to his hunting lodge at Mayerling, the young woman soon became excessively animated and sought to interject herself into court politics and intrigue. Rudolf snubbed her for this, and in a fit of rage, the 17-year old baroness smashed a bottle of champagne over Rudolf's head, killing him. Hearing the fracas and then a gunshot, Johann and other revelers on a nearby balcony, rushed into the salon to discover that Rudolf's valet had avenged his master's death with a single, fatal gunshot to Mary Vetsera. The event was immediately covered-up, and the story of a murder-suicide was fabricated. Enemies of both Rudolf and Johann, began spreading innuendo that Johann was implicated in Rudolf's death. When Emperor Franz Joseph questioned the young archduke about these rumors in 1889, Johan became furious and broke his sword over his knee. Tearing the epaulets and military decorations off his uniform, Johann threw them at the feet of the emperor, and renounced his right to the throne until such time as he might be cleared of the false accusations. The Emperor, indignant at Johan's actions, sentenced him to lose his princely rights and succession for twenty years. Johan then left the country and assumed his new life and the name "John Orth". Orth and his wife, an actress, were believed lost at sea in a shipwreck off Cape Horn in 1890 and were declared dead in absentia in 1911. The 1945 story of Johan's (Orth's) survival has not been established as true. Koehler's grandfather, Heinrich, was born in the state of Hesse in Germany. A master-brewer trained at Mainz, he had immigrated to America at the age of twenty-one, quickly making his way to St. Louis, where German-Americans accounted for nearly one-third the population of 78,000 in 1850. Working his way up to foreman at the Lemp brewery, by 1851 Koehler had saved enough capital to start his own brewery, and moved 225 miles upriver on the Mississippi to Fort Madison, Iowa, where he purchased a small, but established brewery and introduced lager beer to the surrounding area. Around 1863, Heinrich, who now went by "Henry", leased his brewery to his father-in-law, and moved back to St. Louis where he bought a partnership interest in the Excelsior Brewery from his younger brother, Casper (1835–1910). By then the city's population had swelled to more than 300,000 and the brothers aimed to increase beer production and sell