Sunday, June 28, 1914, 10:45 AM, Sarajevo, corner of Franz-Joseph Street/Appelkai: With two gunshots, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip kills the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie. A month later, Austria declares war on the Kingdom of Serbia, triggering World War I. Franz Ferdinand d'Este, nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, was a tyrant, shy and full of contempt for humanity, who longed for the death of the monarch Franz Joseph and devised contradictory state plans. In this biographical novel, which was immediately banned upon its release in 1937, Ludwig Winder does not condemn his miserable hero but instead illustrates how frozen the Habsburg court ceremonial was—a rediscovery one hundred years after the assassination in Sarajevo.