“Franz is here!” was the headline of an American newspaper article referring to the visit of Archduke Franz Ferdinand during his world trip 1892/93. Now, 100 years after his death, Franz Ferdinand will be visiting the Weltmuseum Wien.
June 28th 2014 marks the centenary of the assassination of the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire at Sarajevo, which resulted in the outbreak of the First World War. Unlike many other institutions that will focus on his death and its terrible consequences, the Weltmuseum Wien is hosting an exhibition dealing with a seminal event in the archduke’s life – his ten-month-long journey around the world in 1892-93. This presentation will offer unexpected insights into the world of this many-facetted and polarizing figure.
Who was Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este really? The world trip that took him from Pula in Croatia to Suez, Aden, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, South-East Asia, Oceania, Australia, China, Japan and the United States is also a journey into the inner world of his personality. The archduke returned to Vienna with an impressive number of animal trophies and over 14,000 objects he had amassed during his journey; today, nearly 10,000 of these are stored in the Weltmuseum Wien. Soon after his return, Franz Ferdinand displayed his entire collection in his very own museum. Motivated by a desire to document his qualifications as a ruler and as an “educator of his people”, he hoped to introduce his future subjects to a variety of artefacts with which they were not familiar (…)
For more information, please check the official Weltmuseum website