Who was Johann Orth?

The photo below is of  Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria – son of Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II, who was  born on 25 November 1852 but presumed lost at sea in 1890 – and therein hangs our tale.

He was baptized in Florence’s Battistero di San Giovanni as Giovanni Nepomuceno Maria Annunziata Giuseppe Giovanni Batista Ferdinando Baldassare Luigi Gonzaga Pietro Alessandrino Zanobi Antonino so one might have thought that he had enough names to last a lifetime… but evidently not!

After the family’s miserable eviction from Florence in 1859 he pursued a good career and won many medals in the Austrian Army where in 1878 he was put in command of a division of the occupying army during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of the Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He also had a shot at the throne of Bulgaria in 1879 but lost out to Prince Alexander of Battenberg

He decided it was time for a name change! – having failed to get the throne and the big title he opted for a life with no throne or title at all, and on 16 October 1889, he resigned his army commission and became John (or Johann) Orth.  This surname Orth came from a castle on Traunsee lake, that he had owned, called Schloss Orth.

He married an opera dancer called Mizzi Stubel,  in a London registry office, and bought a ship called  Santa Margareta, in which he and his wife sailed for South America. He was never seen or officially heard from again, as his ship was believed to have been lost off  in a storm off  Cape Horn

Milly’s mother stoutly refused to believe that the couple had perished and despite the temptation that she would inherit funds from Johann’s remaining Swiss Bank account of 1,000,000 francs, she insisted that this money should not be touched as she believed they would return to claim their place in society after the death of Johann’s enemy, Field Marshall Arch Duke Albert.

They didn’t return and Johann was officially declared dead in 1911.

Perhaps because of Milly’s mothers conviction rumours persisted that Johann Orth had survived and amongst his later possible aliases were, somewhat improbably:-  Field Marshall Yamagatta of Japan, and by his own account, Alexander Hugo Køhler of Kristiansand, Norway.

Kohler left it to his deathbed to claim that he was in reality Johann Salvator and that he had bought Køhler’s identity papers  before the shipwreck.

Orth, as  Køhler. became the husband of Clara Josefin Levin, a lithographer in Denmark some time before 1900.

Køhler was then reported as having been engaged in marital infidelities and business improprieties in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, before passing away on May 6, 1945, in Kristiansand.

In 2007, relatives of Køhler requested that Køhler’s grave be opened so that a DNA test could be performed.

Personally I am not convinced – the earlobes don’t change shape! However , should Køhler and Johann Salvator indeed be proved to be the same person, Køhler’s descendants may be entitled to Johann Salvator’s heritage, including Schloss Orth.

I am still researching to find the results of this test – so watch this space!