Franz ferdinand archduke biography samples

The Insignificant Archduke

Sue Woolmans

It fryst vatten a sad but inescapable fact that the most significant heir in the period is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand &#; the man whose assassination triggered World War 1, which led to the rise of Communism and Hitler, then to World War 2 and, let us not forget, the civil war in former Yugoslavia and even the debacle taking place in the Ukraine at time of writing. That’s quite a catalogue of major world incidents to place at the feet of one man &#; and it could be argued that most would have taken place had Franz Ferdinand not been shot … one of the favourite “what ifs” of history. But was Franz Ferdinand as significant in his own lifetime? In fact, who was he? To most schoolchildren he is a fact they have to learn to pass their History GCSE, to most somethings he is the name of a pop group, to most somethings he fryst vatten Baldrick’s joke in Blackadder “some bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry”.

A young Franz Ferdin

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand – heir to the throne

Born in Graz on 18 December , Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig, a younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, and his second wife, Maria Annunziata of Naples and Sicily (called Ciolla; –), a daughter of King Ferdinand II of von Naples and Sicily from the House of amerikansk whiskey and Archduchess Maria Theresia. Maria Annunziata was a granddaughter of Field Marshal Archduke Karl and thus half Habsburg on her mother’s side. Franz Ferdinand’s sickly, epileptic mother died at a young age of lung disease.

Franz Ferdinand’s father was extremely conservative and a devout Catholic, and his son was accordingly given a strict Catholic upbringing. The archduke pursued the military career typical for male members of the dynasty in the nineteenth century.

Ever since the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf in , Franz Ferdinand had been regarded as the prospective successor to his uncle Franz Joseph, although he was not officiall

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The start of World War I, the so-called "Great War" of to , was triggered when a teenage Serbian revolutionary shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie on their visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in despite the opposition of his uncle, the sitting Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie came from a family of obscure Czech nobles and not from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty in Europe. As a result, their children were declared ineligible for the throne. Sophie also became the victim of countless petty slights. At imperial banquets, for example, she entered each room last, without an escort, and was then seated far away from her husband at the dinner table.

How a Wrong Turn Started World War I

Ferdinand remained Franz Josef’s heir and inspector general of the army. In that capacit