ARCHDUKE'S ROMANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 130, 10 September 1910, Page 10

ARCHDUKE'S ROMANCE.

Vienna, July 9. I In the Imperial Court Chamberlain's Judicial Court to-day the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, nephew and heir of the Archduke Johann Salvator, known as Johann Orth, who has disappeared since 18!)0, asked for an official declaration that the Archduke Johann Salvator wasj dead. ! The Court directed a postponement of the application for a period of six ■ months, in order to permit the fding of any proofs that Johann Orth was still' alive. Austrian law formerly required an interval of thirty years before the death of missing persons might be legally presumed, but the law was afterwards modified to meet the exigencies caused by the Ring Thea-tre fire in 1881, and no definite lapse of time is now prescribed. . .

The story of Johann Orth is one of the most remarkable of the many strange and tragic stories connected with the Imperial House of Austria. Born in L 852, the Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria was one of the Tuscan branchof the Hapsburgs. He was a cultured! man, a keen soldier, and a clever musician. The Crown Prince Rudolf, who committed suicide under the most tragic circumstances, was his intimate friend. The Archduke' fell in love with Mill! Stubel, a fascinating opera dancer in Vienna, and as she refused to become his mistress .he determined to marry her. This, of course, meant a breach with the' Emperor Francis Joseph, and the sacrifice of his country and all his social prospects. He decided to begin life afresh and throw his birthright to the winds. He married the lady of his choice, in a London registry office, and bought, the Santa Margherita, an iron sailing ship of altout I#oo tons, at Hamburg. As Johann Orth he ran out from Chatham on his first voyage to South America with a cargo of cement. Here his captain fell ill and had to be paid off, most of the crew following suit. Johann Orth took over the command himself, niid engaged a fresh crew. At Iquique the Santa Margherita sailed for Valparaiso, doubling Capo Horn. The Archduke had been in regular correspondence with his mother, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, but after he left Iquique she never heard of him again, and it is supposed that the ship was wrecked. A man-of-war was sent to search the coast, but no trace of wreckage could be found. Milli .Stubel in one I of her last letters home referred vaguely I to a "no man's land" where they hoped [to live happily ever afterwards, but ! twenty years have passed, and notwith- | standing occasional reports of Jaliann , Orth's re-appearance, no authentic news 1 of the missing Archduke has been receiv- , ed, and insurance companies have had to I pay the money for which his life was ' insured.