Nedjo Cabrinovic:
Family
Background and Childhood
Nedjo Cabrinovic was the only one amongst
the plotters, other than Gavro Princip, with direct involvement in the plot to
kill Franz Ferdinand, who actually made an attempt. Nedjo threw a bomb at the
Archduke’s car on the morning of 28 June 1914 when Archduke’s procession was
passing through the main street of Sarajevo.
Nedjo’s was a city family, having been
based in Sarajevo for generations. His father, Vaso, was born under the Turkish
rule, in 1864; however, when the control of the city was passed over to the
Hapsburgs in 1878, Vaso Cabrinovic had prospered under Austrian rule. He was
the proud owner of one of the first coffee-grinding machines in Sarajevo. He
roasted and sold coffee from his home.
Nedjo’s family was socially superior
to the families of almost all the other plotters, except perhaps the Cubrilovic
brothers.
Vaso Cabrinovic was a rough,
unsophisticated man who subscribed to the notion that the best way to raise
children was to be inordinately stern with them and refuse them whatever they
asked for. He was a man of extreme moods. When he was in good mood he liked
himself to be photographed surrounded by his children. After a quarrel, however
(recalled his daughter Vukosava while speaking to English writer Rebecca West
in the 1930s), he would go round the house cutting the faces of those who had
offended him, out of the pictures. But he never destroyed them. When the
offending party was back in favour, the face would be pasted back in the
photograph.
Vaso Cabrinovic had a very volatile
relationship with Nedjo, the eldest of his seven surviving children (he
fathered ten).
Nedjo Cabrinovic was born in 1895. As
a child he spent some of his time with relatives in the Bosnian city of
Trebinje. Age 12, Nedjo was in a school in Trebinje, where he failed his exams.
His enraged father summoned him back to Sarajevo and refused to pay for his
education. For the rest of his short life Nedjo remained bitter towards his father
about having to leave school. He ran away from home and tried to earn a living
as a locksmith. That did not work out and he had to return home with tail
between his legs.
Teenage years and Interest in Politics
Age 14 (year 1909), Nedjo began an
apprenticeship at a printing plant, the Serbian Press, in Sarajevo, where he
worked for two years and learned typesetting. Around this time he also began to
get interested in politics. He began reading about Socialism and revolution.
His father caught him one night reading a Russian revolutionary novel and beat
him mercilessly.
Nedjo was a hot-headed, impulsive
young man who frequently got into trouble, both at work and at home, because of
his fiery nature. He walked out on his job at the printing press after an
argument with an older colleague and his father, equally short-tempered as
Nedjo, drove him out of the house. He was accepted back after a month but got
into more trouble with his father when he argued with a housemaid and refused
to apologize. This time round, Vaso reported Nedjo to the police and had him
jailed for three days.
Nedjo goes to Belgrade and is
influenced by Anarchist Ideology
Like many young Bosnian Serbs, Nedjo
ended up in Belgrade where he took up a printing job with a group of anarchists.
He became influenced by the anarchist ideas and frequently attended late night
meetings. The intense life-style, together with poor nutrition, took its toll
and Nedjo became ill. He returned to Sarajevo, to his father’s house. He was
now 17, and the year was 1912.
Back in Sarajevo and in further
Trouble
As he convalesced, Nedjo became
involved with a radical group of young Serbs in Sarajevo called ‘Young Bosnians’
(Mlada Bosna). When his health
improved further he found himself a job and began printing a political journal.
It was in the summer of 1912 that Nedjo
met with Gavro Princip, who, having led an itinerant, impoverished life until
then, was, like Nedjo, not in the best of health. The two men soon became close
friends. They began reading together and made notes.
Nedjo sometimes brought Gavro to his
house where Gavro met Nedjo’s beautiful younger sister, Vukosava. It is
probable that Gavro developed romantic longings towards Vukosava; however,
perhaps owing to his shy nature, but also to the large social gap that existed
between their backgrounds, it did not lead to anything.
Nedjo’s unstable life-style and
clashes both with authorities and his father continued unabated. The same year
(1912) he resigned his job in the printing press in order to join printer’s
strike and, as a result, was asked to leave home (yet again) by his father. He
was arrested and jailed for three days for threatening to burn down the
printing press—he was trying to influence the strike, he recalled in his trial,
from his own anarchist position.
Nedjo was asked to give the
authorities the names and whereabouts of the strike-leaders. Nedjo refused.
After being given a long lecture by an Austrian officer, Nedjo was banned from
Sarajevo for 5 years and exiled to Trebinje. In his 1914 trial Nedjo recalled:
‘A personal motive drove me to
vengeance after I was banished from Sarajevo. I was suffering because a
foreigner who came to my country banished me from my native town.’
Flitting between Belgrade and Sarajevo
Nedjo of course did not go to Trebinje.
He went to Belgrade instead. The year was 1912. Gavro Princip had reached
Belgrade too; and the two men frequented cafes patronised by Bosnian Serbs in
the city. Gavro was studying while Nedjo was doing a day job. Both were skint.
The cafes Nedjo and Gavro frequented
were cheap cafes where men could sit for long hours over cups of coffee. The
cafes were also frequented by Komite
officers (the mobilization for the First Balkan War had begun). One such
officer was Milan Ciganovic. Two years later Ciganovic would provide the
plotters with weapons and also train them in shooting from a pistol.
Nedjo and his father, Vaso, it would
appear, could neither get on with each other, nor without each other. Vaso
successfully applied to the Austrian authorities against his son’s expulsion
and sent Nedjo money. As the summer of 1912 neared its end Nedjo was back in
Sarajevo.
Nedjo stayed in Sarajevo until May
1913. He finally qualified as a journeyman typographer and promptly began a
furious political debate in print with the Social Democrats (to whose
organization he belonged) in Sarajevo, criticizing them severely. The Social
Democrats responded aggressively and accused him of being an agent of the
Serbian government. Around this time rumours started circulating that his
father was an agent of Austrian authorities.
While Nedjo was determinedly
continuing with his life of conflict, it has to be said that it was a
reflection of what was going round him. Unrest was growing in Bosina. The Austro-Hungarian
Empire, which had controlled Bosnia and Hercegovina since 1878, had formally
annexed the territory in 1908. The Austrian authorities were becoming
uncomfortably aware that all manners of assassination plots were being hatched
against the royalty. The Empire responded predictably: with repression. In May
1913 the Austrian governor Oskar Potiorek announced ‘Emergency Measures’: he
banned assemblies, organizing, closed many school, and banned Serbian
newspapers. The Austrian newspapers hinted that the Empire might attack Serbia
which, at that time, was involved in the Second Balkan War, this time with
Bulgaria, one of the original Balkan League nations.
Oskar Potiorek
To Nedjo Cabrinovic this was
unconscionable. In his 1914 trial he said,
‘Serbia would be empty and then they
[Austria] could invade her with 100,000 men. I felt I had greater nationalism
in me and when that Balkan war [the Second Balkan War] startred, there developed in me a great
desire to be in Serbia.’
Around this time Nedjo was finally
expelled by the Social Democrats and his former colleagues boycotted him. His
father Vaso banned him from writing to his younger sister Vukosava (who, by
this time, was studying in Croatia), blaming him for influencing Vukosava with
his anarchist ideas.
Final Year in Belgrade (May 1913 to
May 1914)
Nedjo, the restless soul that he was,
felt he could not stay in Sarajevo. Where did he go? To Belgrade, via Trieste
(where he borrowed a gun).
By the time Nedjo arrived in Belgrade,
in 1913, the Second Balkan War was almost over, and, while Serbia had
prevailed, there was little money and great hardship. Nedjo could get only a
very poorly paid job in a printing press.
Nedjo would stay in Belgrade for 12
months. He would return to Sarajevo in June 1914, ready to slay his victim, Franz Ferdinand.
Nedjo was starving, but it did not
diminish his revolutionary fervour. He began frequenting the cheap cafes in
Belgrade and debated furiously all night long. He was an anarchist while many
who came to these cafes were radical nationalists. However, Nedjo had in common
with them the belief of one pan-Slavic state that would unite all Serbs. They
all were unanimous that Austria must be forced out of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
One morning in the spring of 1914,
either March or early April 1914, Nedjo received a letter. The letter, which
bore the stamp of Franz Joseph, the Emperor, had come from Bosnia. Inside the
envelope was a clipping from a newspaper, and only one word—‘greeting’—was
added to it. The text read:
‘From Sarajevo, it is announced that
the Archduke heir Apparent with his wife will come to Sarajevo and participate
in manoeuvres.’ (It never became clear who had sent
this clipping to Nedjo).
Nedjo meets with Gavro Princip and agrees to
participate in the Assassination
One day, in spring 1914, Nedjo met his
old friend Gavro, who too was in Belgrade, in one of the cafes. Nedjo still had
the newspaper clipping with him, which he showed to Gavro. Gavro read the
cutting and returned it to Nedjo without a comment.
At this stage Nedjo was not seriously
thinking about assassinating the Archduke. The same evening Gavro returned to
Nedjo’s digs and suggested they go for a walk to discuss the news clipping
Nedjo had shown him earlier in the day.
The two of them went to a park in Belgrade
where Gavro put it to Nedjo that the two of them carry out the assassination of
Franz Ferdinand. After a minimum of hesitation Nedjo agreed. The two young
men, barely out of their teens, gave each other their word of honour and shook
hands.
Journeys back to Sarajevo, June 1914
Nedjo and Gavro discussed ways to
obtain weapons; Gavro took upon himself the responsibility. As described in the
earlier post, Gavro managed to obtain weapons through Milan Ciganovic. However,
unbeknown to Gavro, Nedjo too had approached Ciganovic for weapons after he ran
into Ciganovic in a Belgrade cafe.
Milan Ciganovic, flanked by Gavro Princip and Nedjo Csbrinovic
Nedjo had only a nodding acquaintance with
discretion and, like some of the other conspirators, spoke freely about the
plot to assassinate the Archduke. It was this indiscretion of Nedjo that caused
strife between him and Gavro when the two, together with Trifko Grabez, set off
from Belgrade for Sarajevo on 28 May 1914. Halfway through the journey Gavro
asked Nedjo to make his own way separately to Tuzla, taking away the weapons
from him. Nedjo was, in Gavro's eyes, becoming a liability because of his
unfortunate urge to tell anyone willing to give him an ear about the
assassination plot.
Nedjo travelled separately and waited
for his two friends in Tuzla. Gavro and Trifko Grabez arrived in Tuzla, kept
the weapons with Misko Jovanovic, and the three conspirators left for Sarajevo
on a train. By that time Nedjo had another falling out with Gavro.
June 1914—Sarajevo
When Nedjo arrived at his father’s
home in Sarajevo after 12 months, Vaso decided that he must be immediately
registered with the police his son’s return. In the police register, where he
had to write Nedjo’s address, his father wrote: ‘all around the world.’
In the next three weeks leading to the
assassination Nedjo met several times with Gavro. However, he was now ‘outside
the loop’, having fallen out with Gavro during the journey. Gavro had obviously
decided that Nedjo was a motormouth and hence unreliable. He told Nedjo very
little especially in relation to the weapons. Nedjo had no idea almost until
the end whether the weapons had arrived in Sarajevo.
Gavro and Grabez told Danilo Ilic (Gavro’s
childhood friend and the principal conspirator) that they thought that Nedjo
was ‘very naive’ and unsuitable to be an assassin.
In his prison interview with Dr.
Pappenheim Gavro told the psychiatrist that Nedjo initially wanted to be the
lone assassin. But [Gavro continued] he [Nedjo] was ‘only a type-setter, not of
sufficient intelligence’ (a touch of academic snobbery, here, from Gavro,
towards his friend who came from a more prosperous, city, background, as
opposed to Gavro’s village, peasant background). Also, he was not considered
sufficiently nationalist because of his previous anarchist ideas.
Nedjo was also unaware that other men
(Mehmed Mehmedbasic, Vaso Cubrilovic and Popovic) were being recruited to the
plot.
Nedjo, as was his nature, continued to
talk indiscriminately and boasted to several people (including family, friends
and even housemaids) the heroic journey he had undertaken from Belgrade to
Sarajevo with his two friends.
Nedjo had a large circle of friends in
Sarajevo, many of them unconnected to the plot. In the three weeks leading to
the assassination Nedjo looked in on many of them. These friends were summoned
to the trial and described a revealing picture of Nedjo’s personality. The
picture emerges of a confident, outgoing, gregarious man who was a charmer.
With these friends Nedjo rarely talked of politics. He met with them in the
company of girls and sang songs.
Whenever he met Gavro and tried to
talk about the assassination, Gavro told Nedjo to shut up.
Nedjo came to the conclusion, based on
the very minimal information provided by Gavro, that the plot to assassinate
Franz Ferdinand had been abandoned. He carried on believing this almost until
the last day.
It was only on 26 June, a Friday, that
Gavro disclosed to Nedjo that the plan to kill Franz Ferdinand was going ahead,
after all.
27 June 1914, Sarajevo
Nedjo met with Gavro the next day (27
June). Gavro took Nedjo to Appel Quay, the main road where Ferdinand’s car
would pass the next day, on 28 June. By this time Gavro and Danilo Ilic had
decided and planned where everyone would stand. Even at such late stage Nedjo
was unaware of the identities of other assassins recruited to the plot, and
believed that Danilo Ilic would take direct part in the assassination.
Gavro showed Nedjo his place: next to
the Austro-Hungarian bank. Nedjo would be the third in line to kill the Archduke,
although he did not know that. (The first two would be Mehmed Mehmedbasic and
Vaso Cubrilovic.)
That evening Nedjo began carrying out
last acts in anticipation of his death the next day. He gave away the few
things he owned. He gave his mother his pocket-knife and watch. He gave his
grandmother, to whom he was especially close, 20 crowns from his last wages (in
the three weeks he was in Sarajevo, incredibly, Nedjo had found a job). He
bought a bouquet of flowers and sent it to a young girl who must have been
close to her heart. He had only a few crowns left. He gave them to his younger
sister, Jovanka. He told her that he was going on a journey and they would
never see each other again. As Jovanka left the room she noticed that her
brother had tears in his eyes.
In his trial, Nedjo would say that he
felt sorry for all his family, even his father with whom he had never got on
well. ‘I have not been satisfied with him [his father],’ Nedjo would inform the
trial. ‘The raising he gave me has brought me to this. But I still feel sorry
for him.’
Nedjo left his home for the last time
on 28 June 1914. He never saw any of his family again. He was arrested
straightaway after his unsuccessful attempt on the Archduke’s life. The
prisoners were kept in isolation before the trial and were not allowed any
visitors. There was no open gallery for the family or other interested parties
at the trial.
After the trial and until his death
Nedjo had only two visitors, and they were not his family.
