WHERE IS JOHANN ORTH?

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16700, 23 January 1926, Page 8

WHERE IS JOHANN ORTH?

ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA. THREW ORDER AT EMPEROR. RESIGNED RANK. An act of renunciation almost without parallel in history is that of the Archduke Johann Salvator, of Austria, who abandoned what might have been one of the most brilliant careers in Europe for the love of a beautiful ballet girl. The Duke’s romance and his subsequent mysterious disappearance have been the theme of absorbing speculation for over thirty years. Seventy years ago the hero of this strange romance was born at F lorence, the son of Leopold 11., Grand Duke of Tuscany. In the child’s veins flowed the proud blood of the Hapsburgs, he was near kin to many of the great rulings farilies of Europe, and of the exalted circle in which he was cradled the young Prince gave early promise of being a distinguished ornament. As he grew up to handsome boyhood he developed rare gifts of mind and a studious dispositioin. He showed a marked aptitude for languages, a skill in music and poetry and a passion lor nature; but his favourite study, even in the schoolroom was the science of war. He meant to be scholar, blit first and foremost a soldier; and long before be reached manhood there was little that he did not know of the military systems ind resources of every .nation in Europe. , SWIFT PROMOTION.

When his schooldays over, the young Archduke joined the Austrian Army, he was quickly recognised as a soldier of remarkable skill and promise. From rank to rank he was promoted so swiftly that, while stjll in the twenties, he was a full-blown general, in command of the armies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was declared by Field-Marshall von Moltke to be the most accomplished strategist in Europe.

To his great gifts, however, were allied an autocratic, unbending will, and a passion for reform and intrigue which were to prove liis undoing. His first tacteal blunder was in publishing a pamphlet in which he mercilessly exposed the faulty organisation of the Austrian artillery. This he followed with a book on drill and training, in which he scathingly criticised the military system of Austria, from top to bottom, turning it mto ridicule, to the consternation and wrath of the army authorities and the Emperor.

Not content with these indiscretions, his hot-headed ness next carried him into the dangerous field of international politics, until he became a serious menace to the peace of Europe. The end of it all was inevitable. The Emperor, his authority defied and his patience exhausted, sent for the Archduke, and after a stern lecture on his conduct, bade his choose betwen two alternatives.

A BEAUTIFUL VISION. ,He must eitjier amend his ways altogether or leave the army and resign his Royal rank. “In a fit of ungovernable rage,” his niece tell us, “Johann tore off his Order of the Golden Fleece, flung it at the Emperor, and left his presence a broken man, retiring to his estate near Gmunden.” Here he spent long months of solitude, literally “eating out his heart,” a solitude broken only by very rare visits to a Vienna theatre. ,

Ono night, in the Imperial Theatre, his eyes were drawn to one of the bai lerinas, whose fresh young beauty and grace were a new revelatibn to him oi the possibilities of female loveliness.

Before he left the theatre he realised that he would know no peace until he had won the bewitcher of the senses and made her his own; and before he slept he had discovered who sh e Avas and where she was to be found.

The girl whose magic had cast such a potent spell over the Prince’s heart was Emile Stubel, daughter of a small tradesman, whose beauty, grace and clever dancing had captured the heart and homage of Vienna. She was, it is true, a. maid of low degree, but she was a jewel fit to be worn on any man’s breast, and a prize to be coveted by a Prince who had foresworn the world ot rank and fashion and yearned for a sharer of the humble life be had mapped out for himself. As a simple, if handsome and fascinating student Archduke Johann sought an introduction to the tradesman’s daughter, and after, a brief wooing, in which lie won her heart as completely as she had conquered his, obtained her glad consent to be his wife.

REVELATION ON WEDDING DAY. It was not until the very eve of her wedding-day that Emilie learnt t-lie secret of her lover’s high rank—that the man who had wooed and won her as a poor student was none other than Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria, cousin of the Emperor, and kinsman ol half the Royalties of Europe. For one year more Prince Johann—now and henceforth known to the world as “Johann Orth”—led an ideally happy and simple life with his humble bride on his Gmunden estate, until at last he determined to waste his life no longer in idleness and humiliation. “I claim the right to work,” ho said, “and as f am not allowed to it in my own country, J will go out into the world in search of it.”

A few days later Johann Orth and his young wife left the Gmunden home, where they had been so happy together and for long months all trace of them was lost. It is rumoured that the Archduke had been recognised as a waiter at a Berlin restaurant: and, again, that he was doing reporter’s work in America. But nothing reliable was known of them until, in the early months of 1890, they were discovered in London, where Johann secured the master’s certificate on which he had set his heart. “INTO THE BLUE.” From London he went to Hkamburg, where lie purchased the Santa Margherita, a fell-found iron sailing ship of about 1300 tons; and, a few weeks later, with his wife as companion and a crew of Croats and Italians, ho set sail from Chatham on a voyage to South America with a cargo of cement.

The vessel arrived safely at La Plata, and. after shipping entirely new crew ,sailed for Valparaiso, around Gape Horn. From the moment, however, that the Marghorita’s masts dipped below the horizon on this voyage, she vanished as completely as n the sea had swallowed 'her.

Yet through all the years that have since passed many have clung stoutly to their belief that Archduke Johann still lived and would reappear some day; and every year has brought some fresh rumour to keep this faith alive.

Again and again he is said to have been seen and recognised in various parts of the earth. He had been reported fighting with t’no Japanese against the Russians; in Chili, hearing arms against Balmnceda; and again in Mallorca, in company with his kinsman, the Archduke Louis Salvator. “DON RAMON” THE MYSTERIOUS George Lacour. a French author oi repute,"proved to his satisfaction that Johann was living in the Argentine, under the guise of a mysterious ana elusive “Don Ramon” ; and Senor Eugenio Charzun, a Senator of Uruguay, not long ago declared that ho had seen him start from the Argentine on a- voyage to Japan. Still more recently it was stated that he was a passenger on a ship bound from America, to England, that lie had been challenged by a fellow-passenger who find recognised him, and admitted that he was the missing Archduke. He has also been reported as living the life of a hermit- on a, Pacific Island. To her last day liis mother, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, clung tenaciously to the belief that he was alive. Year after year, until death claimed her, she kept his roms in Schloss Orth ready at any moment ta receive her wandering son; and a light burning in them to welcome him home on the darkest night. “My son is not dead,” she would sav to those who offered her sypmpathy. “J know that he lives and will come back to me before 1 die.” IN THE SECRET.

There were, it is said only two men, now dead, who knew the truth ; and neither would declare it. Due wus I)r. von Harbeler, the Archduke’s confidential friend and attorney, who, so it was believed, heard from him regularly every month, but from whom no one was over able to elicit a word.

The other was Baron del Abaca, also an intimate friend, whose lile-story is little less romantic than that of the Archduke himself. Shortly after Jahann’s disappearance, the Baron, a distinguished Army officer and a favourate of the Austrian Court, abanvoyaged over the seas to begin, a new dwoned liis family, rank and title, and life in the heart of German New Guinea.

It is said that the Archduke Johann, before liis disappearance, confided his plans to the Baron, under a pledge H secrecy, and that the Baron, until his death, was in constant communication with his Royal friend.