Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky
Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky was a German diplomat who served as ambassador to Britain during the July Crisis and who was the author of a 1916 pamphlet that deplored German diplomacy in mid-1914 which, he argued, contributed heavily to the outbreak of the First World War.
Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky seen in Hyde Park after British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August 1914
As Ambassador in London, 1914
The July Crisis was a series of interrelated diplomatic and military escalations among the major powers of Europe in the summer of 1914, which led to the outbreak of World War I. The crisis began on 28 June 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. A complex web of alliances, coupled with the miscalculations of numerous political and military leaders, resulted in an outbreak of hostilities amongst most of the major European states by early August 1914.
Illustration of the assassination in the Italian newspaper La Domenica del Corriere, 12 July 1914
The accused in court. Front row, from left: 1. Trifko Grabež, 2. Nedeljko Čabrinović, 3. Gavrilo Princip, 4. Danilo Ilić, 5. Miško Jovanović.
Austro-Hungarian propaganda after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand depicting an Austrian fist crushing an ape-like caricature of a Serbian holding a bomb and dropping a knife, and stating "Serbia must die!" (Sterben purposefully misspelled as sterbien to make it rhyme with Serbien.)
Emperor Franz Joseph was 84 years old in 1914. Though disturbed by the murder of his heir, Franz Joseph largely left decision-making during the July Crisis to foreign minister Leopold Berchtold, army chief of staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, and the other ministers.
