Remembering Gavrilo Princip

Ninety years ago today, November 11 at 11 a.m. World War 1 was brought to a close. A senseless and brutal conflict that had claimed 20 million lives, thus finally culminated in what was to be a fragile political peace.



Since Norway never ventured into the fray during 1914-1918, but instead opted for neutrality, we tend to overlook the date when the armistice was won. It has never mattered much to us, despite the fact that Norwegian casualties numbered in the thousands as well. Sailors on commercial vessels were particularly vulnerable, their ships facing constant danger from German submarines.

And we have never paid much attention to the event that indirectly triggered the bloodbaths in or around the trenches. Somehow the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip has escaped our notice. But the bullet that left the barrel of his gun in 1914, killing the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, forever impacted our world in ways we could not foresee:

Avenging humiliation

25 years later all hell would break loose yet again as Germany once more unleashed its vast military capabilities on a dormant and unsuspecting European populace. The giant and humiliating blow Germany had suffered through the peace terms imposed on her in 1918, smarted too much to be ignored. Retribution was almost a popular demand, and retribution came.

Gavrilo Princip couldn't have seen that one coming. He meant to assasinate the Austrian member of the imperial family in order to force der Kaiser to accept the creation of a Serbian homeland inside the then Bosnia. But the 19 year- old student soon learned the consequences of his murderous urges: what he sought, he did not gain. But what he didn't seek hit him hard and mercilessly. Gavrilo Princip did not live to see Serbian nationhood.

He attempted to achieve his goals though a politically motivated murder. But he, and his accomplices, would only inherit death in return.

"The wages of sin is death", the Good Book says. Anyone who chooses to disagree?