The Rest Is History - 467. The Murder of Franz Ferdinand: The Victim (Part 3)

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one of the most important men in the world. But he was a lonely man, not helped by the fact that, in spite of custom and tradition, he had chosen for wife Sophie, an aristocrat who nonetheless was not noble enough to marry a Habsburg Archduke. Public humiliation, enforced by the Emperor himself, would plague them for the rest of their lives. In an attempt to show a Habsburg presence in the Balkans, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie had been convinced to undertake a military inspection in Sarajevo, amidst rising nationalist tensions in the area. And for once, they would be allowed to perform their public duties together, as a couple. But, after the electricity went down in his train on the way there, the Archduke could feel something sinister was in the making… Join Tom and Dominic in the third part of our series on the assassination that sent millions of men to war, as they discuss how Archduke Franz Ferdinand became heir, his strained relationship with his uncle, the Emperor, shooting parties with Kaiser Wilhem II and George V, and why he went to Sarajevo with his wife, Sophie… _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. From an early age, I have been traveling a lot. The differences, the darkness of the received impressions of countries and people, of states and things, have offered me instruction, satisfaction, and joy. No wonder that, from early on, a wanderlust developed in me which finally culminated in the desire to accomplish a voyage around the world. This wish has been fulfilled. What pushed me was the pursuit of the following.

To achieve insight from personal observation of other parts of the world into foreign institutions and communities, to come into contact with foreign people, to learn from foreign cultures and customs, to enjoy the sights of the wonderful works of art and foreign nature and its inexhaustible allure in the open sea, on firm ground, in princely palaces, in meager huts, in metropolises, in solitary wilderness, in lush lowlands, in clear mountain heights, have I found what I have been looking for rich in experiences, in rare prizes, in collections, have I returned home. So that, Dominic, was the preface to an account of traveling around the world, which was published in 1896 by Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke who, let's face up to it, has a truly terrible day on the 28th of June 1914. He does indeed. But before we come to that, let's have a look at his life, his character, and more broadly than that,

the whole world in which he inhabits, the world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And to do that, we've moved from the cafe, which was a very kind of Gavrilo Prince place to kind of hang out, wasn't it? It was. We've come to it, well, it markets itself as a Viennese cafe. So a kind of Habsburg vibe. It's got a very Habsburg vibe

in the Hotel Europa in Sarajevo. Hello, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that little bit of audio footage of Franz Ferdinand talking as much as I did, and judging by their horrified expressions, the waiters did. So yes, so that preface actually is quite interesting. There's a website called Franz Ferdinand's World, and it gives you all his accounts. So he wrote this book about his voyage around the world, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who's of course known now only for one thing which is being shot in sarajevo two things in my case because he's also known for an

extraordinary photograph that was taken of him in egypt where he dressed up as a mummy he did and he's kind of wrapped up and he's in a in a sarcophagus and his little bless him his little austrian face peering out with his whiskers and everything. Exactly. And I think anyone who is interested in the interface of Egyptology and the Austro-Hungarian empire, I mean, you love that photo. There are many such people. So actually the reason I thought that would be a fun introduction, not just because it would give you such a wonderful opportunity to show off your mastery of different voices, but also it's a Franz Ferdinand we don't normally think of. So we think of Franz Ferdinand the man

shot in Sarajevo as the incarnation of kind of stolid Habsburg conservatism so in that impression I was kind of channeling an Austrian walrus yes that's what I had in mind Austrian walrus exactly but that's not entirely fair is it no so that journey around the world he did it in December 1892 and it took him the best part of a year. He came back the following October. It's actually an amazing journey, Tom. Egypt, Aden, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Singapore, Java, Hong Kong, China, Japan, New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Borneo, Canada, the United States. I mean, there's surely a case that at the beginning of the 20th century, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been to more interesting places than almost anybody else on earth.

And it was brave of him to go to America, bearing in mind what happened... To his uncle, Maximilian. To his uncle, Maximilian, who ended up shot. That's right. He actually goes to America. He goes to the great Chicago World's Fair in 1893. He arrived in a private Pullman car,

which was called Mascot. Had a brilliant time. And I think what all this reminds us is that actually, well, he is a much more interesting, complicated, and surprising person, I think, than the Austrian walrus caricature. So the whole point of this series is to explain how and why the First World War began. And actually, rather like Gavrilo Princip princip the archduke is often just written off as a bit of a cipher and a footnote in history really and as we'll see today he is not a footnote in history and actually his story is an excellent way to understand the austro-hungarian empire how it worked what its future was and the kind of some of the geopolitical dynamics in sort of east Central Europe at the beginning of the 1910s.

And I think that British listeners in particular will find certain echoes of dynamics in our own beloved royal family. They will indeed. Because he's the nephew, not the son, of the ruling emperor. That's right. The ruling emperor, I mean, he's been in power forever. And there is a kind of Elizabeth II quality. To Franz Joseph, yes.

To Franz Joseph, the emperor of Austria-Hungary. Absolutely there is. Christopher Clarke in his brilliant book, Sleepwalkers, says how people dream of Franz Joseph. He haunts their sleep. And that's what people say of the queen, in a similar way.

Yes. So Franz Josephph the emperor of austria-hungary came to the throne in 1848 and he'd seen two massive defeats in the first couple of decades of his reign one was at solferino where they lost the austro-hungarians lost northern italy and one was at koeniggratz where they lost to prussia and they basically lost control of Germany. In 1863, Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz in southern Austria. He's the son of Franz Joseph's younger brother, Karl Ludwig, and his mother is a princess of the two Sicilies, Princess Maria Annunziata.

She's a Bourbon. And he's growing up in an empire that has had to completely recalibrate itself it's shrunk because it's lost some of its territory so again quite like elizabeth ii yes uh when he's three in 1867 the austrians and the hungarians agreed what was called the compromise and the way this worked was that the empire would effectively become a kind of strange federation. Half of it was the Empire of Austria, and half of it was the Kingdom of Hungary. And there were different nationalities under each of those. So for example, Croatia was run by the Hungarians. Transylvania was run by the Hungarians. But for instance, Galicia, so what is now Poland, a bit of Poland and a bit of Ukraine,

that was part of the austrian half and it seems a little bit unwieldy but actually franz joseph the emperor keeps it together he is the symbol of stability that glues it together he's very serious he's very hard working he's actually intensely conservative you know the elizabeth the second comparison is a good one because like her he is the embodiment of dutifulness of duty yeah he famously sleeps in this kind of iron bed um he's very frugal he gets up at kind of four o'clock in the morning to do his paperwork he's boring and the boringness is the is the brand so his famous saying that he says every day multiple times a day when he visits some town or he says it was nice we were quite pleased yeah he never says anything but that yeah but there's something also faintly forbidding about him almost kind of

undead so there's a famous description of him in the Radetzky March, the Joseph Roth novel, coffered up in an icy and everlasting old age, like an armor of an awe-inspiring crystal. Yeah, nice. Sorry, Tom, I'm in the middle of, we've literally ordered some Sasha Torta to get into the kind of... I've got some cake. The Habsburg vibe. Couldn't be more Viennese. And I think for Franz Ferdinand, growing up in that world, it is quite a forbidding and intimidating world to grow up in.

So all the accounts of his boyhood, you know, there are different versions, but he seems to have been a very quiet, worried, awkward kind of boy. He's tutored at home. His mother died when he was very young, when he was about seven. He has a younger brother called Otto, who is basically more fun, more clever, more popular.

Total kind of older brother. You and I are both older brothers, aren't we, Tom? So we have a lot of fellow feeling with Franz Ferdinand. Yeah, and the more charismatic brother. Yeah. The other problem he has is he's obviously completely eclipsed by his cousin, the emperor's son. So his cousin is Crown Prince Rudolf. And anybody who knows anything about Habsburg history will know

Crown Prince Rudolf is a pretty extraordinary character he is very charming he is unreliable he's mercurial he's he's he's idealistic um he's like you tom he loves fossils and minerals and stuff but he's also me he's driven mad by syphilis isn't he yes well as far as we yeah so far i mean driven mad yet no so he's ravaged by gonorrhea and syphilis isn't he yes well as far as we yeah so far i mean driven mad yet no so he's ravaged by gonorrhea and syphilis he becomes a morphine addict and in 1889 a point of difference again a point of difference in 1889 when rudolph was 30 and franz ferdinand was 25 rudolph killed himself in a kind of suicide pact with his teenage mistress maria vetsera at the meierling hunting lodge this incredible story the subject of films and operas and so on and so forth now rudolph was the only

son of the emperor under other circumstances the the crown the role of the heir apparent would now have passed to the emperor's brother maximilian but of course maximilian has come to a very sticky end hasn't he because he's gone off to be emperor in Mexico and been shot. Exactly. So actually, the title would now pass to Franz Ferdinand's father, Karl Ludwig. But Karl Ludwig is quite old and he's not in terribly good health. So when Karl Ludwig dies seven years later, Franz Ferdinand, the emperor's nephew,

is unexpectedly the heir to the Austrian throne and will inherit the reigns of this extraordinary multinational dynastic empire. Well, the description is usually ramshackle. Yes. Do you think it's ramshackle? This is a really thorny kind of historical question. We know that Austria-Hungary broke up, obviously, at the end of the First World War. And so I think for a long time, there was a lot of historical question. We know that Austria-Hungary broke up, obviously, at the end of the First World War. And so I think for a long time, there was a lot of back projection. And the classic thing that historians would say about it is it's stagnant, it's ramshackle.

I mean, they always use the word sclerotic and, you know, all this kind of stuff. So Tim Butcher in The Trigger, which we've been citing a lot he quotes from the uh baedeker to the empire of 1905 and in this the baedeker points out that in in some areas of the empire people will drive on the right and some people drive on the left and then butch says it did not say what happened when the two driving styles collided and i guess that that is always the risk, isn't it? With not just Austria and Hungary, but also all the various constituent parts who are not given equal status with Austria and Hungary, that they all have different interests. And occasionally they're going to come into collision with each other.

Well, occasionally, I mean, all the time. So just to give people a sense of some of the nationalities, we're talking about Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes,lovenes slovaks serbs and so on and so on we haven't even mentioned bosnian muslims now the austrians i think it's fair to say were generally the more liberal of the two partners the hungarians treated their nationalities issue by basically pretending it didn't exist at all but i don't think it is fair to say that austria is a basket case or that it is doomed by nationalism first of all economically it's actually

reasonably successful you've got a big customs union integrated markets transport network factories all of this stuff it's actually booming isn't it at this period in the years before the first world war the austria hungarian economy is growing by about five percent a year my god tom i mean we give a lot for that right what would we give for that today there actually isn't that much political violence there is some of course but it's not as bad as the political violence for example in russia and you could argue it's not as bad as the threat of political violence in ireland yeah for example of course there are a lot of nationalists and all these different national groups are demanding more privileges and more airtime, more money and all that stuff, more patronage. But radical nationalists calling for violent separation are actually pretty rare.

Even most nationalist politicians recognize they can probably get more by being in the empire and moaning about it than they would by breaking away well i mean it's interesting definitely when it collapses there are then a lot of nationalists who say oh we've made a mistake i mean particularly by the 30s i wish we were back with the hapsburgs because of course if the hapsburg empire breaks up it is pretty obvious there will be a lot of fighting yeah about who inherits which bits yeah and where they draw the um borders now all of that said of course it's not perfect for one thing the court is incredibly conservative i often wonder whether it's a it's a classic case of kind of overcompensating because they have been on the retreat and because they have lost some of their

former power and so they're trying much too hard to pretend that nothing has changed so franz joseph is pathologically conservative and hierarchical you know we laugh at george the fifth having his strict views about how you creased your trousers yeah i mean franz joseph the issue of what trousers you're wearing is an existential one yeah um he becomes a very melancholy, sort of pessimistic figure. Not least because, I mean, his son has committed suicide. His brother's been shot. His brother has been killed in Mexico. But then his wife, the most glamorous woman in Europe, Cece, Elizabeth.

The Diana. She's the Diana with knobs on of her era. She was murdered on Lake Geneva by an Italian anarchist in 1898. So from that point onwards, Franz Joseph becomes very lonely and sad and kind of reclusive. So Franz Ferdinand grows up in this world. He's in the army, commissioned in the army when he's 12. He basically is steeped in the kind of the world of the Habsburg army, which is, of course, the one institution that's really holding the empire together.

It's also, interestingly, it's an institution where the Austrian side is given a degree of primacy because everyone is expected to speak German, aren't they? Yeah, which the Hungarians don't. And we'll come on to this. For Franz Ferdinand, the fact that the Hungarians don't speak German is an unbelievable affront, absolutely intolerable.

So he, you know, when you look at photos of him as a young man he's always wearing very tight uniforms uh admiring his enormous mustache sort of sitting around in the officer's mess with the other papsburg officers and things and that's his milieu the problem for him is that the emperor has never recovered from the loss of his son and makes no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact that he considers franz ferdinand an absolute waste of space so that when they first met after the meiling tragedy the emperor treated franz ferdinand really like dirt franz ferdinand said afterwards i've never been treated so coldly before the mere sight of me seems to awaken

unpleasant memories it's like denethor mourning boromir it totally is thing faramir yeah no absolutely there was no warmth between them and never is the sad thing is that franz ferdinand he clearly admired franz joseph enormously was very respectful of him never spoke out of turn, never criticized him, never betrayed a hint of his frustration. And yet the emperor continued to treat him with sort of cold indifference. And do you think this is why he's so rude to other people? So kind of short with other people? Franz Ferdinand is famously a very short-tempered man. And clearly a lot of this is, I think, because he's a very frustrated man.

The round-the-world trip, for example, he's clearly curious. When you see those photos of him on the day of the assassination sarajevo where he does as you put it he looks like an austrian walrus you don't think of him as a as a sort of curious man as a as a stream trying to break its banks that's why that photograph of him in the the pharaoh's coffin is so unexpected yeah and funny it is funny so he does the round the world trip and he writes that lyrical passage about it, about how much he loved seeing new experiences

and learning and all this stuff. Then a year later, he fell ill with lung problems. He probably had a version of TB. Like Gavrilo Princip. And he was sent to Egypt to recuperate. That's when he poses as a mummy. But when he's away,

everybody thinks he's going to die and they say oh brilliant his younger brother otto is the new heir now and the emperor and everybody else treats otto as the heir and franz ferdinand knows this and he's absolutely gutted and so when he comes back and everybody's like oh no he's still alive he's really hurt i think and disappointed by this and so as um i as almost any account you read of him says, he grew into a man suspicious, morose, and violent, seeing enemies everywhere, and because of this, turning would-be friends into enemies.

He also has the same, I mean, to his credit, Tom, he has the same view of the human condition as I do. Yes, I saw this. So I always assume that everyone I meet is a rogue until the contrary is proved. It's exactly what I think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely what i think incredible so so we've already had captain bentin as a kind of analog to you from the 19th century history and now we've got franz

my dream dinner party is captain bentin and franz ferdinand tom no no question he's very hot-tempered he's exceptionally rude something else i I admire in a... So he's rude to servants. I don't approve of that, Tom, to be fair. I'm very polite to assets. But when it comes to birds, I mean, he's terrible to birds, isn't he? You wouldn't want to be a bird with him when he's got his gun. You wouldn't. Sorry, Tom, I've shamed myself by taking a mouthful of cake. Theo is absolutely livid. So I don't approve of shooting birds.

Have you seen how many he shot in his life? So 272,511 game kills, 5,000 of which were deer. So I'm assuming all the rest were birds. Have you seen how many he shot? I have. So 272,511 game kills, 5,000 of which were deer. So I'm assuming all the rest were birds. 100,000 trophies were on exhibit at his bohemian castle.

Yeah. In one day's hunt alone, he shot 2,140 game birds and animals. Yeah. Astonishing. Different times, Tom. And on his world tour,

I mean, it's all very well you going on about, oh, he's out there being a hippie and discovering himself. No. elephants emus kangaroos koalas monkeys tigers grizzly bears and when he went to yellowstone park and was kind of bored by the geezers yeah you know he he solved the problem of his boredom but by shooting porcupines and squirrels he's very keen to take on a bison no but to be fair to him he's a very good shot yeah fine well that's a reassurance for the birds isn't it yeah and actually okay i think a lot of listeners at

this point be thinking thinking badly of franz ferdinand not unreasonably of course this is the age tom i know you have a bizarre fetish about this because you're very interested in the history of shooting game you were desperate to recalibrate this series and have more shooting in it i think there's already quite a lot of shooting um and there will be more shooting to come there will be so george v loves shooting yeah aristocrats love i mean this is the big thing and it's become almost industrialized so they have beaters who will basically send hundreds and hundreds of birds into the air and you shoot them all and you're right i would i would at some point like to do an episode on what's going on in britain at this point yeah just on the the case of the prosecution yeah franz

ferdinand being a terrible person yeah i quote the german historian michael freund a man of uninspired energy dark in appearance and emotion who radiated an aura of strangeness and cast a shadow of violence and recklessness so this is the person who you're comparing yourself to. I can see the parallels. Uncanny. They're obviously uncanny. But I mean, presumably that's not why you're sticking up for him.

No, because actually there is another side to Franz Ferdinand as we will see. So he might not seem the most obviously lovable character, but obviously the one thing he needs is a wife. wife. He needs a consort.

Now, Franz Ferdinand doesn't seem to have been a great man for the ladies. He is always complaining, basically, that women are stalking him and trying to marry him. So when he went to Britain in the mid 1890s, he said he'd had an absolutely terrible time with all these sort of posh women being pushed at him. Hello, Franzi. Yeah. He said the designated fiancées moved about in a great herd and showed worrisome levels of persistence. But of course, if there were British families who were pushing their daughters forward,

they were wasting their time because there was a list and they were not on it. So in 1825, something called the hapsburg house law had been drawn up and every head of the house of hapsburg was bound by this law your bride had to be a catholic but also there was a list of families from which this bride could come so aristocratic 15 princely houses hoursburg esterhazy caven hula lobowitz, Metternich and so on. I hope you enjoy that Austrian accent Tom. And there were 33 houses that were not part of the monarchy but were sufficiently aristocratic. So the Fugger-Babenhausens, the Hohenlohrs, the House of Turm and Taxis and so on and so forth.

So this is Franz Ferdinand's list. He regards this list with total contempt which is interesting because he's such a conservative person in other respects but he said to he wrote to a woman friend of his and he said um the women who are being offered to me are all and i quote chicks of 17 and 18 each one uglier than the last right so so he's gallant as well as as well as charming to servants. Yes. So he's not happy with the list. Now, one of his relatives, who was called Archduchess Isabella, decided that she would bag him for one of her daughters. A guy called Gordon Brookshepard, who's written a lot about Austrian history,

describes her as an immensely built and immensely ambitious woman. She's always inviting him to her house at Pressburg. And he's very keen to go, isn't at pressburg and he's very keen to go isn't he yeah he's very keen to go and he keeps going back yeah and she's like she is obviously this is fantastic after my daughters this is absolutely splendid he's dancing my daughters again having dinner telling anecdotes about shooting birds all is well and then an absolute disaster in april 1899 they have a tennis party. Franz Ferdinand goes and he's in great form.

And then he leaves and he leaves his watch behind. I'm assuming it's a pocket watch rather than a wristwatch because it's got a locket attached to it. It would be, wouldn't it? And a servant finds it and takes it to the Archduchess Isabella and says, found Franz Ferdinand's watch. Isabella opens the locket, looking forward to seeing which of her

daughters it is and horror of horrors the picture in the locket is of a lady in waiting so this is sophie countess sophie chotec von chotkova and vognin and sophie choteek has been attached for a few years to Archduchess Isabella's house. She is 27 years old. Franz Ferdinand is 37. They're both mature and very serious people. Sophie Chotek is an aristocrat. Her family had been barons in Bohemia since 1556. They've been counts of the Empire since 1745.

But Tom, she is not on the list. And so that's why she ranks as a lady-in-waiting. Exactly. And so she's ineligible. Archduchess Isabella is outraged. So she kicks Sophie out of the house, immediately reports this to the Emperor.

The Emperor says to Franz Ferdinand, what are you thinking? She's not on the list you can have the chotech or you can have the crown but you cannot have both and so again for british people yeah familiar with our own beloved monarchy yeah i mean again the echoes are they are very clear except the difference i think tom because if franz joseph is is elizabeth's second oh right yes then um i mean there is a definite element of Charles and Camilla here, isn't there? Yeah, I hadn't thought of that, Tom.

You know, I mean, really, it's a great love story. He's pledged to Camilla. You got the honours list in mind again, Tom. Yeah, always. If I don't get the order of the fleece from Edward Habsburg. But I mean, he seems to have loved Sophie for for the same reason that charles seems so keen on camilla that she calms him down and makes him feel happy she does and it's probably the only person who makes him feel happy as far as i think that's absolutely right everybody says sophie chodek

she is a really decent sensible she's polite she's tactful she is nice so basically everything he isn't yeah and she's great for him now Franz Joseph the emperor just is dead against this they get the cardinal archbishop of Vienna he gets all the relatives everybody to gang up on Franz Ferdinand and say dropper you know terrible decision Franz Ferdinand goes absolutely ballistic and he shouts at them and he says um your stupid marriage laws are the reason that half of the children in our family are idiots or epileptics which obviously doesn't go well yeah he's agreeing with james joyce who described the hapsburgs as the most physically corrupt royal family in europe so franz ferdinand might well have agreed with you franz ferdinand just throws this you know a massive wobbly i must marry her and

eventually the emperor gives in franz ferdinand sticks to his guns the emperor to a degree right right so the emperor gives in and he says fine you marry her but here is the deal i will raise her to a duchess duchess of hohenberg but if you think she will ever be empress, be queen of Hungary and empress of Austria, and that your children will be emperors of Austria, you know, you can forget about it. That is the deal. It will have to be a morganatic marriage where she will never have the same status as you, and neither will the children. Now, that is a big thing to ask of somebody.

You will be emperor, but your children never will and it's a sign of how serious franz ferdinand is about sophie that he says fine that's what i have to do i'll do it and so it is that on the 28th of june remember the date 28th of june 1900 in the secret council chamber at the hofburg palace in vienna franz j Franz Joseph the Emperor and all 15 archdukes of the Habsburg house go out on this kind of dais. He reads out the terms. Franz Ferdinand has to publicly agree to the terms. His wife and children will never have equal status to him. And then he signs a declaration of renunciation, a oath that is it legally you know my kids will not inherit a gutting a galling thing for him a humiliating yeah and terrible humiliations

will be visited on sophie when they awful awful so we'll come to them just a sec three days later they go and they get married they get married at a hapsburg castle in bohemia the emperor doesn't go none of the archdukes go. None of the uncles, brothers, and cousins of Franz Ferdinand. Franz Ferdinand is the only archduke at his own wedding. No cardinals go, no bishops go. A big deal for the Habsburgs, the ultra-Catholic family of kind of dynastic Europe. It's just an ordinary parish priest who officiates. So basically they have this sort of private wedding and then they go to his castle at Conopista with the one with all the trophies of birds and stuff.

And flowers as well. He's a big gardener, isn't he? He is. Again, like Charles. The honeymoon they spend walking in the garden and they call it the upper stations of the cross because they both feel completely embattled and humiliated by the terrible treatment by the rest of his family. And actually, as you said said it doesn't get any better

the guy who ran the court yeah imperial chamberlain count montenuovo was himself the product of a morganatic marriage from napoleon yeah some more on napoleon's wives and somebody or something like this and he is really bitter that sophie has got above her station. And he, during the attempt to sort of discredit her, he'd circulated photos of her that he had retouched to make her look older and uglier than she was. Yeah, I remember the royal family touching up photos. Yeah. I heard of.

So here's how it works. From this point onwards, when they go to court functions, when they all file him, Franz Ferdinand has to walk on his own as if he's not married everybody else comes in and she has to come in last so all the other archduchesses and things come in she has to come in last on her own for everyone to kind of she can't sit in the hapsburg box she can't sit next to him at the opera she can't use the carriage the official carriage

if a visiting monarch comes to have an official dinner and Franz Ferdinand is there as invited, the seat next to him for his consort is left empty as a sign and she is forced to sit down kind of below the salt with the other people of her status. I think the glorious thing about her is that she doesn't seem to show her bitterness about this. She maintains her good humor which is what franz ferdinand wants and needs from her totally yeah they're incredibly happy as a couple they're completely devoted they have three children

sophie maximilian and ernst will come on to the children a little bit later they basically spend most of their time at this castle which is now the czech republic called konopista every morning he goes out and he assaults the local birds then in the afternoons they spend their time gardening and then the evenings he's like playing drafts with the kids and all that kind of thing and they are by the standards of their age i.e with a lot of hunting they are a really model devoted happy so they have a daughter don't they and two sons two sons exactly neither of of whom are going to inherit the throne to inherit the throne and actually the thing about the gardening franz fernand lots of people won't know this he is a great gardener he's one of europe's great gardeners so conor pister and his other castle archdetton he creates these amazing rose

gardens people say the best rose gardens in Central Europe. And he gets all these lovely messages about his. Would you like me to read you a message about his? Yeah. So here we go. This is from somebody who'd come to stay at his house. Again, thank you from my heart for the precious hours I was able to spend with you in Klingsor's Magic Garden.

That's a Wagner reference. It's a Wagner reference. I admire the organizational mastery and the fine color sense which show through in your landscaping. Glorious weather here. The roses in my rose garden are nearly all in bloom. Rhododendrons still flowering in spite of three weeks rain. So which tender-hearted, sensitive, green-fingered,

lovable-sounding person was that? It's our old friend, the Kaiser. Oh, bless him. The Kaiser. In his gardening shoes. So the Kaiser sent that message to Franz Ferdinand. Oh, Tom, the tragedy, he sent it two weeks before Franz Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo. And it just goes to prove what I've always said about this whole story about 20th century European history. The real victim is, of course, the Kaiser. And on that bombshell, I think we should take a break.

And when we come back, we will continue looking at the life of Franz Ferdinand. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to the rest of history. I have a mouthful of Viennese cake. And the reason for that is that Theo has just been telling off me and you, Dominic.

For eating cake during the recording. For eating cake during the recording. So being very naughty. He's looking very cross. Glaring at us. But I've now finished eating the cake. There you go. And I'm going to begin with a quote.

Oh, great, Tom. So this is from Edward Crankshaw. You've written down, I don't know who he is. I'm assuming a historian. He wrote a book called The Fall of the House of Habsburg. Right. Brilliant. Great title.

There was more to Franz Ferdinand than his hunting in his rose gardens. He was a bitterly frustrated man, heir to a great empire, who saw his inheritance crumbling away from mismanagement and neglect. So no point of comparison there with Prince Charles. No, right. So this thing about there being more to Franz Ferdinand. Franz Ferdinand is not just doing his roses and talking to Sophie and shooting birds. He is also increasingly interested in politics and the future of the empire.

So we said at the beginning, of course, everyone knows now the austro-hungarian empire did not last and the consequence was a very fragmented central europe and southeastern europe and a lot of blood would flow and so the question has always been could the empire have survived franz ferdinand gives this a lot of thought so can i ask you just before you start on saying what his plans for the empire are, is your take on him and his plans that if he had not been killed in Sarajevo, if he had survived to become emperor, that the Austro-Hungarian empire would have had a good chance of cohering and sticking together? It had a chance. Whether it's a good chance is impossible to say.

But the idea that it had to fragment fragment and we can both think straight away of another multinational kingdom that has endured because we're both from it yeah the united kingdom so some multinational realms did survive i mean the russian federation is still going and it has a lot of people of different religions different nationalities and languages So it's not impossible to imagine a Habsburg empire that is not involved in war continuing. Maybe it loses bits. But it just, it heightens the sense of jeopardy, doesn't it? If, if we have a sense of Franz Ferdinand as a serious reformer, which he undoubtedly is, he undoubtedly is a serious reformer. By the mid-1900s, he's really thinking about this seriously. It's obvious Franz Joseph is not going to live forever and that he, Franz Ferdinand, will take over. The great trend of the day, which

we talked about in our Rise of the Nazis podcasts, is for a kind of populist pan-Germanism. So there's a guy called Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who's the guy who invented… The Hitler salute. The Hitler salute, Heil, the label Fuhrer, who's the guy who invented the Hitler salute, Heil, the label Führer, all that stuff. So he is saying we need to reorient towards Protestant Germany. You know, Germany for the Germans, a greater Germandom. Franz Ferdinand makes it very clear he absolutely despises this way of thinking.

He's very interested in all the minorities of the empire. And so this is why he oddly doesn't like the Hungarians. Exactly. Despite the fact that he's the king of the Hungarians. Because the Hungarians are very contemptuous, aren't they, of the minorities? They are. I don't want to upset our Hungarian listeners. Well, no, they've moved on. The Hungarians don't come out terribly well from this story.

So Franz Ferdinand in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, he almost sets up a kind of shadow government, makes links with nationalist politicians, national groups. So he's genuinely interested. What do the Romanian peasants under the rule of the Magyars think? What are people saying in what is now Western Ukraine, all of this stuff? Now, the Hungarians are the great obstacle to this because in the Hungarian half of the empire, they basically give their minorities no house room at all they can't vote they have very little political expression and franz ferdang decides the hungarians are basically the opposite the massive obstacle and he absolutely despises them that is a problem isn't it if you're

going to become king of hungary probably the kindest thing he said about them was he said they're a bunch of mustachioed gypsies um and in fact again and again i come back to the conviction which i should go on expressing for as long as i live that the so-called decent hungarian simply does not exist and that every hungarian be he a minister a prince cardinal a tradesman a peasant a hussar or a stable boy is a revolutionary and and then he just drew a kind of line so you can put in your own words and imagine what word he was thinking of. So yeah, he absolutely despises them. And the way he wants to break their power, he thinks of two plans. And we alluded to them in our Gavrilo Princip episodes.

One plan is that effectively, instead of it being Austria-Hungary, it will be a kind of Austria-Hungary-Yugoslavia. So the Slav bits, particularly Croatia, Bosnia, the Dalmatian coast, they will be a kingdom of their own, no longer under the thumb of the Austrians or the Hungarians. And this is the thing that is so terrifying for Serbian nationalists. Exactly. Now, the alternative, there was a Romanian professor called Aurel Popovici, and he drew up a plan for a United States of Greater Austria. So there'd be 16 states. There'd be Austria, there'd be a little Hungary,

there'd be Silesia, Bohemia, West Galicia, Slovenia, Transylvania, and so on and so on and so on. And the emperor would be king of all of them equally, and it would be a federation. And you could sort of see how that would work, how that would… Although the Hungarians would hate it. The Hungarians would be absolutely furious, and it would probably provoke some kind of revolt in Hungary, I would imagine. But what a great country that would be if that still existed. I mean, that would be a tremendous country.

It would be like the EU. It would be like the EU, but with more… a heavier emphasis on… On chocolate. On the sort of cakes that we're eating now, Tom, I think it's fair to say. On kind of heavy coffee houses. Now, could he deliver on that? It's hard to say. What is undoubtedly true, though, is that he had a plan drawn up,

ready to go for when he exceeded, when he became emperor. He would change the suffrage laws in Hungary. Of course, that was a brilliant way of breaking the power of the Hungarian gentry who are his opponents. If he says, actually, everybody in the Hungarian half can now vote. So that would include Romanians. That would include all the Transylvanian peasants and whatnot. Three million Croats, for example, can vote. He's an improbable kind of enthusiast for broadening the franchise, isn't he?

He is. His other big thing, which we talked about in the first half very briefly, is he's infuriated that the Hungarians want to use their own language in their bit of the army because actually the law is you can only really have one language in the army and that should be german the language of the dynasty that should be the glue that holds the empire together that basically everybody's second language is german and that's the language of war so he's fighting the hungarians all the time about this language issue. And yet the irony is Franz Ferdinand, the one thing he never wants to do is to use that army.

And this is where Serbian intelligence, the black hand, were dead wrong. Franz Ferdinand is not the leader of the war party. The one thing he stands for more than anything else is no war and especially no war with serbia yeah it's i mean it's such a a kind of tragic irony isn't it that the serbs end up killing the one man who was holding the military establishment back from and particularly one figure in particular isn't there yeah who is franz conrad uh von herzendorf and um he is another very romantic figure he's yeah so he has a great crush on another man's wife yeah and he's endlessly writing letters to her isn't he which he's then too embarrassed to send three thousand

letters he just stores them up yeah and basically And basically, he wants to declare war on Serbia so that he can have a thumping victory, come back and get her. Well, I think, to be fair to him, he's already semi-got her because he has this massive crush on this Gina von Reininghaus. That's it. Who is the wife of an industrialist in Vienna. So Conrad, General Conrad, he had been friends with Franz Ferdinand, actually. He has this crush on this Gina.

I think they did start an affair, but they can't get married. And he thinks, well, if I can win a great war, I'll come back and, you know, we'll get married and that'll be absolutely brilliant. And it'd be like gone with the wind, you know, that'll be absolutely tremendous. And so as Chris Clark says in his book, The Sleepwalkers, between 1906 and 1914, Conrad repeatedly counseled preventive wars against Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, Romania, and even Italy. Italy, which was actually Austria's nominal ally at the time. Christopher also says he came to see war as a means of gaining possession of Gina. I mean, there's another potential cause of the First World War.

Now, it's not just, it's obviously too simplistic to say. It's just because of impressing this woman. There are quite a lot of people in Austria who think Serbia is a kind of rogue state. It's a terrorist state. But also, it's become because of impressing this woman there are quite a lot of people in austria who think serbia is a kind of rogue state it's a terrorist state but also it's become dangerous hasn't it so so previously there's uh this guy who describes serbia as a rascally boy trying to steal apples from an orchard but since the two balkan wars yeah serbia has expanded and it's swallowed up kosovo the place of the great battle. And it's got all this French loans, improved its armaments, improved its rail, got a vast new reservoir of manpower. So it's starting to look a bit menacing.

I think that's absolutely right. I think the Austrians think the Serbian threat will only get greater. And Franz Ferdinand thinks the way we deal with it is we change our own internal arrangements so that basically Serbia is no longer a magnet to people inside the empire. But General Conrad and others think, no, we actually just go after Serbia right now, teach it a lesson, and that's the best way to ensure long-term security. But the risk with that is that Serbia is allied to Russia.

Exactly. The Serbian is its patron. So actually, the person who Franz Ferdinand turns to as an ally in these internal arguments is his fellow rose garden fancier the kaiser so the kaiser is the one person who's actually really nice to him who's kind to him and um a big fan of sophie and a big fan of sophie so for those listeners who are inclined to look poorly on the kaiser yeah because i mean let's be honest the kaiser is a complicated man so shall i read what a top historian has written about this relationship

yeah between franz ferdinand and the kaiser the two men loved going hunting together and looked forward to the day when they would be empress together swaggering around with their huge mustaches and ridiculous hats yeah and that top historian dominic was yourself yeah and adventures in time the first world war so they would meet up and they would wear hunting gear and you know compliment each other on their massive mustaches and they would go and shoot some birds and then the kaiser would come back and he would be really nice he would make a point of being nice to sophie so when they went to to germany he goes up in my estimation i feel sorry for sophie yeah the kaiser would say come and sit by me sophie you know he'd be really kind to her all this kind of thing he's wrote letters all the time to franz

ferdinand saying you know don't feel stressed about when your emperor it'll be brilliant we'll have a great time i will be your friend i will always stand by austria all of this stuff it sounds flippant but franz ferdinand is quite a man, ostracized by the rest of the family and by the court. The Kaiser's friendship means a lot to him. And he will often say to the Kaiser, you know, give me a hand here. People are talking of war. The Hungarians have been difficult. You know, use a bit of your influence if you can. And the Kaiser usually says, you know, I'll do what I can. And is it right that the particular moment of crisis is in the wake of these two wars, these two Balkan wars, when Serbia has kind of expanded by something like over 80% of its territory.

Exactly. So the first Balkan war, as we said, October to May 1912, 1913, it's everybody basically ganging up on the Ottomans. Conrad says again and again, let's attack Serbia now. Franz Ferdinand is appalled at this. Let's not stoop to this hooligism let us stay aloof and watch the scum bashing each other's skulls so he doesn't hold the uh the serbs and their antagonists in tremendous regard he actually gives a public toast to peace what would we get

out of war with serbia all we'd get from beating serbia serbs misread him so badly because i think they're projecting onto him a stereotype of austria that is an anchor of their ideology yeah their ideology is austria is a bullying oppressor yeah franz ferdinand has a gigantic mustache and shooting loads of birds ergo yeah he is also a bullying oppressor and it doesn't fit in their demonology yeah if he's actually a sort of peace figure but then as you say in the second balkan war where everybody ganged up on bulgaria the serbs conquered a lot more of the balkans and reports are going back to vienna we have them we know them they're there in the archives from austrian consuls in the southern balkans saying there are horrendous massacres there's horrendous ethnic cleansing going on entire villages of albanians or people who

describe themselves as turks or muslims wiped out by Serbian paramilitaries. So the Austrians think, oh, the Serbians are very bad guys. And yet again, Franz Furner says, no, we're not going to get involved. It would be the end of the empire if we ever fought a war with Serbia because it would mean war with Russia. A war with Russia, he writes at one point, will finish us. Should the Kaiser of Austria, the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar knock each other off their thrones and clear the way for revolution? No way.

I mean, it's very prescient, actually. It's amazingly prescient. Yeah. And just, again, it kind of ratchets up the sense of tragedy, really, that this is the man whose death will ultimately result in precisely those results. So when that crisis is over, in the autumn of 1913, the Austrians have not got involved. The Balkan Wars, it seems, have ended.

The Kaiser comes to Konopishtah. They have an absolutely brilliant time. They shoot 1,100 pheasants. There's some great banter, Tom, about St. George. We've just done a podcast on it. Yeah, you'll enjoy this. Franz Ferdinand, one of his hobbies was collecting pictures

of St. George and the Dragon. Yeah, I should have put this in the podcast. 3,750 different representations of St. George and the Dragon. And he shows them to the Kaiser and he says, look at you wasting your time

with that naval race with the British building dreadnoughts. I've already beaten the British. I have more images of their patron saint than they have in Windsor Castle. And the Kaiser thinks this is absolutely tremendous.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I am liking that very much. But actually, actually, Franz Ferdinand, I mean, he's quite keen on Britain, isn't he? I was so shocked at that impression that I nearly fainted. He actually had been very down on Britain about 10 or 20 20 years earlier but by this point he's actually you know he doesn't mind it not least because they are also really into shooting birds there but i was about

to say they're very nice to sophie well there's that as well but principally it's about shooting pheasants we're a patriotic podcast and i have to say george v and his court very well from what happens next because they also invite sophie and franz fernand over to windsor for a week and this is great for so i mean this is a big deal for franz fernand so if you go to what is considered the kind of premier court in europe and to be treated as equals and they're nice to sophie and that's yeah that's great i mean actually george the fifth's diary is hilarious on this on tuesday we got over a thousand pheasants 450 ducks on wednesday i like i like the entry friday an awful day blowing and pouring with rain a regular deluge in the afternoon but they still got 800 pheasants and nearly 400 ducks even though it's raining and

actually everybody says the arts duke they say he's a wonderful man. What a brilliant man. Because no one is a better killer of birds than the Archduke. The Duke of Portland, he proved himself first class. He's the equal of any of my friends. Give him enough practice, he would be the equal of any of the best shots in the country. High praise. So everyone says it's great.

At dinner, Tom, do you know who they sit in opposite? Your friend, top fisherman Sir Edward Grey, british foreign secretary and they talk about world peace serbia albania they go into all the balkans and sir edward gray and everyone says oh what a tremendous man the archduke is queen mary the archduke is most amiable he's making an excellent impression his wife is so nice agreeable and easy to get on with. Very tactful. And actually, afterwards, she says to somebody, used to be very un-English, but she's been such a good influence on him. They're lovely people.

That's nice. So he comes back to Austria. He's very pleased with himself. All good. Has Christmas with his family. So this is 1913? 1913. But he does have something hanging over him, which is,

a few months earlier, the governor of Bosnia, General Potiorek, has has said to him wouldn't it be nice if you came to watch our army exercises in bosnia yeah at the end of june do a little visit to sarajevo fly the flag very good for kind of relations with the locals hapsburg authority all of this now the thing is again this is a detail i think a lot of people miss people say oh he what he really wanted to go because he and sophie could be together and all of this actually he doesn't really want to go it's going to be very hot he's not that keen on it he has had as we said problems with his lungs he's very anxious about the heat and he knows they all know that there is a security risk it's often said yeah they are completely oblivious to

the security that's not really true it's in the governor's interest to downplay it because it'll make him look a better governor but fran fernand is not an idiot he knows perfectly well this is an age of assassinations and there's always a risk but putting i mean putting good spin on it making the best of a bad job he can take Sophie because the emperor kind of very grudgingly gives permission doesn't he does Franz Ferdinand goes to see him on the 4th of June remember from the previous episode the 4th of June is the day the killers arrived in Sarajevo the same day Franz Ferdinand in Vienna goes to see the emperor he says I'm not really looking forward to this it's going to be so hot I'm not feeling. What will make life really easy for me is if I take Sophie.

And the emperor for once says, fine, if you must take your damned wife with you. So he's going to go. The next day, of course, is the day that there is that sort of coded warning from the ambassador to the finance minister. It would be a good idea to cancel it. That's not passed on to the authorities in bosnia to the governor so the plan is there is going to be very little security because the point is to show that we don't need it no it's a normality so let's get into the sort of countdown franz fernand on sunday

the 7th he goes to the vienna derby that's all great everyone makes a fuss of him and sophie and in fact in the next day's papers lots of people comment about how she's the best dressed and she looks great and and he's very pleased with that the following week his old friend the kaiser is back back to look at the roses designed his own hunting uniform love it i love it green jacket and he's got um hunting boots he's got massive boots he's got this ridiculous little hat they have a chat about the reform plans franz fernand says to the kaiser i would like you to help me with the hungarians you know get them to give more concessions to their peasants and the slavs and stuff and he says it's really crucial to do this he's no fool franz fernand he says

that romanian minority is really important because roman Romania is moving away from us and towards Russia. We can't afford to alienate the Romanians. Therefore, we should really be thinking about what's going on in Hungary and having reforms and keeping them on side. And actually, the Kaiser says, you know, I'll do my bit. Don't worry. You can rely on me. And the visit is such a success that Franz Ferdinand says

this has been brilliant after the summer is over and I'm back from Bosnia let's have a hunting weekend and you know

who we should have along George V so say what you like about the First World War it saved the lives of a lot of birds

I know but it ruined what would have been a brilliant weekend an absolutely brilliant weekend I mean that's my dream dinner party actually

Captain Bentin from the Costa series the Kaiser Franz Ferdand george v i'd be in my element whereas i'm just thinking of the birds yeah you're all cart aren't you i'm all hard um when the kaiser is gone they open up the castle because it's their annual open date for people to come and see the gardens i imagine sophie's lovely a big deal for franz finand, this. Lovely to children, I imagine. I think actually they're quite reclusive. They don't really mingle much because they're kind of shy. They're modest people, Tom.

Oh. What can you say? I imagine they're going out and being charming to, you know. Oh, no. I have to disappoint you on that. Wiping the snot from a little girl's face. That kind of thing. Is that your definition of charm?

Yeah. Well, kind of, yeah. Okay, fine. You know, the people's archduchess. Well, she's not an archduchess, is she? Well, the people's... Duchess. The people's lady-in-waiting.

So now we're at the weekend. They have a long weekend. They have multiple castles. So they go to their summer castle, which is basically called Klum, on the border between what's now the Czech Republic and Austria. And they just have a family weekend. I mean, it basically sounds like a British caravan holiday holiday from the 1970s they go on long walks in the woods

they play bowls they play board games with the kids so the kids are sophie's 13 max is 11 and ernst is 10 go on space hoppers and this is you see they're both going to bosnia it's the longest they'll ever have been away from the children so this is their kind of farewell to the children we will be back soon we are going to go to this business in bosnia and then we'll come back and we can crack on with the summer so then on wednesday the 24th goodbye to the children and they're going to go now they're going to go separately sophie's going to go by train via budapest but franz ferdinand is very interested in the navy so he's going to go partly by boat

he's going to go down a get a kind of dreadnought actually austria's one dreadnought from trieste down the coast of what's now croatia and then he will take a yacht up river into herzegovina and then a train the rest of the way an odd thing happens when he gets the train from vienna to trieste there's an electrical fault on the train and the train gets very hot because there's obviously no fans but also they have to rely on candles for light and franz ferdinand says to his kind of chamberlain see this is how it's going to start he says first an overheated carriage then there'll probably someone will try and shoot me in sarajevo and then if they can't quite finish off the job, there'll be an explosion on board the ship afterwards. He makes this kind of joke. But he says explicitly, I do not want to

live in a bell jar, under a glass jar. We're always in mortal danger. We just have to put our trust in God. And actually, the rest of the journey unfolds with that incident he goes down the dalmatian coast he gets the yacht then he gets the train and on the 25th of june he arrives in the spa town not far from where we are tom elidja which is up in the hills above us just outside sarajevo sophie is already there and is waiting for him. And at that point, they have three days to live. Brilliant stuff. And in our next episode, we will trace the fateful events

that lead up to his assassination, a day that changes the world. Bye-bye. Auf Wiedersehen. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment it's your weekly fix

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