Hugo Köhler’s diary

Did Johann Salvator buy himself a new identity?

When Archduke Johann Nepomuk Salvator, now Johann Orth, disappears along with the Saint Margaret steamer attempting to circumnavigate South America in 1890, everyone believes that the ship has sunk. Johann Salvator is pronounced dead in 1911. But the story of Johann Orth, the unconventional dropout, is not over yet.

The basis for this theory is the diary of a certain Hugo Köhler, as pictured. The first 9 lines: “Archduke Johann Salvator, known as Johann Orth, purchases Hugo Köhler’s identification papers at the inn in Hamburg in January 1881.”

Indeed Johann Salvator, as an archduke, does buy the papers from the cartographer Hugo Köhler. Köhler desperately needs the money for a curative trip to Egypt for tuberculosis. According to records from his home in Eilenberg in Saxony he dies in Egypt shortly after. In the years following 1890 a man is confirmed to have travelled with Köhler’s papers through North Germany and Scandinavia, finally settling in Norway. On his deathbed the man believed to be Hugo Köhler reveals his true identity to his offspring.

And so a scurrile 21st century instalment is added to the story of the unconventional dropout Johann Orth.