If you are like me, someone mentions "Franz Ferdinand" in conversation and you think "the band!" However, I've come across this Austrian's name several times now (both in history class as well as english) and I wanted to find out a little more about him.
Before he died, he was the heir to the Austrio-Hungarian empire. He was very unpopular with the upper classes because he wanted to give Slavs an equal voice to that of the Magyars and Aryans in government. However, this was not the only reason for his assassination.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was absorbed into Austria in 1908, which upset many Serbians because they had wanted the province to be a part of Serbia. A Serbian terrorist group called the Black Hand decided to assassinate him. Their first attempt failed, but the grenade they threw at the Archduke's car managed to seriously wound many members of his party. He decided to visit them the next day, but the car he was in took a wrong turn and he ended up driving straight past one of the original assassins, Gavrilo Princip. Princip shot the Archduke and his wife. Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Dear Sophie, Dear Sophie, do not die! Stay alive for our children!"
Austrio-Hungary used the assassination as an excuse to take Serbia to war. The fighting escalated and because many European countries were allied, just about all of Europe was sucked into war. Thus, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand resulted in WWI.
Sources:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWarchduke.htm
http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/ferdinand.htm
Fun fact: According to wikipedia, the band Franz Ferdinand is named after the racehorse "Archduke Ferdinand" that won the 2001 Northumberland Plate (I presume it is some kind of horse race).
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Even though the Archduke wanted to 'give Slavs equal voice' on par with the Aryans and Magyars (Germans and Hungarians) he was not popular with most Slavs in the least, especially ones from the Balkans, like Serbia. The rise of nationalism made it extremely difficult for old empires like Austria to maintain control of its plethora of ethnic groups. Each wanted their own nation, so any Austrian royal was seen as a tyrant in their eyes. The Black Hand's association with Serbia is denied by Serbia to this day but it is more likely than not a state sponsored assassination. After Princip's bombs missed he actually went to get a sandwich in front of the hospital to console himself after his failed attempt when he had a stroke of luck and noticed the Archduke was visiting.
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