The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Prinzip, Gabrilo

PRINZIP, Gabrilo, Serbian assassin: b. Serajevo, Bosnia, about 1893; d. a prisoner in an Austrian fortress near Prague, 30 April 1918. Though an Orthodox Serb and a member of the Greater Serbian party, he was an Austrian subject, the son of a small innkeeper of Serajevo. It was he who fired the three shots from a Browning pistol which killed the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, in Serajevo on 28 June 1914. At the time a mere schoolboy and a printer's “devil,” Prinzip may be credited with having precipitated the European War by furnishing the Austrian government with a suitable pretext for war against Serbia. He was immediately arrested after firing the shots and subsequently sentenced to imprisonment for life. Prinzip confessed, on 2 July 1914, that he had previously informed the Pan-Serbian Union of his intention to murder the Archduke.