A Czechoslovakian soldier present at the burial revealed to the authorities in Belgrade the place where Gavrilo Princip’s body had been buried. After arresting him, the Austrians held him prisoner in Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic. Too young to be sentenced to death, 19-year-old Princip was left to die in prison of hunger and tuberculosis. He died just as the war was drawing to an end and the Hapsburg authorities buried the body on an unmarked area, afraid that Yugoslav nationalism would result in the grave becoming a place of pilgrimage. However, in May 1920, when the Austrian Empire’s occupied territories became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Yugoslavs (stara Jugoslavija, old Yugoslavia, or prva Jugoslavija, the first, as they call it here) Princip’s remains were exhumed and moved to Sarajevo, where they were buried in a solemn ceremony.

Princip’s fate was a bitter one. He was a Serb born in the small Bosnian village of Obljaj, when it was still part of lands controlled by the Hapsburgs. It was a remote place, on the fringe of geography and history, one that Gavrilo left to go and study in Sarajevo and Belgrade, before deciding to retrace his steps and on June 28th 1914 commit the murder that was the watershed in 20th century history. “A perfect political crime”, was how Sir Edward Grey described it at the time; perfect because “the reals reasons for which it was committed and its dynamics will remain forever unknown.” And therefore inevitably controversial.

This is still true one hundred years later, as Europe prepares to commemorate in the Bosnian capital the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Ideologies and interpretations still continue to clash and speculate about Princip. During the first Yugoslavia, the government in Belgrade had a monument built near the crossroad where the shooting took place, acclaiming Princip as a patriot. A commemorative plaque was placed where the attack occurred and remained there until 1940. After invading the Balkans and occupying Sarajevo, Hitler ensured it was presented to himself as a birthday present.

Over the past one hundred years, the assassin’s destiny has been linked to that of Yugoslavia. It is necessary at this point to clarify one of the most serious contradictions in the creation of Yugoslavia, which is also the dilemma around which the figure of Princep revolves. When the heir to the Hapsburg throne was murdered, the territory later assigned to Belgrade’s sovereignty was divided between Austria-Hungary (which also controlled Bosnia-Herzegovina) and the Kingdom of Serbia. According to many supporters of south Slavs unity, Serbia was the only hope there was of creating a single state in which “Croatians, Serbs and Slovenians” could independently coexist. Many started to look to Serbia, literally, as a Yugoslav Piedmont. In Belgrade nationalist pamphlets started to circulate and were called ‘Pijemont’ (Piedmont).

For as long as Yugoslavia existed, Gavrilo Princip and his remembrance had a home. For Tito, young Princip was a ‘narodni heroji’, a hero of the people. Plaques reappeared where the attack had taken place and a museum dedicated to Princip was opened. The nearby bridge, now simply called the Latin bridge, was renamed Principov Most, Princip’s Bridge. Another museum was opened in the house he was born in, in Obljaj. “People even came from abroad to visit it,” says today one of his great-grandchildren, 50-year-old  Mile Princip. “Schools, streets and squares were named after Gavrilo.”

But Princip was not just a fervent Yugoslav. He was of Serbian origin. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand took place on June 28th, the day on which Serbs celebrate vidovdan, the day of St. Vitus, the anniversary of Kosovo Polje’s defeat at the hands of the Turks. The battle of 1389 marked the end of the Kingdom of Serbia and the beginning of Ottoman rule in the region. Although never claiming that his gesture was an act involving the defence of the idea of a “Greater Serbia”, Gavrilo Princip also became  a symbol for Serb nationalists. Croatians and Muslims in Bosnia, especially after the “Chetniks” laid siege to Sarajevo, repudiated all links with Princip, whom they describe as a “terrorist.” During the Nineties, in the middle of the war, his grave was used as a public toilet. “From hero to zero”, as brilliantly summarised by the Daily Telegraph’s war correspondent Tim Butcher, who recently wrote a monograph on Princip. The home of the former ‘narodni heroj’ was set on fire by Croatian militias.

“As a historical figure, Gavrilo Princip should be objectively studied, on the basis of historical documentation,” warns Adil Kulenovic, president of Sarajevo’s club of intellectuals ‘Krug 99’, “otherwise there is the risk he will be manipulated on the basis of our ideologies. It would be nice if one day there could be monuments for both Gavrilo and Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.” For the moment, however, in Bosnia-Herzegovina the echoes of the June 28th 1914 continue to divide. On one hand the Croatians and Bosnian -Muslims once again speak of their fondness for Habsburg rule and for Vienna, thereby attempting to corroborate their demands to be considered ‘Europeans’. On the other hand, the Serbs of Bosnia, firstly Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, the Serb entity created within the country with the Dayton Peace Agreement, has already made known that “he will not be attending” the centenary commemorations. Invitations sent from Sarajevo have also been declined by Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and by the President of the Republic Tomislav Nikolic. “We cannot visit a place where our people are placed in the dock,” said Nikolic, attempting to justify his absence. It is not clear whether he was referring to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, or the crimes committed by troops led by Ratko Mladic during the Nineties.

Having decided to desert commemorations in Sarajevo, the Serbs in Bosnia and in Belgrade will organise a separate event to celebrate vidovdan. They will do this in Visegrad, an artificial suburb created by film director Emir Kusturica in honour of the Nobel Prize winning author Ivo Andric, in one of the regions in which there was the most ferocious ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs during the last war.

A terrorist and a patriot, a Serb and a Yugoslav, Gavrilo Princip is still able to divide families. Mile Princip is now a fervent Serb patriot. He calls upon his ancestor to defend “our traditions and our history as Serbs, our shared Orthodox faith.” He writes poetry and, as he says, he “educates.” In a recent documentary made by Dutch television, one sees him walking and talking to his aunt, Svetlana Princip. During the siege, the woman stayed in the city to share the fate of its inhabitants, regardless of their ethnicity and to defend the museum dedicated to her ancestor and in which her family has worked for years. “I have always been proud of Gavrilo”, says Svetlana, “even though the importance of what he did is denied.” In her opinion, staying in bombed Sarajevo, defending the value of coexistence, was perhaps the only way to preserve the memory of Princip, the Yugoslav patriot. In the meantime her nephew Mile had chosen to remain loyal to Gavrilo, the hero of vidovdan, the Serbs’ avenger against their oppressors. He had gone up into the mountains to fight alongside the snipers and the artillerymen in the name of Greater Serbia.

Translated by Francesca Simmons