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1868 Sophie

Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (1 March 1868 – 28 June 1914) was the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Biography[]

Sophie was born in Stuttgart as the fourth daughter of Count Bohuslav Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin, a Bohemian aristocrat, Ambassador and a member of the House of Chotek, and his wife Countess Wilhelmine Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau (1838–1886).

It is unknown where Sophie first met Archduke Franz Ferdinand, although it may have been at a ball in Prague in 1894. Franz Ferdinand had become heir presumptive to the throne, after the suicide of his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 and the death of his father Karl Ludwig of typhoid in 1896. As such his uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph, informed him that he could not marry Sophie, who could not become an empress consort. To be an eligible consort for any member of the Imperial House of Habsburg-Lorraine, one needed to belong to one of the reigning or formerly reigning dynasties of Europe. Although the Chotek family were noble since at least the 14th century and had been made counts of the Holy Roman Empire in 1745, they were not of dynastic rank.

Franz Ferdinand refused to renounce Sophie to marry equally and beget an heir to the throne, compounding the scandal surrounding the death and illicit affair of the emperor's previous heir. Sophie and Franz Ferdinand were married on 1 July 1900 at Reichstadt (now Zákupy) in Bohemia.

In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was invited by General Oskar Potiorek, Governor of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to watch troops on maneuvers for three days in Sarajevo, the provincial capital. Sophie was not usually allowed to accompany her husband on ceremonial visits because of her lower status, but on this occasion, Franz Ferdinand was invited as a military commander rather than a royal personage.

At 10:10 am of Sunday, 28 June 1914, when the procession passed the Sarajevo central police station, Nedeljko Čabrinović hurled a hand grenade at the archduke's car. The driver accelerated when he saw the object flying towards the car and the grenade exploded under the wheel of the next car.

After attending the official reception at the City Hall, Franz Ferdinand asked about the members of his party that had been wounded by the bomb. In order to avoid the city centre, General Oskar Potiorek decided that the Imperial car should travel straight along the Appel Quay to the Sarajevo Hospital. However, Potiorek forgot to tell the driver, Leopold Loyka, about this decision. On the way to the hospital, by the Latin Bridge, the driver took a right turn into Franz Joseph Street. One of the conspirators, Gavrilo Princip, was standing on the corner at the time.

The driver put his foot on the brake, and began to back up. In doing so he moved slowly past the waiting Gavrilo Princip. The assassin stepped forward, drew his pistol, and at a distance of about five feet, fired twice into the car. Franz Ferdinand was hit in the neck and Sophie in the abdomen. They were both dead within an hour.

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