Gavrilo Princip
Gavrilo Princip was a nineteen-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist and member of the secret Young Bosnia movement when he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Princip was motivated by South Slav nationalism and the desire to free Bosnia-Herzegovina from Austro-Hungarian rule and unite the South Slavic peoples. Too young to be executed under Austro-Hungarian law, he was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment and died of tuberculosis in a Terezín fortress prison in April 1918, never knowing the full scale of the war he had helped unleash. His act was the immediate trigger that detonated the structural tensions of European great-power rivalry.
- Lived: 1894 CE – 1918 CE
- Nationality: Bosnian Serb
- Roles: assassin, nationalist activist
