Anna Anderson
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| Image:Annaan.JPG | |
| Born | 1896-12-16 Borowy Las, Poland |
|---|---|
| Died | 1984-02-04 Charlottesville, Virginia Pneumonia |
| Spouse | John Eacott Manahan |
Anastasia Manahan (born Franziska Schanzkowska), known for most of her life as Anna Anderson (16 December 1896—4 February 1984), was the best known of several women who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, the last monarchs of Imperial Russia. The Grand Duchess Anastasia was born on June 18, 1901 and is presumed to have been executed with her family on July 17, 1918 by Bolshevik Secret Police.
Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. Following Anderson's death, DNA tests were performed comparing Anderson's DNA to the known bloodline of Grand Duchess Anastasia. The DNA tests proved that she could not have been Anastasia.
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[edit] Early life
Born to a peasant family in Pomerania, then a Polish province of the German Empire, Franziska Schanzkowska (as Anderson was then known) spent her early years working on farms. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 she found employment in a munitions factory in Berlin. Her fiancé was killed on the Western Front in 1916 and shortly thereafter Anderson was involved in a serious accident at work; she dropped a hand grenade that blew up, killing her foreman. These events appear to have led to a complete nervous breakdown, and Anderson spent the next few years in and out of mental institutions.
[edit] Transformation
Anderson's first claim to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia occurred after her failed attempt at suicide in Berlin in 1920, although it was not until 1922 her claim became world famous. Later, she explained that she had gone by train and walked to Berlin to seek out her "aunt," Princess Irene. Once she reached the palace, she feared that no one would recognize her, or worse, that they would discover she had borne a child out of wedlock. In shame, she attempted to take her own life by jumping off a bridge into the cold water of the Landwehr Canal.She was rescued by a passing official and became a ward of the state as a patient in a mental hospital in Dalldorf. The young woman was covered, according to her doctors at the asylum with "many scars and lacerations." The doctors also surmised that the woman was probably a “Russian refugee” because of her Eastern accent. Also noted was a triangular shaped scar on her foot. Rarely talking, and refusing to provide hospital staff with any information about herself led the nurses to nickname her Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown). She remained in the asylum for two years until Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed she recognized Anderson to be the Grand Duchess Tatiana, based upon photos of the Grand Duchesses she saw in a magazine.
[edit] Controversy
Baroness Buxhoeveden, a former member of the Russian Imperial Court, was the first to visit the asylum in order to determine if Anderson's claim to be a daughter of Tsar Nicholas II was legitimate. Upon arrival, the baroness pulled Anderson up off the bed and claimed that she was “too short to be Tatiana”. She left believing Anderson a fraud, and never wavered in her opinion. Anderson stated that she never claimed she was Tatiana, but that she was Anastasia.
[edit] Tchaikovsky, husband and son
Thus began a series of events that would shape Anderson's life forever, regardless of who she really was. Miss Unknown, who began calling herself Anastasia Tchaikovsky (she told confidantes the name of the Russian soldier who rescued her, married her, and eventually fathered her a son was Alexander Tchaikovsky) claimed to have survived the massacre in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where the Imperial family is believed to have been murdered. She said that as the assassination began she passed out, and after falling to the ground, she was shielded from additional mortal harm by the body of her sister, Tatiana. Tchaikovsky and his brother, part of the executioner's squad, noticed she was still alive amongst the corpses after the execution and were able to sneak her out of the building. After her rescue, she was brought to Bucharest by Alexander and his brother Serge, their sister Veronica, and their mother. She had a child with Alexander, and they got married in Bucharest. It was in Bucharest, she said, that Tchaikovsky was killed in a street brawl.
Upon her release from the asylum, Tchaikovsky was taken in by Baron Von Kleist, a Russian emigré, who believed her claim. 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 Inspector Grünberg.
[edit] Inspector Grünberg
While staying with the inspector, Empress Alexandra's sister, Princess Irene, came to visit Anderson under an assumed name. When Anderson saw Irene, she ran away and went to her room. From the little of what Princess Irene saw, she did not believe this to be her niece. Irene did admit that the upper half of the woman's face did have physical similarities to her niece. However, she believed that the lower half of the woman's face bore no similarity, and that she believed it to be impossible for it to have altered to that degree in the years since she had last seen her niece. However, when questioned about her judgement much later in life, it was claimed that Irene became distraught saying, "She is similar. She is similar. She looks and acts like the little one."
Princess Irene's son, Prince Sigismund, sent Anderson a list of questions that he said only Anastasia could know how to answer. According to him, Anderson answered every question correctly.
[edit] 1925 hospital stay, Gilliard & Tegleva
In 1925, Anderson developed an infection in her arm and was again placed in a hospital. Sick and near death, she lost a lot of weight. It was during this time that Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, the younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II and Anastasia’s aunt, who had survived the Revolution and settled in Denmark, came to Berlin to see the woman who claimed 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 was, “My reason cannot grasp it, but my heart tells me it is she.”
According to Dr. Rudnev (the doctor treating Anderson), 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”. Yet in many letters written by Olga to Anderson before the denunciation, Olga declared, in reference to the Royal Family, “we shall not abandon you." She also referred to the times when "you stuffed me with chocolate and tea." She sent her presents, among them a personal photo album and a knitted shawl. Another Imperial tutor, Charles Sydney Gibbes, met Anderson much later in Paris and denounced her as well.
Other people who knew the young Anastasia quite well, like the Grand Duchess’s childhood nurse Alexandra (Shura) Tegleva and Empress Alexandra’s close friend Lili Dehn, definitely identified Anderson as Anastasia.
Tegleva accompanied her husband, Gilliard, to meet with Anderson in 1925 and confirmed that Anderson's foot disorder, hallux valgus (bunions), was identical to that of the Grand Duchess. "This is Anastasia's body," she declared. Anderson had also asked Shura to cover her forehead with perfume, a ritual that Shura remembered from Anastasia's childhood when she wanted her nanny to "smell like a flower."
Gleb and Tatiana Botkin, childhood playmates of the Imperial family whose father was murdered along with the family, also accepted her as the Grand Duchess without hesitation.
Her longtime helper, Harriet Rathlef, claimed she had birthmarks and scars in locations identical to where Anastasia had them, including a cauterized mole on the shoulder, which a sailor on the Imperial yacht, the Standart, had recalled. Her ear was declared by an expert to be identical in 60 different points to Anastasia's.
Grand Duke Andrew Vladmirovich, first cousin of Nicholas II, 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 Kschessinska met her as well near the end of her life and said Anna had the Tsar's eyes. She believed that Mrs. Anderson was truly the daughter of the Tsar.
Certain people (in this case, Captain Felix Dassel) would question her, having trick questions such as “The billiard table was on the second floor” and Anna would reply, “You remember nothing. Billiard was on the first floor.”
One time, Faith Lavington's sister had sent her an article clipped from the New York Times, headlined "First Uncensored Photos from Soviet Russia", depicting various rooms from the Tsar's palaces at Tsarskoe Selo and Livadia. Trying to test Anna, she cut off every trace of caption to see if Anna would recognize it. When she was shown the pictures, she turned "very red" and declared, "But this is my Papa's bathroom!"
At around the time when 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. No independent evidence has yet appeared of such a trip.
[edit] Ernst Ludwig and Franziska Schanzkowska
Ernst Ludwig hired a private investigator to investigate her claims. It was suggested that she was in fact a missing Polish factory worker, Franziska Schankowska.
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 definitely not my sister."
Officials at Dalldorf say that she spoke Russian with the nurses. She would only respond in German. She explained her failure 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.
DNA tests conducted in the 1990s, after Anderson's death, proved that she was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska.
[edit] Inheritance dispute, 1938-1970
In 1938, Anderson's lawyer 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.
[edit] Marriage and death
From 1947 to 1968 she lived in Bad Liebenzell - Unterlengenhardt, a small village in the Black Forest near Stuttgart. After moving to the United States in 1968, Anderson lived for several months on Long Island with Mrs. William B. Leeds (born Princess Xenia Georgievna Romanova of Russia), a daughter of Grand Duke George Mihailovich of Russia and Princess Maria Georgievna of Greece and Denmark. When she later came to live in the Garden City Hotel on Long Island, she booked in as Mrs. Eugene Anderson to avoid the press.
In 1968 upon returning to the U.S., Anderson, around the age of 70, married wealthy American supporter John Eacott Manahan, age 49. The couple lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died of pneumonia in 1984. Her body was cremated according to her wishes.
[edit] 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, were not in the grave.
DNA testing was done to make sure that the remains were actually those of the imperial family. Later, when their remains were indeed confirmed, the Martha Jefferson Hospital was asked for possible testing samples. Nothing could be found at first according the the hospital vice president.
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.
It was later discovered that indeed there was 'Anastasia Manahan' tissue in the hospital. Anderson’s DNA was compared with those of the Romanovs, at the suggestion of Marina Botkin Schweitzer, 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.
Anderson’s DNA sample, however, did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, 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."
Anderson's DNA sample was also compared with that of Karl Maucher, Franziska Schanzkowska's great nephew, and it was found that there was a match.
There was also a slide of blood presumed to be from Anna Anderson located in Germany by a researcher; however, the sequence obtained from it did not match the mtDNA sequence of the other samples. 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.
[edit] Supporters cling to hope
The DNA tests came as an unexpected shock to those involved with Anastasia Manahan. Few who had known her were willing to accept 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 was from Anderson since they were located ten years after her death. 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.
They also claim it was not coincidence that she had distinctive birthmarks on her body that Anastasia had as well.
According to early reports, Schanzkowska was reported missing on March 9, 1920, while Anderson had appeared on February 17. Franziska was 5'5", while Anderson was only 5'2". Franziska's clothes and shoes were also found and compared. The shoes were a size 39, while Anderson wore a size 36.
According to Franziska's medical records, she had not been injured in a grenade explosion (King and Wilson), and was certified medically insane. Not a single doctor who had examined Anna Anderson had found her to be insane.
After Gill had announced his results, Richard Sweitzer stated, "I know one thing. Anastasia was not a Polish peasant."
He also suggested a possible switch of the intestines, one in which false results would emerge. Some noted that for a period of months during 1992-93, the tissue could not be located.
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.’
- They don't explain the exact handwriting match or the exact match in many areas of her physical body, including the exact same deformities as Anastasia.
[edit] Anna in popular culture
In 1928, a film was made based very loosely on the woman who would one day be called "Anna Anderson" in 1928. It was a silent film called "Clothes Make the Woman".
In 1956 there was a film made about a figure based on Anna Anderson, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman as Anna/Anastasia, and Yul Brynner; however, this film is highly fictionalized. It was remade in 1997 as an animated musical, Anastasia, but the film itself does not actually make any references to the historical Anna Anderson or to how she managed to convince so many that she was Anastasia. It is likely the filmmakers only took the storyline, about a Russian commoner training a girl to be Anastasia for her grandmother's money, from the 1956 movie as opposed to the actual characters.
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.
[edit] Sources
- King, Greg, Penny Wilson (2003). The Fate of the Romanovs.
- Kurth, Peter (1995). Anastasia: The Life of Anna Anderson. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-5954-4.
- Kurth, Peter (1997?). Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. Back Bay. ISBN 0-316-50717-2.
- Lovell, James Blair (1998). Anastasia: The Lost Princess. Robson. ISBN 0-86051-807-8.
- Klier, John, Helen Mingay (1999). The Quest for Anastasia: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Romanovs. Citadel.
- Massie, Robert K. (1995). The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. Secaucus, NJ: Carol. ISBN 0-8065-2064-7.
[edit] External links
- Article by Peter Kurth — Anna Anderson’s biographer tells why he dosen't believe Anna Anderson was Franziska Schanzkowska.
- Russian Forensics - A site demonstrating the Russian agenda to prove Anastasia's remains were in the grave.
- Anna Anderson WAS Grand Duchess Anastasia — a site supporting a "conspiracy theory" surrounding Anna Anderson and Anastasia
- 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 Nikolaevna and the woman who claimed to be her.
- Could Anna Anderson be Anastasia? - A web site discussing the DNA tests done on Anna Anderson.
- Anastasia: The Unmasking Of Anna Anderson - An online article on Anna Anderson and her claim.de:Anna Anderson
fr:Anna Anderson nl:Anna Anderson ja:アンナ・アンダーソン ru:Андерсон, Анна sv:Anna Anderson
