Anna Anderson

File:Annaan.JPG

Anastasia Manahan, usually known as Anna Anderson (c.1900 – 4 February 1984) was the best known of several women who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra.

She may have believed the claim herself. Anastasia was born on 18 June 1901 and was presumed executed with her family on 17 July 1918. Anna Anderson has also been identified as Franziska Schanzkowska (born 16 December 1896 – reported missing on March 9, 1920).

Anna’s body was cremated upon her death in 1984. DNA testing done in 1994 on a surgical specimen retained since 1979 in a hospital and on hairs found in a book in 1994 seemed to determine that Anna was not Anastasia, and indicated she was likely to be Franziska. However, supporters argue over the chain of custody for these various samples.

Appearance

She was first discovered after having attempted suicide in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin in 1920. She said that she walked to Berlin to seek out her aunt, Princess Irene. She reached the palace where Irene lived, but, fearing no one would recognize her, did not try to enter and attempted to take her life.

She then became a patient in a mental hospital, Dalldorf, under the name Fräulein Unbekannt (a.k.a. Miss Unknown) for two years before claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia after several patients and staff at the hospital noted a resemblance to Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia.

Some people, including a few relatives who knew Anastasia very well and some acquaintances of the Imperial family, were convinced that she was indeed Anastasia.

The young woman was covered with scars. The doctors who noted the woman to be a “Russian refugee” because of her eastern accent, noted that she was covered with “many lacerations.” One on the foot was in a triangular shape. Experts who examined it much later in the 1960s declared it to be in the exact shape and size of that of a bayonet used during World War I.

Miss Unknown, who called herself Anastasia Tchaikovsky, made the assertion that she had somehow been rescued, in spite of massive gunfire and repeated bayonet attacks, from the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where the Imperial family was murdered, by a Russian Polish soldier named Alexander Tchaikovsky, whom she had later married and with whom she moved to Bucharest, where he was killed in a street brawl. There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of Alexander Tchaikovsky. Anderson also claimed that she had a child with Tchaikovsky, but gave him away. She claimed to have fainted behind her sister, Tatiana, and that a bullet grazed her ear. Many believed her story. Many did not.

Disputed identification

One day while in the asylum, a fellow psychiatric patient there, Clara Pluethart, stopped Anna saying that she recognized her as the Grand Duchess Tatiana from a royalty magazine that she read. Anna later confided she was not Tatiana, but Anastasia. When Baroness Buxhoevden came to identify her, the baroness pulled Anna up and claimed that she was “too short to be Tatiana”. Calling herself Anastasia Tchaivkovsky, the unknown woman was taken in by a Russian emigre, Baron Von Kleist. However, 'Anastasia' felt he was putting her on display and making a spectacle out of her, so she ran away and was taken in by Inpsector Grunberg. While there, Alexandra's sister, Princess Irene came to view this woman under a false name. When 'Anastasia' saw her, she ran away from her visitor and locked herself in her room. From the little of what Princess Irene of Prussia saw, she did not believe this to be her niece, although she noted her hair and the top of her face to be somewhat similar. But as for the bottom of her face, she believed it to be impossible for it to have altered to that degree. However, when questioned about her judgement much later in life, she wringed her hands and said, "She is similar. She is similar. But what does that mean if it is not she?" Her son, Prince Sigismund, sent 'Anastasia' a list of questions that he said only Anastasia could know. According to him, she got all of these right.

In 1925, 'Anastasia' developed an infection in her arm where the bone was exposed and was placed in a hospital. She became sick and near death, shrinking to a gaunt 70 lb. While in the hospital, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II and Anastasia’s aunt, who had survived the Revolution and settled in Denmark, came to Berlin to meet the woman who was said to be her niece. She spent several days with the patient. After some hesitation, she along with former Imperial tutor Pierre Gilliard denounced the young woman in the hospital as a fraud, saying that she was “not who she believes she is.” Olga’s original statement according to Ambassador Zahle was, “My reason cannot grasp it, but my heart tells me it is she.” According to Dr. Rudnev (the doctor treating Anna for an infected arm), Gilliard referred to the sick young woman as “Her Imperial Highness” and said that he could not say as “a fact” that the woman in the hospital was not the grand duchess. Olga and Gilliard themselves later declared they had known instantly that she was a fraud, “a sad deranged creature”. However, in Olga's letter she had written to 'Anna' before denying her, she declared “we shall not abandon you."

Imperial tutor Sydney Gibbes met Anna much later in Paris in and declared, “If that’s Grand Duchess Anastasia, then I’m a Chinaman.”

Other people, who knew the young Anastasia quite well, like Anastasia’s childhood nurse Alexandra (Shura) Tegleva and Empress Alexandra’s close friend Lili Dehn, identified Anna as Anastasia. Tegleva saw Anna in 1925 with her husband, Pierre Gilliard, and confirmed that Anna’s foot disorder, hallux valgus (bunions), was identical to the Grand Duchess. "This is Anastasia's body," she declared. Anderson had also asked Tegleva for a forehead massage with a special oil, something Anastasia had enjoyed from childhood.

Gleb Botkin and Tatiana Botkin, childhood playmates of the Imperial family whose father was murdered along with the family, recognized her without hesitation. Upon Gleb's first visit, she refused to see him, but asked the Leuchtenburgs who she had stayed with to ask him if he had brought his funny animals. They did not know what she meant, but Botkin apparently did. When they were younger, Botkin would paint watercolors of animals in court attire and Anastasia would make up stories to go along with the paintings. When shown these watercolors, Anna not only recalled the game, but was able to remember the stories that went along with the pictures. Botkin proclaimed Anna to be Anastasia for the rest of his life.

Some claimed she had birthmarks and scars in locations identical to where Anastasia had them, including a cautorized mole on the shoulder, which a sailor on the Imperial yacht, the Standart had recalled.

Grand Duke Andrew Vladmirovich met the “claimant” in 1928 before Anna set out to New York with Gleb and declared, “I have seen Nicky’s daughter!” The Tsar’s former mistress, Mathilde Kschessinka met her as well near the end of her life and said Anna had the Tsar's look. She believed that Mrs. Anderson was truly the daughter of the Tsar.

Certain people would question her, having trick questions such as “The billiard table on the second floor was destroyed” and Anna would reply “I believe the table was on the first floor.” One time, two women Anna had been staying with found photos of the Imperial palaces in what was now the Soviet Union and, trying to test Anna, cut out a picture of the Tsar's room to see if she would recognize it. When Anna was shown the picture, she became angry and declared, "But this is Papa's room!"

At around the time Anna was suffering from a severe illness, Anna recalled a visit by Anastasia’s uncle, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (Alexandra’s brother) to Russia in 1916 during World War I. If this had been true, it would have been treason.

So Ernst hired a private investigator to investigate her claims. He found a woman named Doris Wingender who stated that Anna was in fact Franziska Schanzkowska, an ethnic Polish Pomeranian factory worker in Berlin, born in 1896, who had disappeared at around the same time that Fräulein Unbekannt was discovered. Doris said that Anna was Franziska who was her mother's lodger who dissappeared in 1920. Schanzkowska was said to have multiple scars due to an explosion accident in a hand grenade factory during World War I, thus explaining the scars on Anderson’s body. Anderson claimed that they were from the execution that she barely escaped. To see if this story was true, Ambassador Zahle and Anderson supporter Harriet Rathlef set up a meeting between Anderson and Franziska Schanzkowska's brother Felix. When Felix saw her from a distance, he declared, "That is my sister Franziska." At the end of the day, when asked to sign an affadavit, he declined. "I will not sign it. That is not my sister."

It was pointed out that she was unable to speak Russian, although other witnesses at Dalldorf swore to have heard her speak it. She would only respond in German. She explained her inability to speak Russian by saying that she was unwilling to use the language spoken by the people who murdered her family, as they were not allowed to speak any other language in the Ipatiev House.

Certain things she knew seemed to be things that only someone very close to the imperial family could have known. Felix Dassel, who was nursed by young Anastasia and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia back in Russia, recalled that Anderson was familiar with a particular in-joke of the royal children — they referred to a Colonel Sergeyev as “the Man with the Pockets” — and was convinced that nobody but he and Anastasia could have known about it. He also attempted to trick Anderson by talking about the medallions and sabers that the wounded soliders in the hospital had recieved. "I do not recall giving sabers." Dassel said they had never given any sabers. He could not trip her up no matter how hard he tried.

In 1938, Anderson initiated a suit in German courts to claim an inheritance which was handed out to relatives of Empress Alexandra who declared all the Imperial family to be dead. Anderson’s lawyers declared that Grand Duchess Anastasia was still alive. Her supporters fought valiantly for her claim. Her opponents fought just as hard however to prove she was in reality the missing Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska. The case dragged out until 1970, when the court determined that she had not proven herself to be the Grand Duchess, nor had the identity been disproven.

Marriage and death

After moving to the United States, Anderson lived for several years on Long Island with Princess Xenia, a daughter of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia and Princess Maria Georgievna of Greece. It was during this visit she began to call herself Mrs. Eugene Anderson, in an attempt to avoid the press. The name Anna was added in the 1930s.

In 1968 upon returning to the U.S., Anderson, around the age of 70, married wealthy American supporter John Eacott Manahan, age 49; they had no children. The couple lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died of pneumonia in 1984. Her body was cremated according to her wishes.

DNA tests

In 1991, the bodies of the royal family were exhumed, and it was discovered that the bodies of Alexei, and one of his sisters (according to Dr. William Maples, Anastasia), were not in the grave.

DNA testing was done to make sure that the remains were actually those of the imperial family. Later, Anderson’s DNA was compared with those of the Romanovs, at the suggestion of Marina Botkin Scweitzer, the daughter of Gleb Botkin. "At the time that they identified the bodies of the Imperial Family, I thought we should do the same for the Grand Duchess," she said. The mitochondrial DNA of the bones unearthed from a forest grave, presumed to be those of Alexandra and three of her daughters, were compared to that of the Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine was a sister of Alexandra. This proved to be a match.

Anderson’s DNA, however, did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh, meaning that if the tissue sample being tested belonged to Anderson, she could not have been Anastasia. At the press conference, Dr. Peter Gill stated, “If one accepts that this sample is from Anna Anderson, then it is almost impossible that she could have been Anastasia.” When asked if the mystery was now over, Gill replied, "That is not for me to say."

Another DNA test, comparing the DNA from the sample to that of Carl Maucher, a great nephew of the missing Franziska Schanzkowska, had a nearly perfect match, supporting the hypothesis that the identification originally made in 1927 with Franziska Schanzkowska was a very likely one. The 'official' verdict is that Anna and Franziska were one and the same person.

Anna’s DNA was taken from bowel tissue obtained during a 1979 operation Anna had undergone at the Martha Jefferson Hospital of Charlottesville, Virginia for an intestinal blockage. About one foot of her intestines had been removed, and about five inches of it cut into five slices and preserved in formalin, remained in the hospital’s pathology department from that time. The number on the block matched Anna’s historical number at the Martha Jefferson Hospital. It was obtained by the testers following a long and complicated court battle throughout the year 1994 between Gleb Botkin’s daughter, Marina Botkin Schweitzer, and the Russian Nobility Association.

Later, someone claimed to have obtained hair samples of Anna Anderson that came from an envelope inside of a book at the bottom of John Manahan’s old bookstore. The envelope was said to have said “Anastasia’s hair” on it and the hairs still had follicles on them. This person contacted Anderson biographer Peter Kurth who got them in touch with Dr. Stoneking. These hairs were likewise subjected to DNA tests and found to have the same mtDNA sequence as the intestinal tissue. No STRs were derived from the hair, and so only the mtDNA comparison could be performed. So contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute proof that the hair and tissue came from the same person.

Aside from the intestine and the hair samples, there was also a slide of blood presumed to be from Anna Anderson located in Germany by a researcher. The sequence obtained from it did not match the mtDNA sequence of the other samples however. Investigators concluded it was either contaminated or that the donor was not Anderson. However, Dr. David Sankueler who took the sample back in 1951 said that the blood sample remained under his lock and key only. Little is known about this sample.

Supporters cling to hope

The DNA tests came as an unexpected shock to those involved with Anastasia Manahan. No one could believe that this woman was a Polish girl who had been working in the factories and then miraculously became a Grand Duchess. Supporters continued to argue that there is no hard proof that the intestinal tissue were from Anderson, because they do not believe that this woman could have been a Polish farm worker. They argue that she could not have known so much about the Imperial family’s life, and have so much inside knowledge of the imperial family, and could not reconcile their impressions of Anna Anderson with having been a Polish peasant born in the late 19th century, when, they say, class distinctions were so great. According to early reports, Schanzkowska was reported missing on March 9, 1920, when Anderson had appeared on February 17. According to Doris Wingeder who claimed Anderson was her mother's lodger, Franziska was, 'a little bit taller than I am." Doris was 5'3, while Anderson was 5'2. Wingender also had Franziska's clothes and shoes. The shoes were a size '39, while Anderson wore a size '36. What is important about this is that Doris Wingender was an opponent to Anna Anderson's claim. According to Franziska's medical records, she had not been injured in the grenade explosion and was certified medically insane. Not a single doctor who had examined Anna Anderson found her to be insane.

After the Dr. Peter Gill had announced his results, Richard Sweitzer stated, "I know one thing. Anastasia was not a Polish peasent." He also suggested a possible switch of the intestines, one in which false results would emerge.

Others took a more rational approach, suggesting that the chain of custody for the tissue sample would not have stood up in any court of law.

Anderson biographer Peter Kurth, an acquaintance of Anna Anderson, who wrote a book on the case, has explained his refusal to accept the DNA findings with: ‘They don’t explain how she spoke “more English than German” already in the early 1920s, or how she arrived in America in 1928 speaking fluent English, having had only the most rudimentary “lessons” in the form of Mother Goose rhymes. They don’t explain her intimate acquaintance with the history, customs and lore of the Romanov family and every royal house of Europe; how she could deal with hotel staff in French; play the piano with or without sheet music; walk, sit, stand or offer her hand in exactly the home-trained manner; how she recognised members of the Romanov family just by the sound of their voices; “walked through the garden calling the flowers by their quaint Russian names” etc.’ Peter Kurth has been supported by historians Greg King and Penny Wilson, authors of "The Fate of the Romanovs".

The 2002 edition of "The File on the Tsar" by Summers and Mangfold, gave a fairly balanced account of supporters' refusal to accept these results.

'Nearly fifty years ago, Anna Anderson told a story about a sketch she and her sister had put on to amuse their parents during their confinement in Tobolsk. She played a male part, she 'recalled', and and had to borrow a man's dressing-gown. At a pivotal moment in the play, a freak draught made the dressing gown billow up around their thighs, revealing that she was wearing the tsar's long-johns- against the bitter cold of the Siberian winter. The family, said Anna Anderson, had hooted with laughter. The only witnesses from the imperial household who would have been present at that scene, and who are known to have survived, were the two family tutors-both foreigners. One was the English tutor, Sydney Gibbes, and his memoirs were published for the first time in 1975. They include this account of an incident during amatuer theatricals in Tobolsk. "The cast," Gibbes wrote, "had its happiest night with an Edwardian farce by Henry Grattan, called 'Packing Up', ... Anastasia took the male part... at the end of the farce the 'Husband' had to turn his back, open his Dressing-gown as if to take it off- Anastasia used an old one of mine... but a draught got under the gown and whisked its tail up to the middle of her back, showing her sturdy legs and bottom encased Emperor Jaguer's underwear...' So far as exhaustive research can establish, only Anna Anderson had ever before told this vivid ancedote, in private and three decades before the Gibbes memoirs appeared. If Anderson was a phoney, as the seemingly damning DNA evidence now tells us, how did she know the story? That was one of the myriad puzzles that believers in Anna Anderson had to confront when the scientists delivered their verdict. Ian Lilburn, a research historian and the only observer to attend every session of the "Anastasia" appeal process in the German courts, had a calmer response than some. "I think," he said, knowing he sounded like a Luddite and Romanov flat-earther, " there is something we don't know about the DNA."

In any case, people will continue to believe in Anna Anderson's claim due to the fact that in Russia, the remains of a body measuring 5'7 are buried under the name of Anastasia, despite the fact that Anastasia was the shortest of her sisters.

Anna in popular culture

In 1956 there was a film made about Anna Anderson, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman as Anna/Anastasia, and Yul Brenner; however, this film is highly fictionalized. It was remade in 1997 as an animated musical. Anastasia (1997)

NBC ran a two-part mini-series titled "Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna" which starred Amy Irving and won her a Golden Globe. It was based on the biography of Anna Anderson by Peter Kurth.

References

• The Fate of the Romanovs, Greg King and Penny Wilson, 2003
• Anastasia: The Life of Anna Anderson, Peter Kurth, Pimlico, 1995. [ISBN 0712659544]
• Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, Peter Kurth, Back Bay Books, 1997? [ISBN 0316507172]
• Anastasia: The Lost Princess, James Blair Lovell, Robson Books, 1998. [ISBN 0860518078]
• The Quest for Anastasia: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Romanovs, John Klier and Helen Mingay, Citadel Press, 1999.
• The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, Robert K. Massie, 1995[ISBN 0806520647]

External links

• Russian Forensics - A site demonstrating the Russian agenda to prove Anastasia's remains were in the grave.
• Could Anna Anderson be Anastasia? — a website arguing against the conclusiveness of two of the three Anna Anderson DNA Tests.
• Anna Anderson WAS Grand Duchess Anastasia — a site supporting the conspiracy theory surrounding Anna Anderson and Anastasia
• Article by Peter Kurth — Anna Anderson’s biographer attempts to reconcile his belief that Anna Anderson was Anastasia with the 1994 DNA results.
• Article by Rey Barry — Journalist Rey Barry — friend of Anna Anderson and Jack Manahan, and a supporter of her pretensions.
• Anastasia: Duchess in Disguise — another website arguing that photographs of Anna Anderson look like Anastasia.
• Anastasia and Anna Anderson — A narrative of Anastasia’s death.
• Anna Anderson/ Anastasia Manahan — A paper written by a supporter with a list of reasons why they believe that Anna Anderson was Anastasia.
• Anastasia: The Truth - A website correcting misstatements recently made about Anastasia and Anna Anderson.
• HIH Grand Duchess Anastasia Historical Society - A web site telling the story of Anastasia Nicholaevna and the woman who claimed to be her.