WHERE IS JOHANN ORTH?

Shannon News, 19 February 1926, Page 4

WHERE IS JOHANN ORTH?

ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA WHO RESIGNED RANK. THREW ORDER OF GOLDEN FLEECE IN EMPEROR'S FACE. An act <sf 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 hav e been the theme of absorbing speculation for over thirty years. Seventy years ago the hero of this strange romance'was born at Florence, the son of Leopold 11., Grand Duke of Tuscany. In the child's veins flowed the proud blood of the he was near kin to many of the great ruling families 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 hands>ome boyhood he developed rare gifts of mind and a studious disposition. He showed a marked aptitude for languages, a skill in music and poetry, and a passion for Nature; but his favourite study, even in the schoolroom, was the science of war. - He meant to be a scholar, but first and foremost a, soldier; and long before he reached manhood there was little that h e did, not know of th e military systems and resources of every nation in Europe. Swift-Promotion. When, his schooldays over, the young Archduke joined the Austrian Army, h e was quickly recognised as a soldier of remarkabe skill and promise. From rank to rank he was promoted so swiftly that, while still in the twenties, he was a full-blown general, in command of the armies iu Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was declared by Field-Marshal von Moltke to b e 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 his undoing. His first tactical blunder was in publishing a pamphlet in whicli he unmercifully 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 tbp to bottom, turning it into ridicule, to the consternation, and wrath of' the army authorities and the Emperor. Not content with these indiscretions, his hot-headedness 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 paiience exhausted, sent for the duke, and after a stern lecture on his conduct bade him choose between two alternatives.

N A Beautiful Vision. He must either amend his ways altogether or leave the-army and resign his Royal rank. "In a fit of ungovernable rage," his niece tells us. "Johann tore off his Order of the Golden Fleece, flung it at the Emperor, and left his presence a broken l 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. One night ,in the Imperial Theatre, his eyes wer e drawn to 6ne of the ballerinas, whose fresh young beauty and grace were a new revelation to him of 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 she was and where she was to be found. The girl whose magic had cast such a potent spell over the Prince's heart was Emilie Stubel, a 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 prize to be coveted by a Prince who had foresworn the world of rank and fashion and yearned for a sharer of the humble life he had mapped out for himself. As a simple, if handsome and fascinating student, Archduke Johann sought an introduction to the tradesman's daughter, and alter a brief wooing in which he won her heart as completely as she had conquered his, obtained her glad consent to be his wife. Revelation on Wedding- Eve.

It was not until the very eve of her wedding-day that Emilie learnt the secret of her lover's high rank—that th e man who had wooed and won her as a poor student was none other than Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria, coupin of the Emperor, and kinsman of half the Royalties of Europe. For one year more Prince Johann—--1 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. "T claim the right to work,'' he said, "and as I am nqt allowed to do it in my own country, I will go out into the world in search of it." A few days later Johann Orth and his young wife left the Gmunden home, whore they had been so happy together, and for long months all trace of them was lost. It was rumoured that the Archduke had been recognised as 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- 1 5 90, they were discovered in London, where Johann secured the master's certificate on which he. had set his heart. j "Into the Blue." From London he went to Hamburg,

where he purchased the Santa Margherita, a well-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, he set sail from Chatham on a voyage to South America with » cargo of cement. The vessel arrived safely at Lat Plata, and, after shipping an entirely new crew, sailed for Valparaiso, around Cape Horn. From th e moment, however, that the Margherita's masts dipped below the horizon on this voyage, she vanished as completely as if the sea had swallowed her. "Yet through all th e 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 the Japanese against the Russians, in Chili', bearing arms against Balmaceda; and again in Mailorca, in company with his kinsman, the Archduke Louis Salvator. "Don Ramon" the Mysterious. George Lacour, a French author of repute, proved to his satisfaction that Johann was living in the Argentine, under the guise of a mysterious and elusive "Don , Ramon;" and Senor Eugenio Charzun, a Senator of Uruguay, not. long ago declared'that he 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 he had been challenged by a fellow-passenger who had 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 his mother, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, clung still alive. Year after.year, until death claimed her, sh e kept his rooms in Schloss Orth ready at any moment to receive her wandering son; and a light burningin them to welcome him heme on the darkest night. "My.son is not dead„" she would say to thos e who offered sympathy. "I kno w that he lives and will come back to me before I die." In tlie Secret. There were, ,it is said, only two men, now dead, who knew the truth; and neither would declare it. One was Dr. Von Harbeler .the Archduke's , confidential friend and attorney, who, it is believed, heard from him regularly every month, but from whom no one was ever able to elicit a word. The other was Baron del Abaco. also an intimate friend, whose life-story is little less lomantic than that of the Archdukve himself. Shortly after k Johann's disappearance the Baron, a distinguished army officer and a favourite of th e Austrian Court, abandoned his family, rank and title, and voyaged over the seas to begin a new life in the heart of German New Guinea. It is said that the Archduke Johann before his disappearance, confided his plans to the Baron, under a pledge oE secrecy, and that the Baron, until his death, was in constant communication with his Royal friend.