“The First Shots of the First World War” – The Sarajevo Assassination in History & Memory

Paul Miller (McDaniel College, Westminster/Maryland, USA)

The conflicting ways in which the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 has been remembered, memorialized, represented, and imagined are also reflections on the process of coming to terms with the First World War. Literature, art, film, monuments, and museums have all figured into that process, such that we might consider the date June 28, 1914 itself what the historian Pierre Nora called a lieu de mémoire—a site of memory on which to explore how this past has been re-read, re-used and, even, reinvented through different time periods and in diverse contexts. By considering how the Sarajevo assassination has been conjured and construed since it first entered human consciousness as an act of world historical significance, the talk seeks to shed light on how we have sought to make sense of the “Urkatastrophe” of the twentieth century.