – L’Attentat de Sarajevo, Payot

In 1954 a more complete version was published by Professor Vojislav Bogićević as Sarajevski Atentat, Izdanje Drž. Arhiva Nr BiH

In 1984, an English translation was published in two volumes by W. A. Dolph Owings, Elizabeth Pribić and Nikola Pribić as The Sarajevo Trial, Documentary Publications

The clinical notes of Princip’s psychiatrist – originally published in German as Gavrilo Princips Bekenntnisse, 1926, Lechner & Son

Translated into English and published as Confessions of the Assassin Whose Deed Led the World War, in periodical Current History, August 1927, Vol. XXVI, Number 5, pp. 699–707

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