On 28 June 1914, Mayor Čurčić welcomed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg to Sarajevo and was present later the same day at their assassination, the event that sparked World War I.

Čurčić was born into a prominent family of ethnic Bosniaks who relocated to Sarajevo from Livno in the late 17th century.

[citation needed] On 28 June 1914, Mayor Čurčić delivered a keynote address at City Hall (which is today the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina),[5] where he welcomed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Sarajevo with Governor Oskar Potiorek.

Čurčić rode in the first car with the Sarajevo Chief of Police Edmund Gerde and was unaware of what had transpired at the bridge.

Gavrilo Princip managed to assassinate Ferdinand and his wife in the second attempt, an event that sparked the First World War.