Emery Deri
The World’s Magazine
1926 or 1927
NOTE
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The so-called “curse” of Franz Ferdinand’s death car is one of the two most famous automobile curses in history, the other being the supposed “curse” on James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, “Little Bastard.” The story, now almost universally repeated in occult literature, was popularized in 1959 when radio broadcaster Frank Edwards published a chapter on it in Stranger Than Science, a collection of scripts from his radio show of the same name. Edwards neglected to share his sources and therefore has been credited by many, including Smithsonian magazine, with inventing the story. Instead, he merely copied. For the first time, I present the stories that created the legend.
On October 25, 1926, the Innsbrucker Nachrichten reported a story from Klausenberg, Transylvania (Cluj in Romania) that the Gräf and Stift double phaeton that had carried the Archduke Franz Ferdinand during his fatal trip through Sarajevo in 1914 had crashed into another car while a car dealer from neighboring Turda (Hungarian: Torda) named Tibor Hirschfeld drove it to a wedding, injuring several people: As reported from Klausenberg, there was an automobile accident in which the car in which Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo played a fatal role. Two parties were engaged in road trips on the road to Torda. In one car there was a hunting party of ten people. In the second, following car, which had been used by Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo at one time, the Torda car dealer Tibor Hirschfeld led a party of six people to a wedding. Hirschfeld wanted to pass the car driving in front of him. In a big cloud of dust, he drove into the first car at full speed. Four of the occupants were seriously injured, five slightly injured. (my trans.) Hirschfeld must have been telling a tall tale to make his car seem more valuable to Romanian customers since the double phaeton that had carried the archduke had been on display in Vienna’s Heeresgeschichtliches Museum since 1914. But the story spread. The most popular version claimed that the car, which was falsely said to be red in color, had killed 13 people and brought calamity to a series of owners. The piece, widely quoted and summarized in other publications, appeared The World’s Magazine in late 1926 or early 1927, where it ran under the byline of Emery Deri, an American correspondent for outlets like The New York Times and The New Republic resident in Hungary. The article was syndicated to other newspapers and magazines. That year, the conservative media critic Ralph E. Zuar published the same account in German, nearly verbatim, in Der Berliner Westen. I have been unable to find the original, and the later copy I found, from August 1927, does not specify the original publication date, only that it was “recent,” which in those days could mean anytime in the preceding year, making it difficult to determine whether Deri copied from Zuar or Zuar from Deri.
Subsequently, Frank Edward used a copy of Deri’s article, or a similar one, as the basis for a radio broadcast about Franz Ferdinand’s death car curse for his Stranger Than Science syndicated radio show, and his script was published in the book version. It contained numerous errors, apparently due to careless copying, and a new ending alleging that the car had been destroyed not by falling off a cliff but by an Allied bomb hitting the museum where it was housed during World War II. The Weekly World News provided an uncredited plagiarism of the chapter in a 1981 article. Between the two, the legend of the death car’s “curse” became a staple of occult lore. No later paranormal writer, copying from one source or the other, looked into the origins, and eventually even Smithsonian magazine attributed the story’s origin to Edward. Meanwhile, the Viennese professor Karl Unster took the story for fact in 1968 and sought the remains of the car at a junkyard in Germany, believing that in 1954 and 1955 Porsche had salvage the steel to make its sportscars. His research led to the false conclusion that Franz Ferdinand’s car provided the steel for the Porsche 550 Spyder in which James Dean died, transferring the Habsburg curse to Dean’s successors. This copy of the Emery Deri article that started a century of occult speculation is the syndicated version. It ran on page 20 of The Great Divide, a Denver, Colorado newspaper, on February 9, 1927. As there is no record of a copyright renewal, the piece appears to have fallen into the public domain, per the governing law at the time. |
Demon of Disaster:
The Archduke’s Fatal Car
Caused Death of 13 Persons in 12 Years and Now Is Finally Destroyed
By Emery Deri
By Emery Deri
HERE is the remarkable story of the fatal automobile in which Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife rode to their tragic death at Sarajevo, in 1914, preluding the World war. The car of sinister history went to its final destruction the other day, causing the death of four persons in its final mishap.
IN THE twelve years of its weird career this car was the symbol of death and disaster, carrying misfortune wherever it went. Six of its successive owners were killed, and all of the remaining five suffered more or less serious injuries. Thirteen men in all went to their deaths in this sinister machine met their fate under its murderous wheels. An heir to a throne died on its cushions, and a powerful army leader rode in it to his defeat. Its road was marked by fatality, death followed in its wake, its very appearance brought sorrow.
I confess that I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to be among those few who rode in this accursed machine and are still alive. . . .
IT WAS in Sarajevo, in those hectic June days of 1914, which preceded the outbreak of the World war, that I first encountered the legendary red automobile in which the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated a few days before.
There it stood peacefully in the garage of the governor’s palace, its velvet cushions stained with blood, its back seat perforated by the murderer’s bullets. It was a brand new car, ordered by the Bosnian authorities for the exclusive use of the archduke when his visit to the province was announced.
SIX weeks later the World war broke out. General Potiorek was appointed leader of the Southern army. He made up his mind to make use of the red automobile, despite the tragic association already connected with It. But soon the fatal red car was speeding back from the front.
The Austrian armies had suffered a terrific defeat in the battle of Valjevo, and General Potiorek fled with his troops Into Austrian territory. The genera! was disgraced and he took his downfall so much to heart that he lost his mental balance He left Sarajevo and the red car was used by a former staff officer for a long time. In the span of two months it had two more tragic accidents. It ran down two peasants in the outskirts of Sarajevo. It skidded and threw out the chauffeur. who was instantly killed.
IN 1917, the red automobile again crossed my path. I was a war correspondent and my business took me to the southern front. I stopped for two days in Sarajevo, where the new military governor (General Sarkotic) invited me to accompany him on an Inspection of the troops. We rode in the historic red car, and when we were half way to our destination, about sixty miles from the city it suddenly stopped. The chauffeur, one of the best mechanics in the army, was unable to find out what the trouble was and we had to wait hours until another car arrived.
“I am not superstitious.” said the general while we were waiting, “but I think I will rot use this car any more. I am always having some kind of trouble with it. It is strange, it is inexplicable.”
I did not hear of the red car again for about a year, when I met an officer who served under Gen. Sarkotlc. We exchanged reminiscences and I chanced to ask him what became of the general’s notorious automobile
“Oh, you mean the red car? The ‘devll-car,’ as we called it? Nothing in particular. It is still in use. But about six months ago it collided with an oxcart Two peasants died as a result of that accident and the poor chauffeur, that fellow whom you knew, is still in the hospital” . . .
AND the “devil-car” went on its fearsome way. Left in Sarajevo when the Austrian authorities evacuated Bosnia, it passed into the hands of the new Jugo-Slav governor of the province. He used it for two months, within which time he had four accidents with it, in the last one suffering a severe injury to his right arm. The automobile was then sold to a Jugoslav physician. Dr. Srskic, who was rather well known thr[o]u[gh]out the country. The “devil-car,” however, had such a bad reputation that he was unable to get a chauffeur, so he finally decided to drive it himself.
Dr. Srskic used the car for about six months. One day he wanted to visit one of his friends in the country and took his car with him. When the doctor failed to arrive, hours after his appointed time, his friend became nervous and went out to meet him. He came back a few hours later with the body of Dr. Srskic, found on a lonely road in a ditch, with the car on top of him.
AGAIN the demon car was sold, and this time it was a Bostonian landowner who had the courage to buy it. He was thought comparatively lucky, as he had no accident with the machine. Of course it was merely an odd coincidence that he committed suicide a year later. But his family was convinced that the automobile brought this misfortune, and no one of the dead man’s heirs wanted the hoodoo machine.
Again it was sold, this time to a well-known manufacturer, a certain Peter Svestitch. He was an intelligent, open-minded man. who laughed at the warnings of his friends and was glad to buy a fine automobile at a price far below its real value.
The first week he had an accident with the machine which was as mysterious and fatal as the others in the career of this Frankenstein monster of mechanism. On a country road the driver suddenly lost control of the car, which ran amuck and collided with another automobile in which six persons were riding. One of these was killed and four others severely injured.
Again the red demon changed hands and again it was a country physician who bought it. He found, however, that everyone so dreaded the ill-fated car that his patients refused to see him, and the peasants fled from the “doctor with the bewitched automobile.” He ran the risk of losing his entire practice So he decided to sell the car.
Unable to find a buyer among his own countrymen, he finally sold it to a dealer, who, on his part, resold it to a Swiss sportsman. The new owner sent the car to Vienna and undertook a journey thru the famous Dolomiten Pass. This was last summer.
A few weeks later the Austrian newspapers printed details of one of the most terrible automobile disasters that ever happened in the Dolomiten mountains. Two automobiles collided at a sharp curve One of them was thrown into a deep chasm, while the driver of the second car suffered a fracture of the skull and died two days later in a hospital. The name of this driver was M. Bluntli. And the car he drove was the same red painted six-seater in which the archduke was assassinated twelve years before.
ONCE more the red car passed into the hands of a dealer, and once again it came back to Sarajevo. There it was sold and resold and became involved in so many mishaps and accidents that It found no buyer in Bosnia. Its owner, at last. sold to a Hungarian, one Tibor Hirschfeld, who owned a garage in Cluj. Transylvania, and did a business in second-hand automobiles. Hirschfeld intended to sell the car to someone In Transylvania who did not know its story. He changed the color of the car to a deep blue and offered it for sale for $600.
So here stood the “devil-car,” in its new blue disguise, in the garage of Tibor Hirschfeld waiting for another owner and victim.
A few weeks ago Hirschfeld was invited to a wedding in a town about eighty miles from Cluj. He undertook to drive out, and invited five friends to accompany him. When they were about to start, Hirschfeld saw that there was no other car available except the blue six-seater.
“I hope you are not afraid to ride in a bewitched automobile,” he said to his friends. No. of course not! Nobody was afraid. There were laughs and jokes about the modern devil, who accommodated himself to the times and selected a high powered automobile as his vehicle.
Everybody was in the best of humor. Hirschfeld told jokingly how every one heretofore who came In contact with this machine had met his death. He drove at top speed. Then the unforeseeable, the inexplicable happened. The car swerved, crashed into another automobile, and the next minute both machines crumbled up—completely wrecked. The “devil-car” had carried down to its final destruction five of the six passengers. — World’s Magazine
IN THE twelve years of its weird career this car was the symbol of death and disaster, carrying misfortune wherever it went. Six of its successive owners were killed, and all of the remaining five suffered more or less serious injuries. Thirteen men in all went to their deaths in this sinister machine met their fate under its murderous wheels. An heir to a throne died on its cushions, and a powerful army leader rode in it to his defeat. Its road was marked by fatality, death followed in its wake, its very appearance brought sorrow.
I confess that I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to be among those few who rode in this accursed machine and are still alive. . . .
IT WAS in Sarajevo, in those hectic June days of 1914, which preceded the outbreak of the World war, that I first encountered the legendary red automobile in which the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated a few days before.
There it stood peacefully in the garage of the governor’s palace, its velvet cushions stained with blood, its back seat perforated by the murderer’s bullets. It was a brand new car, ordered by the Bosnian authorities for the exclusive use of the archduke when his visit to the province was announced.
SIX weeks later the World war broke out. General Potiorek was appointed leader of the Southern army. He made up his mind to make use of the red automobile, despite the tragic association already connected with It. But soon the fatal red car was speeding back from the front.
The Austrian armies had suffered a terrific defeat in the battle of Valjevo, and General Potiorek fled with his troops Into Austrian territory. The genera! was disgraced and he took his downfall so much to heart that he lost his mental balance He left Sarajevo and the red car was used by a former staff officer for a long time. In the span of two months it had two more tragic accidents. It ran down two peasants in the outskirts of Sarajevo. It skidded and threw out the chauffeur. who was instantly killed.
IN 1917, the red automobile again crossed my path. I was a war correspondent and my business took me to the southern front. I stopped for two days in Sarajevo, where the new military governor (General Sarkotic) invited me to accompany him on an Inspection of the troops. We rode in the historic red car, and when we were half way to our destination, about sixty miles from the city it suddenly stopped. The chauffeur, one of the best mechanics in the army, was unable to find out what the trouble was and we had to wait hours until another car arrived.
“I am not superstitious.” said the general while we were waiting, “but I think I will rot use this car any more. I am always having some kind of trouble with it. It is strange, it is inexplicable.”
I did not hear of the red car again for about a year, when I met an officer who served under Gen. Sarkotlc. We exchanged reminiscences and I chanced to ask him what became of the general’s notorious automobile
“Oh, you mean the red car? The ‘devll-car,’ as we called it? Nothing in particular. It is still in use. But about six months ago it collided with an oxcart Two peasants died as a result of that accident and the poor chauffeur, that fellow whom you knew, is still in the hospital” . . .
AND the “devil-car” went on its fearsome way. Left in Sarajevo when the Austrian authorities evacuated Bosnia, it passed into the hands of the new Jugo-Slav governor of the province. He used it for two months, within which time he had four accidents with it, in the last one suffering a severe injury to his right arm. The automobile was then sold to a Jugoslav physician. Dr. Srskic, who was rather well known thr[o]u[gh]out the country. The “devil-car,” however, had such a bad reputation that he was unable to get a chauffeur, so he finally decided to drive it himself.
Dr. Srskic used the car for about six months. One day he wanted to visit one of his friends in the country and took his car with him. When the doctor failed to arrive, hours after his appointed time, his friend became nervous and went out to meet him. He came back a few hours later with the body of Dr. Srskic, found on a lonely road in a ditch, with the car on top of him.
AGAIN the demon car was sold, and this time it was a Bostonian landowner who had the courage to buy it. He was thought comparatively lucky, as he had no accident with the machine. Of course it was merely an odd coincidence that he committed suicide a year later. But his family was convinced that the automobile brought this misfortune, and no one of the dead man’s heirs wanted the hoodoo machine.
Again it was sold, this time to a well-known manufacturer, a certain Peter Svestitch. He was an intelligent, open-minded man. who laughed at the warnings of his friends and was glad to buy a fine automobile at a price far below its real value.
The first week he had an accident with the machine which was as mysterious and fatal as the others in the career of this Frankenstein monster of mechanism. On a country road the driver suddenly lost control of the car, which ran amuck and collided with another automobile in which six persons were riding. One of these was killed and four others severely injured.
Again the red demon changed hands and again it was a country physician who bought it. He found, however, that everyone so dreaded the ill-fated car that his patients refused to see him, and the peasants fled from the “doctor with the bewitched automobile.” He ran the risk of losing his entire practice So he decided to sell the car.
Unable to find a buyer among his own countrymen, he finally sold it to a dealer, who, on his part, resold it to a Swiss sportsman. The new owner sent the car to Vienna and undertook a journey thru the famous Dolomiten Pass. This was last summer.
A few weeks later the Austrian newspapers printed details of one of the most terrible automobile disasters that ever happened in the Dolomiten mountains. Two automobiles collided at a sharp curve One of them was thrown into a deep chasm, while the driver of the second car suffered a fracture of the skull and died two days later in a hospital. The name of this driver was M. Bluntli. And the car he drove was the same red painted six-seater in which the archduke was assassinated twelve years before.
ONCE more the red car passed into the hands of a dealer, and once again it came back to Sarajevo. There it was sold and resold and became involved in so many mishaps and accidents that It found no buyer in Bosnia. Its owner, at last. sold to a Hungarian, one Tibor Hirschfeld, who owned a garage in Cluj. Transylvania, and did a business in second-hand automobiles. Hirschfeld intended to sell the car to someone In Transylvania who did not know its story. He changed the color of the car to a deep blue and offered it for sale for $600.
So here stood the “devil-car,” in its new blue disguise, in the garage of Tibor Hirschfeld waiting for another owner and victim.
A few weeks ago Hirschfeld was invited to a wedding in a town about eighty miles from Cluj. He undertook to drive out, and invited five friends to accompany him. When they were about to start, Hirschfeld saw that there was no other car available except the blue six-seater.
“I hope you are not afraid to ride in a bewitched automobile,” he said to his friends. No. of course not! Nobody was afraid. There were laughs and jokes about the modern devil, who accommodated himself to the times and selected a high powered automobile as his vehicle.
Everybody was in the best of humor. Hirschfeld told jokingly how every one heretofore who came In contact with this machine had met his death. He drove at top speed. Then the unforeseeable, the inexplicable happened. The car swerved, crashed into another automobile, and the next minute both machines crumbled up—completely wrecked. The “devil-car” had carried down to its final destruction five of the six passengers. — World’s Magazine
