Anna Anderson
Encyclopedia
Anna Anderson was the best known of several impostors who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia
. The real Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II
and Alexandra, was killed along with her parents and siblings
on 17 July 1918 by communist
revolutionaries in Ekaterinburg, Russia
; but the location of her body was unknown until 2008.
In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin
. At first, she went by the name Fräulein Unbekannt (German for Miss Unknown) as she refused to reveal her identity. Later she used the name Tschaikovsky and then Anderson. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard
, said Anderson was an impostor but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety.
Between 1922 and 1968, Anderson lived in Germany and the United States with various supporters and in nursing homes and sanatoria, including at least one asylum. She emigrated to the United States in 1968, and shortly before the expiry of her visa married Jack Manahan, a Virginia
history professor who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric". Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany
. After the collapse of communism
in the Soviet Union
, the locations of the bodies of the Tsar, Tsarina, and all five of their children were revealed and multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that Anderson's DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of the Romanovs. Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA
matched that of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Most scientists, historians and journalists who have discussed the case accept that Anderson and Schanzkowska were the same person.
by jumping off the Bendlerbrücke into the Landwehrkanal
. She was rescued by a police sergeant and was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. As she was without papers and refused to identify herself, she was admitted as Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown) to a mental hospital in Dalldorf (now Wittenau, in Reinickendorf
), where she remained for the next two years. She had scars on her head and body, and spoke German with an accent described as "Russian" by medical staff.
In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unknown woman was the Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia
, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
. On her release, Peuthert told Russian émigré
Captain Nicholas von Schwabe that she had seen Tatiana at Dalldorf. Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana. Schwabe persuaded other émigrés to visit the unknown woman, including Zinaida Tolstoy
, a friend of the Tsarina Alexandra. Eventually Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden
, a former lady-in-waiting
to the Tsarina, visited the asylum with Tolstoy. On seeing the woman, Buxhoeveden declared "She's too short for Tatiana," and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess. A few days later, the unknown woman noted, "I did not say I was Tatiana."
A nurse at Dalldorf, Thea Malinovsky, claimed years after the patient's release from the asylum that the woman had told her she was another daughter of the Tsar, Anastasia
, in the autumn of 1921. However, the patient herself could not recall the incident. Her biographers either ignore Malinovsky's claim, or weave it into their narrative.
before the fall of the Tsar. The Berlin policeman who handled the case, Detective Inspector Franz Grünberg, thought Kleist "may have had ulterior motives, as was hinted at in émigré circles: if the old conditions should ever be restored in Russia, he hoped for great advancement from having looked after the young woman." She began calling herself Anna Tschaikovsky, though Peuthert "described her everywhere as Anastasia". Tschaikovsky stayed in the houses of acquaintances, including Kleist, Peuthert, a poor working-class family called Bachmann, and Inspector Grünberg's estate at Funkenmühle, near Zossen
. At Funkenmühle, Grünberg arranged for the Tsarina's sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
, to meet Tschaikovsky but Irene did not recognize her. Grünberg also arranged a visit from Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia
, but Tschaikovsky refused to speak to her, and Cecilie was left perplexed by the encounter. Later, in the 1950s, Cecilie signed a declaration that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, but Cecilie's family disputed her statement and implied that she was suffering from dementia.
By 1925, Tschaikovsky had developed a tuberculous infection of her arm, and she was placed in a succession of hospitals for treatment. Sick and near death, she suffered significant loss of weight. She was visited by the Tsarina's groom of the chamber Alexei Volkov; Anastasia's tutor Pierre Gilliard
; his wife, Shura, who had been Anastasia's nursemaid; and the Tsar's sister Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
. Though they expressed sympathy, if only for Tschaikovsky's illness, and made no immediate public declaration, eventually they all denied she was Anastasia. In March 1926, she convalesced in Lugano
with Harriet von Rathlef
at the expense of Grand Duchess Anastasia's great-uncle, Prince Valdemar of Denmark
. Valdemar was willing to offer Tschaikovsky material assistance, through the Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle
, while her identity was investigated. To allow her to travel, the Berlin Aliens Office issued her with a temporary certificate of identity as "Anastasia Tschaikovsky", with Grand Duchess Anastasia's personal details. After a quarrel with von Rathlef, Tschaikovsky was moved to the Stillachhaus Sanatorium at Oberstdorf
in the Bavarian Alps in June 1926, and von Rathlef returned to Berlin.
At Oberstdorf, Tschaikovsky was visited by Tatiana Melnik, née Botkin. Melnik was the niece of Serge Botkin, the head of the Russian Refugee office in Berlin, and the daughter of the imperial family's personal physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin
, who had been murdered by the communists alongside the Tsar's family in 1918. Tatiana Melnik had met Grand Duchess Anastasia as a child, and had last spoken to her in February 1917. To Melnik, Tschaikovsky looked like Anastasia even though "the mouth has changed and coarsened noticeably, and because the face is so lean, her nose looks bigger than it was." In a letter, Melnik wrote: "Her attitude is childlike, and altogether she cannot be reckoned with as a responsible adult, but must be led and directed like a child. She has not only forgotten languages, but has in general lost the power of accurate narration ... even the simplest stories she tells incoherently and incorrectly; they are really only words strung together in impossibly ungrammatical German ... Her defect is obviously in her memory and eyesight." Melnik declared that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, and supposed that any inability on her part to remember events and her refusal to speak Russian was caused by her impaired physical and psychological state. Either inadvertently through a sincere desire to "aid the patient's weak memory" or as part of a deliberate charade, Melnik coached Tschaikovsky with details of life in the imperial family.
, a distant relative of the Tsar, gave her a home at Castle Seeon
. The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia. During her stay at Castle Seeon, Knopf reported that Tschaikovsky was actually a Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanzkowska. Schanzkowska had worked in a munitions factory during World War I
when, shortly after her fiancé had been killed at the front, a grenade fell out of her hand and exploded. She was injured in the head, and a foreman was killed in front of her. She became apathetic and depressed, was declared insane on 19 September 1916, and spent time in two lunatic asylums. In early 1920, she was reported missing from her Berlin lodgings, and since then had not been seen or heard from by her family. In May 1927, Franziska's brother, Felix Schanzkowski, was introduced to Tschaikovsky at a local inn in Wasserburg
near Castle Seeon. Leuchtenberg's son, Dmitri, was completely certain Tschaikovsky was an impostor and that she was recognized by Felix as his sister, but Leuchtenberg's daughter, Natalie, remained convinced of Tschaikovsky's authenticity. Leuchtenberg himself was ambivalent. According to one account, initially Felix declared that Tschaikovsky was his sister Franziska, but the affidavit he signed spoke only of "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said she did not recognize him. Years later, Felix's family said that he knew Tschaikovsky was his sister, but he had chosen to leave her to her new life, which was far more comfortable than any alternative.
Visitors to Seeon included Prince Felix Yusupov
, husband of Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who wrote, "I claim categorically that she is not Anastasia Nicolaievna, but just an adventuress, a sick hysteric and a frightful playactress. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be in doubt of this. If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar." Other visitors, however, such as Felix Dassel, an officer whom Anastasia had visited in hospital during 1916, and Gleb Botkin
, who had known Anastasia as a child and was Tatiana Melnik's brother, were convinced that Tschaikovsky was genuine.
at Leeds' expense. On the journey from Seeon to the States, Tschaikovsky stopped at Paris, where she met Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia
, the Tsar's cousin, who believed her to be Anastasia. For six months Tschaikovsky lived at the estate of the Leeds family in Oyster Bay, New York.
As the tenth anniversary of the Tsar's assassination approached in July 1928, Botkin retained a lawyer, Edward Fallows, to oversee legal moves to obtain any of the Tsar's estate outside of the Soviet Union
. As the death of the Tsar had never been proven, the estate could only be released to relatives 10 years after the supposed date of his death. Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation (an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia), which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate. Tschaikovsky claimed that the Tsar had deposited money abroad, which fed unsubstantiated rumors of a large Romanov fortune in England. The surviving relatives of the Romanovs accused Botkin and Fallows of fortune hunting, and Botkin accused them of trying to defraud "Anastasia" out of her inheritance. Except for a relatively small deposit in Germany, distributed to the Tsar's recognized relations, no money was ever found. After a quarrel, possibly over Tschaikovsky's claim to the estate (but not over her claim to be Anastasia), Tschaikovsky moved out of the Leeds' mansion, and the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff
arranged for her to live at the Garden City Hotel
in Hempstead, New York, and later in a small cottage. To avoid the press, she was booked in as Mrs. Anderson, the name by which she was subsequently known. In October 1928, after the death of the Tsar's mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, the 12 nearest relations of the Tsar met at Marie's funeral and signed a declaration that denounced Anderson as an impostor. The Copenhagen Statement, as it would come to be known, explained: "Our sense of duty compels us to state that the story is only a fairy tale. The memory of our dear departed would be tarnished if we allowed this fantastic story to spread and gain any credence." Gleb Botkin answered with a public letter to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
, which referred to the family as "greedy and unscrupulous" and claimed they were only denouncing Anderson for money.
From early 1929 Anderson lived with Annie Burr Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue
spinster happy to host someone she supposed to be a daughter of the Tsar. For 18 months Anderson was the toast of New York society. Then a pattern of self-destructive behavior began that culminated in her throwing tantrums, killing her pet parakeet, and on one occasion running around naked on the roof. On 24 July 1930, Judge Peter Schmuck of the New York Supreme Court
signed an order committing her to a mental hospital. Before she could be taken away, Anderson locked herself in her room, and the door was broken in with an axe. She was forcibly taken to the Four Winds Sanatorium in Westchester County, New York
, where she remained for slightly over a year. In August 1932, Anderson returned to Germany accompanied by a private nurse in a locked cabin on the liner Deutschland
. Jennings paid for the voyage, the stay at the Westchester sanatorium, and an additional six months' care in the psychiatric wing of a nursing home at Ilten near Hanover
. On arrival at Ilten, Anderson was assessed as sane, but as the room was prepaid, and she had nowhere else to go, she stayed on in a suite in the sanatorium grounds.
published a sensational story accusing her of being a Romanian actress who was perpetrating a fraud. Her lawyer, Fallows, filed suit for libel, but the lengthy case continued until the outbreak of World War II
, at which time the case was dismissed because Anderson was living in Germany, and German residents could not sue in enemy countries. From 1938, lawyers acting for Anderson in Germany contested the distribution of the Tsar's estate to his recognized relations, and they in turn contested her identity. The litigation continued intermittently without resolution for decades; Lord Mountbatten
footed some of his German relations' legal bills against Anderson. The protracted proceedings became the longest-running lawsuit in German history.
Anderson had a final meeting with the Schanzkowski family in 1938. Gertrude Schanzkowska was insistent that Anderson was her sister, Franziska, but the Nazi government had arranged the meeting to determine Anderson's identity, and if accepted as Schanzkowska she would be imprisoned. The Schanzkowski family refused to sign affidavits against her, and no further action was taken. In 1940, Edward Fallows died virtually destitute after wasting all his own money on trying to obtain the Tsar's non-existent fortune for the Grandanor Corporation. Towards the end of the war Anderson lived at Schloss Winterstein with Louise of Saxe-Meiningen
, in what became the Soviet occupation zone. In 1946, Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg
helped her across the border to Bad Liebenzell
in the French occupation zone.
Prince Frederick settled Anderson in a former army barracks in the small village of Unterlengenhardt, on the edge of the Black Forest
, where she became a sort of tourist attraction. Lili Dehn
, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia, but when Charles Sydney Gibbes
, English tutor to the imperial children, met Anderson he denounced her as a fraud. In an affidavit, he swore "She in no way resembles the true Grand Duchess Anastasia that I had known ... I am quite satisfied that she is an impostor." She became a recluse, surrounded by cats, and her house began to decay. In May 1968, Anderson was taken to a hospital at Neuenbürg
after being discovered semi-conscious in her cottage. In her absence, Prince Frederick cleaned up the property by order of the local board of health. Her Irish Wolfhound and 60 cats were put to death. Horrified by this, Anderson accepted her long-term supporter Gleb Botkin
's offer to move to the United States.
Botkin was living in the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia
, and a local friend of his, history professor and genealogist John Eacott Manahan, paid for Anderson's journey to the United States. She entered the country on a six-month visitor's visa, and shortly before it was due to expire, Anderson married Manahan, who was 20 years her junior, in a civil ceremony on 23 December 1968. Botkin was best man. Jack Manahan enjoyed this marriage of convenience, and described himself as "Grand Duke-in-Waiting" or "son-in-law to the Tsar". The couple lived in separate bedrooms in a house on University Circle in Charlottesville, and also owned a farm near Scottsville
. Botkin died in December 1969. In February of the following year, the lawsuits finally came to an end; neither side could establish Anderson's identity.
Jack and Anderson, now legally called Anastasia Manahan, became well known in the Charlottesville area as eccentrics. Though Jack Manahan was wealthy, they lived in squalor with large numbers of dogs and cats, and piles of garbage. On 20 August 1979, Anderson was taken to Charlottesville's Martha Jefferson Hospital
with an intestinal obstruction. A gangrenous tumor and a length of intestine were removed by Dr. Richard Shrum.
With both Jack and Anderson in failing health, in November 1983, Anderson was institutionalized, and an attorney, William Preston, was appointed as her guardian by the local circuit court
. A few days later, Manahan "kidnapped" Anderson from the hospital, and for three days they drove around Virginia eating out of convenience stores. After a 13-state police alarm, they were found and Anderson was returned to a care facility. In January she may have had a stroke, and on 12 February 1984, she died of pneumonia
. She was cremated the same day, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon
on 18 June 1984.
, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were exhumed from a mass grave near Ekaterinburg. They were identified on the basis of both skeletal analysis and DNA testing. For example, mitochondrial DNA
was used to match maternal relations, and mitochondrial DNA from the female bones matched that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine
was a sister of Alexandra. The bodies of Tsarevich Alexei
and the remaining daughter were discovered in 2007. Repeated and independent DNA tests confirmed that the remains were the seven members of the Romanov family, and proved that none of the Tsar's four daughters survived the shooting of the Romanov family
.
A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during her operation in 1979, had been stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital
, Charlottesville, Virginia
. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the sample and compared with that of the Romanovs and their relatives. It did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, confirming that Anderson was not Anastasia. However, the sample matched DNA provided by Karl Maucher, a grandson of Franziska Schanzkowska's sister, Gertrude (Schanzkowska) Ellerik, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska. Five years after the original testing was done, Dr. Terry Melton of the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University
, stated that the DNA sequence tying Anderson to the Schanzkowski family was "still unique", though the database of DNA patterns at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
had grown much larger, leading to "increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska".
Similarly, several strands of Anderson's hair, found inside an envelope in a book that had belonged to Anderson's husband, Jack Manahan, were also tested. Mitochondrial DNA from the hair matched Anderson's hospital sample and that of Schanzkowska's relative Karl Maucher but not the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs.
fed rumors that members of the Tsar's family had survived. The conflicting rumors about the fate of the family allowed impostors to make spurious claims that they were a surviving Romanov.
Most impostors were dismissed; however, Anna Anderson's claim persisted. Books and pamphlets supporting her claims included Harriet von Rathlef-Keilmann's
book Anastasia, ein Frauenschicksal als Spiegel der Weltkatastrophe (Anastasia, A Woman's Fate as a Mirror of the World Catastrophe), which was published in Germany and Switzerland in 1928, though it was serialized by the tabloid newspaper Berliner Nachtausgabe in 1927. It was countered by works such as La Fausse Anastasie (The False Anastasia) by Pierre Gilliard
and Constantin Savitch, published by Payot of Paris in 1929. Conflicting testimonies and physical evidence, such as comparisons of facial characteristics, which alternately supported and contradicted Anderson's claim, were used to either bolster or counter the belief that she was Anastasia. In the absence of any direct documentary proof or solid physical evidence, the question of whether Anderson was Anastasia was for many a matter of personal belief. As Anderson herself said in her own idiomatic English, "You either believe it or you don't believe it. It doesn't matter. In no anyway whatsoever." The German courts were unable to decide her claim one way or another, and eventually, after 40 years of deliberation, ruled that her claim was "neither established nor refuted". Dr. Günter von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for Anderson's opponents in the later years of the legal case, said that during the German trials "the press were always more interested in reporting her side of the story than the opposing bench's less glamorous perspective; editors often pulled journalists after reporting testimony delivered by her side and ignored the rebuttal, resulting in the public seldom getting a complete picture."
In 1957, a version of Anderson's story, pieced together by her supporters and interspersed with commentary by Roland Krug von Nidda, was published in Germany under the title Ich, Anastasia, Erzähle (I, Anastasia, an autobiography). The book included the "fantastic tale" that Anastasia escaped Russia on a farm cart with a man called Alexander Tschaikovsky, whom she married and had a child by, before he was shot dead in a Bucharest
street and the child, Alexei, disappeared into an orphanage. Even Anderson's supporters admitted that the details of the supposed escape "might seem bold inventions even for a dramatist", while her detractors considered "this barely credible story as a piece of far-fetched romance". Other works based on the premise that Anderson was Anastasia, written before the DNA tests, include biographies by Peter Kurth and James Blair Lovell. More recent biographies by John Klier
, Robert Massie and Greg King
that describe her as an impostor were written after the DNA tests proved she was not Anastasia.
Assessments vary as to whether she was a deliberate fraud, a young woman traumatized into adopting a new identity, or used by her supporters for their own ends. Pierre Gilliard
denounced Anderson as "a cunning psychopath". Writer Michael Thornton thought, "Somewhere along the way she lost and rejected Schanzkowska. She lost that person totally and accepted completely she was this new person. I think it happened by accident and she was swept along on a wave of euphoria." Lord Mountbatten
, a first cousin of the Romanov children, thought her supporters "simply get rich on the royalties of further books, magazine articles, plays etc." Prince Michael Romanov, a grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
, stated the Romanov family always knew Anderson was a fraud, and that the family looked upon her and "the three-ringed circus which danced around her, creating books and movies, as a vulgar insult to the memory of the Imperial Family."
in the title role. The play was so successful that in 1956 an English adaptation by Guy Bolton
was made into a film, Anastasia. The plot revolves around a group of swindlers who attempt to raise money among Russian émigrés by pretending that Grand Duchess Anastasia is still alive. A suitable amnesiac, "Anna", is groomed by the swindlers to impersonate Anastasia. Anna's origins are unknown and as the play progresses hints are dropped that she could be the real Anastasia, who has lost her memory. The viewer is left to decide whether Anna really is Anastasia. The film was released at the same time as Is Anna Anderson Anastasia? starring Lili Palmer, which covers much the same ground, but the central character is "perhaps even more lost, mad and pathetic, but she, too, has moments when she is a woman of presence and dignity". Playwright Royce Ryton
wrote I Am Who I Am about Anna Anderson in 1978. Like the earlier plays, it depicts Anderson as "a person of intrinsic worth victimized by the greed and fears of others" and did not attempt to decide her real identity. In 1965, the musical Anya
, based on Guy Bolton's play and using the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, opened on Broadway starring Constance Towers
as Anya and Lillian Gish
as the Dowager Empress—it was not successful.
Kenneth Macmillan
's ballet Anastasia, first performed in 1967, used I, Anastasia, an autobiography as inspiration and "is a dramatic fantasy about Anna Anderson, the woman who believes herself to be Anastasia ... Either in memory or imagination, she experiences episodes from Anastasia's past ... The structure is a kind of free-wheeling nightmare, held together by the central figure of the heroine, played by Lynn Seymour
". A contemporary reviewer thought Seymour's "tense, tormented portrait of the desperate Anna Anderson is quite extraordinary and really impressive". Anna Anderson was also used as a narrative device in Youri Vámos
' 1992 ballet for Theater Basel
, Sleeping Beauty – Last Daughter of the Czar, based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
's Sleeping Beauty.
NBC
ran a two-part fictionalized mini-series in December 1986 titled Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
which starred Amy Irving
and won her a Golden Globe nomination. In the words of Hal Erickson, "Irving plays the leading character in a lady-or-the-tiger fashion, so that we never know if she truly swallows her own tale or if she's merely a clever charlatan." The central character ("Anastasia" or "Anya") of the 1997 animated fantasy Anastasia
is portrayed as the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia, even though the film was released after DNA tests proved that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia. The film is an entirely fictional musical entertainment, and in the words of one reviewer, "historical facts are treated with particular contempt".
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna....
. The real Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
and Alexandra, was killed along with her parents and siblings
Shooting of the Romanov family
The shooting of the Romanov family, of the Russian Imperial House of Romanov, and those who chose to accompany them into exile, Dr. Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp, and Ivan Kharitonov, took place in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 on the orders of Vladimir Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov, and the...
on 17 July 1918 by communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
revolutionaries in Ekaterinburg, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
; but the location of her body was unknown until 2008.
In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. At first, she went by the name Fräulein Unbekannt (German for Miss Unknown) as she refused to reveal her identity. Later she used the name Tschaikovsky and then Anderson. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic, who was French language tutor to the five children of Tsar Nicholas II from 1905 to 1918. Years after the Imperial Family was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in July 1918, Gilliard wrote a book Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family...
, said Anderson was an impostor but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Ernest Louis Charles Albert William , was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 1892 until 1918...
, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety.
Between 1922 and 1968, Anderson lived in Germany and the United States with various supporters and in nursing homes and sanatoria, including at least one asylum. She emigrated to the United States in 1968, and shortly before the expiry of her visa married Jack Manahan, a Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
history professor who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric". Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany
Seeon Abbey
Seeon Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in the municipality of Seeon-Seebruck in the rural district of Traunstein in Bavaria, Germany.-History:...
. After the collapse of communism
Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...
in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the locations of the bodies of the Tsar, Tsarina, and all five of their children were revealed and multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that Anderson's DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of the Romanovs. Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...
matched that of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Most scientists, historians and journalists who have discussed the case accept that Anderson and Schanzkowska were the same person.
Dalldorf asylum (1920–1922)
On 27 February 1920, a young woman attempted to take her own life in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
by jumping off the Bendlerbrücke into the Landwehrkanal
Landwehrkanal
The Landwehr Canal, or Landwehrkanal in German, is a long canal parallel to the Spree river in Berlin, Germany, built between 1845 and 1850 according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné...
. She was rescued by a police sergeant and was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. As she was without papers and refused to identify herself, she was admitted as Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown) to a mental hospital in Dalldorf (now Wittenau, in Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf is the twelfth borough of Berlin. It encompasses the northwest of the city area, including the Berlin-Tegel Airport, Lake Tegel, spacious settlements of detached houses as well as housing estates like Märkisches Viertel.-Subdivision:...
), where she remained for the next two years. She had scars on her head and body, and spoke German with an accent described as "Russian" by medical staff.
In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unknown woman was the Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia , , was the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra...
, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
. On her release, Peuthert told Russian émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
Captain Nicholas von Schwabe that she had seen Tatiana at Dalldorf. Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana. Schwabe persuaded other émigrés to visit the unknown woman, including Zinaida Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
, a friend of the Tsarina Alexandra. Eventually Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden
Sophie Buxhoeveden
Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, also known as Sophia Karlovna Buxhoeveden , was a lady in waiting to Tsarina Alexandra of Russia. She was the author of three memoirs about the imperial family and about her own escape from Russia...
, a former lady-in-waiting
Lady-in-waiting
A lady-in-waiting is a female personal assistant at a royal court, attending on a queen, a princess, or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman from a family highly thought of in good society, but was of lower rank than the woman on whom she...
to the Tsarina, visited the asylum with Tolstoy. On seeing the woman, Buxhoeveden declared "She's too short for Tatiana," and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess. A few days later, the unknown woman noted, "I did not say I was Tatiana."
A nurse at Dalldorf, Thea Malinovsky, claimed years after the patient's release from the asylum that the woman had told her she was another daughter of the Tsar, Anastasia
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna....
, in the autumn of 1921. However, the patient herself could not recall the incident. Her biographers either ignore Malinovsky's claim, or weave it into their narrative.
Germany and Switzerland (1922–1927)
By May 1922 the woman was believed by Peuthert, Schwabe and Tolstoy to be Anastasia. Buxhoeveden said there was no resemblance. Nevertheless, the woman was taken out of the asylum and hosted at the Berlin home of Baron Arthur von Kleist, a Russian émigré who had been a police chief in Russian PolandCongress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...
before the fall of the Tsar. The Berlin policeman who handled the case, Detective Inspector Franz Grünberg, thought Kleist "may have had ulterior motives, as was hinted at in émigré circles: if the old conditions should ever be restored in Russia, he hoped for great advancement from having looked after the young woman." She began calling herself Anna Tschaikovsky, though Peuthert "described her everywhere as Anastasia". Tschaikovsky stayed in the houses of acquaintances, including Kleist, Peuthert, a poor working-class family called Bachmann, and Inspector Grünberg's estate at Funkenmühle, near Zossen
Zossen
Zossen is a German town in the district of Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg, south of Berlin, and next to the B96 highway. Zossen consists of several smaller municipalities, which were grouped together in 2003 to form the city.-Geography:...
. At Funkenmühle, Grünberg arranged for the Tsarina's sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine was the third child and third daughter of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom and Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Her maternal grandparents were Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert...
, to meet Tschaikovsky but Irene did not recognize her. Grünberg also arranged a visit from Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia
Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia as the wife of German Crown Prince William, the son of German Emperor William II...
, but Tschaikovsky refused to speak to her, and Cecilie was left perplexed by the encounter. Later, in the 1950s, Cecilie signed a declaration that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, but Cecilie's family disputed her statement and implied that she was suffering from dementia.
By 1925, Tschaikovsky had developed a tuberculous infection of her arm, and she was placed in a succession of hospitals for treatment. Sick and near death, she suffered significant loss of weight. She was visited by the Tsarina's groom of the chamber Alexei Volkov; Anastasia's tutor Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic, who was French language tutor to the five children of Tsar Nicholas II from 1905 to 1918. Years after the Imperial Family was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in July 1918, Gilliard wrote a book Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family...
; his wife, Shura, who had been Anastasia's nursemaid; and the Tsar's sister Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia. Her older brother was Tsar Nicholas II....
. Though they expressed sympathy, if only for Tschaikovsky's illness, and made no immediate public declaration, eventually they all denied she was Anastasia. In March 1926, she convalesced in Lugano
Lugano
Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...
with Harriet von Rathlef
Harriet von Rathlef
Harriet Ellen Siderowna von Rathlef-Keilmann, , was a Latvian-born sculptor and writer of children's books who escaped to Germany from the Baltic provinces following the Russian Revolution of 1917....
at the expense of Grand Duchess Anastasia's great-uncle, Prince Valdemar of Denmark
Prince Valdemar of Denmark
Prince Valdemar of Denmark, GCTE was a member of the Danish Royal Family, the youngest son of Christian IX of Denmark and his wife Luise of Hesse-Kassel...
. Valdemar was willing to offer Tschaikovsky material assistance, through the Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle
Herluf Zahle
Herluf Zahle was a Danish barrister with the Supreme Court, a career diplomat and the President of the League of Nations from 1928 to 1929.- References :* at Dansk Biografisk Haandleksikon...
, while her identity was investigated. To allow her to travel, the Berlin Aliens Office issued her with a temporary certificate of identity as "Anastasia Tschaikovsky", with Grand Duchess Anastasia's personal details. After a quarrel with von Rathlef, Tschaikovsky was moved to the Stillachhaus Sanatorium at Oberstdorf
Oberstdorf
Oberstdorf is a municipality and skiing and hiking town in southwest Germany, located in the Allgäu region of the Bavarian Alps.At the center of Oberstdorf is a church whose tall spire serves as a landmark for navigating around town. The summits of the Nebelhorn and Fellhorn provide...
in the Bavarian Alps in June 1926, and von Rathlef returned to Berlin.
At Oberstdorf, Tschaikovsky was visited by Tatiana Melnik, née Botkin. Melnik was the niece of Serge Botkin, the head of the Russian Refugee office in Berlin, and the daughter of the imperial family's personal physician, Dr. Eugene Botkin
Eugene Botkin
Yevgeny Sergeyevich Botkin was the court physician for Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra and, while in exile with the family, sometimes treated the hemophilia-related complications of the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.Botkin went into exile with the Romanovs following the Russian...
, who had been murdered by the communists alongside the Tsar's family in 1918. Tatiana Melnik had met Grand Duchess Anastasia as a child, and had last spoken to her in February 1917. To Melnik, Tschaikovsky looked like Anastasia even though "the mouth has changed and coarsened noticeably, and because the face is so lean, her nose looks bigger than it was." In a letter, Melnik wrote: "Her attitude is childlike, and altogether she cannot be reckoned with as a responsible adult, but must be led and directed like a child. She has not only forgotten languages, but has in general lost the power of accurate narration ... even the simplest stories she tells incoherently and incorrectly; they are really only words strung together in impossibly ungrammatical German ... Her defect is obviously in her memory and eyesight." Melnik declared that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, and supposed that any inability on her part to remember events and her refusal to speak Russian was caused by her impaired physical and psychological state. Either inadvertently through a sincere desire to "aid the patient's weak memory" or as part of a deliberate charade, Melnik coached Tschaikovsky with details of life in the imperial family.
Castle Seeon (1927)
In 1927, under pressure from his family, Valdemar decided against providing Tschaikovsky any further financial support, and the funds from Denmark were cut off. Duke George of LeuchtenbergDuke of Leuchtenberg
Duke of Leuchtenberg was a title created by Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria and awarded to his son Maximilian Philipp Hieronymus. Little is known about this title until its re-creation by Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria on 14 November 1817 and awarded to his son-in-law Eugène de Beauharnais...
, a distant relative of the Tsar, gave her a home at Castle Seeon
Seeon Abbey
Seeon Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in the municipality of Seeon-Seebruck in the rural district of Traunstein in Bavaria, Germany.-History:...
. The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Ernest Louis Charles Albert William , was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 1892 until 1918...
, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia. During her stay at Castle Seeon, Knopf reported that Tschaikovsky was actually a Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanzkowska. Schanzkowska had worked in a munitions factory during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
when, shortly after her fiancé had been killed at the front, a grenade fell out of her hand and exploded. She was injured in the head, and a foreman was killed in front of her. She became apathetic and depressed, was declared insane on 19 September 1916, and spent time in two lunatic asylums. In early 1920, she was reported missing from her Berlin lodgings, and since then had not been seen or heard from by her family. In May 1927, Franziska's brother, Felix Schanzkowski, was introduced to Tschaikovsky at a local inn in Wasserburg
Wasserburg am Inn
Wasserburg am Inn is a town in the district Rosenheim in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The historic centre is a peninsula, formed by the meandering Inn River...
near Castle Seeon. Leuchtenberg's son, Dmitri, was completely certain Tschaikovsky was an impostor and that she was recognized by Felix as his sister, but Leuchtenberg's daughter, Natalie, remained convinced of Tschaikovsky's authenticity. Leuchtenberg himself was ambivalent. According to one account, initially Felix declared that Tschaikovsky was his sister Franziska, but the affidavit he signed spoke only of "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said she did not recognize him. Years later, Felix's family said that he knew Tschaikovsky was his sister, but he had chosen to leave her to her new life, which was far more comfortable than any alternative.
Visitors to Seeon included Prince Felix Yusupov
Felix Yusupov
Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston , was best known for participating in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, the faith healer who was said to have influenced decisions of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna.-Biography:...
, husband of Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who wrote, "I claim categorically that she is not Anastasia Nicolaievna, but just an adventuress, a sick hysteric and a frightful playactress. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be in doubt of this. If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar." Other visitors, however, such as Felix Dassel, an officer whom Anastasia had visited in hospital during 1916, and Gleb Botkin
Gleb Botkin
Gleb Evgenievich Botkin was the son of Dr. Eugene Botkin, the court physician who was murdered at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks with Tsar Nicholas II and his family on July 17, 1918....
, who had known Anastasia as a child and was Tatiana Melnik's brother, were convinced that Tschaikovsky was genuine.
United States (1928–1931)
By 1928, Tschaikovsky's claim had received interest and attention in the United States, where Gleb Botkin had published articles in support of her cause. Botkin's publicity caught the attention of a distant cousin of Anastasia's, Xenia Leeds, a former Russian princess who had married a wealthy American industrialist. Botkin and Leeds arranged for Tschaikovsky to travel to the United States onboard the liner BerengariaSS Imperator
SS Imperator was an ocean liner built for the Hamburg Amerikanische Packetfahrt Actien Gesellschaft launched in 1912. She was the first of a trio of successively larger Hamburg America ships that included and built by the line for transatlantic passenger service...
at Leeds' expense. On the journey from Seeon to the States, Tschaikovsky stopped at Paris, where she met Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia
Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia
Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia was a Russian grand duke, the youngest son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.-Biography:...
, the Tsar's cousin, who believed her to be Anastasia. For six months Tschaikovsky lived at the estate of the Leeds family in Oyster Bay, New York.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. As the death of the Tsar had never been proven, the estate could only be released to relatives 10 years after the supposed date of his death. Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation (an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia), which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate. Tschaikovsky claimed that the Tsar had deposited money abroad, which fed unsubstantiated rumors of a large Romanov fortune in England. The surviving relatives of the Romanovs accused Botkin and Fallows of fortune hunting, and Botkin accused them of trying to defraud "Anastasia" out of her inheritance. Except for a relatively small deposit in Germany, distributed to the Tsar's recognized relations, no money was ever found. After a quarrel, possibly over Tschaikovsky's claim to the estate (but not over her claim to be Anastasia), Tschaikovsky moved out of the Leeds' mansion, and the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
arranged for her to live at the Garden City Hotel
Garden City Hotel
The Garden City Hotel is a four-star hotel in Garden City, New York, the only four-star hotel on Long Island. The first incarnation was built in 1874 by A.T. Stewart and the current fourth incarnation was built in 1983 by the late Myron Nelkin. It is famous for having hosted many world leaders and...
in Hempstead, New York, and later in a small cottage. To avoid the press, she was booked in as Mrs. Anderson, the name by which she was subsequently known. In October 1928, after the death of the Tsar's mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, the 12 nearest relations of the Tsar met at Marie's funeral and signed a declaration that denounced Anderson as an impostor. The Copenhagen Statement, as it would come to be known, explained: "Our sense of duty compels us to state that the story is only a fairy tale. The memory of our dear departed would be tarnished if we allowed this fantastic story to spread and gain any credence." Gleb Botkin answered with a public letter to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia was a daughter of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and the elder of Tsar Nicholas II two sisters. She married her cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikailovich of Russia, with whom she had seven children....
, which referred to the family as "greedy and unscrupulous" and claimed they were only denouncing Anderson for money.
From early 1929 Anderson lived with Annie Burr Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue
Park Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
spinster happy to host someone she supposed to be a daughter of the Tsar. For 18 months Anderson was the toast of New York society. Then a pattern of self-destructive behavior began that culminated in her throwing tantrums, killing her pet parakeet, and on one occasion running around naked on the roof. On 24 July 1930, Judge Peter Schmuck of the New York Supreme Court
New York Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in thestate court system of New York, United States. There is a supreme court in each of New York State's 62 counties, although some smaller counties share judges with neighboring counties...
signed an order committing her to a mental hospital. Before she could be taken away, Anderson locked herself in her room, and the door was broken in with an axe. She was forcibly taken to the Four Winds Sanatorium in Westchester County, New York
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
, where she remained for slightly over a year. In August 1932, Anderson returned to Germany accompanied by a private nurse in a locked cabin on the liner Deutschland
SS Deutschland (1923)
SS Deutschland Sometimes called Deutschland IV to distinguish from others of the name was a 21,046 gross registered ton German HAPAG ocean liner which was sunk in a British air attack in 1945, with great loss of life....
. Jennings paid for the voyage, the stay at the Westchester sanatorium, and an additional six months' care in the psychiatric wing of a nursing home at Ilten near Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
. On arrival at Ilten, Anderson was assessed as sane, but as the room was prepaid, and she had nowhere else to go, she stayed on in a suite in the sanatorium grounds.
Germany (1931–1968)
Anderson's return to Germany generated press interest, and drew more members of the German aristocracy to her cause. She again lived itinerantly as a guest of her well-wishers. In 1932, the British tabloid News of the WorldNews of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
published a sensational story accusing her of being a Romanian actress who was perpetrating a fraud. Her lawyer, Fallows, filed suit for libel, but the lengthy case continued until the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, at which time the case was dismissed because Anderson was living in Germany, and German residents could not sue in enemy countries. From 1938, lawyers acting for Anderson in Germany contested the distribution of the Tsar's estate to his recognized relations, and they in turn contested her identity. The litigation continued intermittently without resolution for decades; Lord Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
footed some of his German relations' legal bills against Anderson. The protracted proceedings became the longest-running lawsuit in German history.
Anderson had a final meeting with the Schanzkowski family in 1938. Gertrude Schanzkowska was insistent that Anderson was her sister, Franziska, but the Nazi government had arranged the meeting to determine Anderson's identity, and if accepted as Schanzkowska she would be imprisoned. The Schanzkowski family refused to sign affidavits against her, and no further action was taken. In 1940, Edward Fallows died virtually destitute after wasting all his own money on trying to obtain the Tsar's non-existent fortune for the Grandanor Corporation. Towards the end of the war Anderson lived at Schloss Winterstein with Louise of Saxe-Meiningen
Saxe-Meiningen
The Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine line of the Wettin dynasty, located in the southwest of the present-day German state of Thuringia....
, in what became the Soviet occupation zone. In 1946, Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg
Saxe-Altenburg
Saxe-Altenburg was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in present-day Thuringia.-History:The duchy originated from the medieval Burgraviate of Altenburg in the Imperial Pleissnerland , a possession of the Wettin Margraves of Meissen since 1243...
helped her across the border to Bad Liebenzell
Bad Liebenzell
Bad Liebenzell is a spa town in the Nagold River valley, the northern part of the Black Forest. It was first mentioned in 1090 and is the heart of the Liebenzeller Mission ....
in the French occupation zone.
Prince Frederick settled Anderson in a former army barracks in the small village of Unterlengenhardt, on the edge of the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
, where she became a sort of tourist attraction. Lili Dehn
Lili Dehn
Lili Dehn, or Lili von Dehn, born Yulia Alexandrovna Smolskaia, , was the wife of a Russian naval officer and a friend to Tsarina Alexandra....
, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia, but when Charles Sydney Gibbes
Charles Sydney Gibbes
Charles Sydney Gibbes was the English tutor of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia. Later in his life he became an Orthodox monk, adopting the name of Nicholas after Saint Nicholas The Passion Bearer. After his return to Britain he became a prominent figure in Orthodoxy in Britain...
, English tutor to the imperial children, met Anderson he denounced her as a fraud. In an affidavit, he swore "She in no way resembles the true Grand Duchess Anastasia that I had known ... I am quite satisfied that she is an impostor." She became a recluse, surrounded by cats, and her house began to decay. In May 1968, Anderson was taken to a hospital at Neuenbürg
Neuenbürg
Neuenbürg is a town in the Enz district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Enz, 10 km southwest of Pforzheim.The town has three stops, Neuenbürg, Neuenbürg Süd and Neuenbürg Freibad, on route S6 of the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn, which operates over the Enztalbahn railway....
after being discovered semi-conscious in her cottage. In her absence, Prince Frederick cleaned up the property by order of the local board of health. Her Irish Wolfhound and 60 cats were put to death. Horrified by this, Anderson accepted her long-term supporter Gleb Botkin
Gleb Botkin
Gleb Evgenievich Botkin was the son of Dr. Eugene Botkin, the court physician who was murdered at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks with Tsar Nicholas II and his family on July 17, 1918....
's offer to move to the United States.
Final years (1968–1984)
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...
, and a local friend of his, history professor and genealogist John Eacott Manahan, paid for Anderson's journey to the United States. She entered the country on a six-month visitor's visa, and shortly before it was due to expire, Anderson married Manahan, who was 20 years her junior, in a civil ceremony on 23 December 1968. Botkin was best man. Jack Manahan enjoyed this marriage of convenience, and described himself as "Grand Duke-in-Waiting" or "son-in-law to the Tsar". The couple lived in separate bedrooms in a house on University Circle in Charlottesville, and also owned a farm near Scottsville
Scottsville, Virginia
Scottsville is a town in Albemarle and Fluvanna counties in the U.S. state of Virginia. The population was 555 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...
. Botkin died in December 1969. In February of the following year, the lawsuits finally came to an end; neither side could establish Anderson's identity.
Jack and Anderson, now legally called Anastasia Manahan, became well known in the Charlottesville area as eccentrics. Though Jack Manahan was wealthy, they lived in squalor with large numbers of dogs and cats, and piles of garbage. On 20 August 1979, Anderson was taken to Charlottesville's Martha Jefferson Hospital
Martha Jefferson Hospital
Martha Jefferson Hospital is a nonprofit community hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1903 by eight local physicians. The 176-bed hospital has an employed staff of 1,600 and has 365 affiliated physicians....
with an intestinal obstruction. A gangrenous tumor and a length of intestine were removed by Dr. Richard Shrum.
With both Jack and Anderson in failing health, in November 1983, Anderson was institutionalized, and an attorney, William Preston, was appointed as her guardian by the local circuit court
Virginia Circuit Court
The Virginia Circuit Courts are the state trial courts of general jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Circuit Courts have jurisdiction to hear civil and criminal cases. For civil cases, the courts has authority to try cases with an amount in controversy of more than $4,500 and has...
. A few days later, Manahan "kidnapped" Anderson from the hospital, and for three days they drove around Virginia eating out of convenience stores. After a 13-state police alarm, they were found and Anderson was returned to a care facility. In January she may have had a stroke, and on 12 February 1984, she died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
. She was cremated the same day, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon
Seeon Abbey
Seeon Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in the municipality of Seeon-Seebruck in the rural district of Traunstein in Bavaria, Germany.-History:...
on 18 June 1984.
DNA evidence
In 1991, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas IINicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were exhumed from a mass grave near Ekaterinburg. They were identified on the basis of both skeletal analysis and DNA testing. For example, mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...
was used to match maternal relations, and mitochondrial DNA from the female bones matched that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine
Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, later Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven was the eldest daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his first wife Princess Alice of the United Kingdom .Her mother died while her brother and sisters...
was a sister of Alexandra. The bodies of Tsarevich Alexei
Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia
Alexei Nikolaevich of the House of Romanov, was the Tsesarevich and heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire. In English, his title is usually given as Tsarevich, a title that has a separate meaning in Russia. Alexei was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress...
and the remaining daughter were discovered in 2007. Repeated and independent DNA tests confirmed that the remains were the seven members of the Romanov family, and proved that none of the Tsar's four daughters survived the shooting of the Romanov family
Shooting of the Romanov family
The shooting of the Romanov family, of the Russian Imperial House of Romanov, and those who chose to accompany them into exile, Dr. Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp, and Ivan Kharitonov, took place in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 on the orders of Vladimir Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov, and the...
.
A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during her operation in 1979, had been stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital
Martha Jefferson Hospital
Martha Jefferson Hospital is a nonprofit community hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1903 by eight local physicians. The 176-bed hospital has an employed staff of 1,600 and has 365 affiliated physicians....
, Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...
. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the sample and compared with that of the Romanovs and their relatives. It did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, confirming that Anderson was not Anastasia. However, the sample matched DNA provided by Karl Maucher, a grandson of Franziska Schanzkowska's sister, Gertrude (Schanzkowska) Ellerik, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska. Five years after the original testing was done, Dr. Terry Melton of the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
, stated that the DNA sequence tying Anderson to the Schanzkowski family was "still unique", though the database of DNA patterns at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory is a forensics laboratory specializing in DNA profiling run by the United States Armed Forces and located in Rockville, Maryland....
had grown much larger, leading to "increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska".
Similarly, several strands of Anderson's hair, found inside an envelope in a book that had belonged to Anderson's husband, Jack Manahan, were also tested. Mitochondrial DNA from the hair matched Anderson's hospital sample and that of Schanzkowska's relative Karl Maucher but not the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs.
Assessment
Though in July 1918 communists had killed the entire imperial Romanov family, including 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia, for years afterwards communist disinformationPropaganda in the Soviet Union
Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxism-Leninism ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In societies with pervasive censorship, the propaganda was omnipresent and very efficient...
fed rumors that members of the Tsar's family had survived. The conflicting rumors about the fate of the family allowed impostors to make spurious claims that they were a surviving Romanov.
Most impostors were dismissed; however, Anna Anderson's claim persisted. Books and pamphlets supporting her claims included Harriet von Rathlef-Keilmann's
Harriet von Rathlef
Harriet Ellen Siderowna von Rathlef-Keilmann, , was a Latvian-born sculptor and writer of children's books who escaped to Germany from the Baltic provinces following the Russian Revolution of 1917....
book Anastasia, ein Frauenschicksal als Spiegel der Weltkatastrophe (Anastasia, A Woman's Fate as a Mirror of the World Catastrophe), which was published in Germany and Switzerland in 1928, though it was serialized by the tabloid newspaper Berliner Nachtausgabe in 1927. It was countered by works such as La Fausse Anastasie (The False Anastasia) by Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic, who was French language tutor to the five children of Tsar Nicholas II from 1905 to 1918. Years after the Imperial Family was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in July 1918, Gilliard wrote a book Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family...
and Constantin Savitch, published by Payot of Paris in 1929. Conflicting testimonies and physical evidence, such as comparisons of facial characteristics, which alternately supported and contradicted Anderson's claim, were used to either bolster or counter the belief that she was Anastasia. In the absence of any direct documentary proof or solid physical evidence, the question of whether Anderson was Anastasia was for many a matter of personal belief. As Anderson herself said in her own idiomatic English, "You either believe it or you don't believe it. It doesn't matter. In no anyway whatsoever." The German courts were unable to decide her claim one way or another, and eventually, after 40 years of deliberation, ruled that her claim was "neither established nor refuted". Dr. Günter von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for Anderson's opponents in the later years of the legal case, said that during the German trials "the press were always more interested in reporting her side of the story than the opposing bench's less glamorous perspective; editors often pulled journalists after reporting testimony delivered by her side and ignored the rebuttal, resulting in the public seldom getting a complete picture."
In 1957, a version of Anderson's story, pieced together by her supporters and interspersed with commentary by Roland Krug von Nidda, was published in Germany under the title Ich, Anastasia, Erzähle (I, Anastasia, an autobiography). The book included the "fantastic tale" that Anastasia escaped Russia on a farm cart with a man called Alexander Tschaikovsky, whom she married and had a child by, before he was shot dead in a Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
street and the child, Alexei, disappeared into an orphanage. Even Anderson's supporters admitted that the details of the supposed escape "might seem bold inventions even for a dramatist", while her detractors considered "this barely credible story as a piece of far-fetched romance". Other works based on the premise that Anderson was Anastasia, written before the DNA tests, include biographies by Peter Kurth and James Blair Lovell. More recent biographies by John Klier
John Klier
Professor John Klier was a pioneering historian of Russian Jewry and a pivotal figure in academic Jewish studies and East European history in the UK and beyond. At the end of his career and life, Professor Klier was the Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History at University...
, Robert Massie and Greg King
Greg King (author)
Greg King is an American author, best known for his biographies of prominent historical figures.-Biography:Born in 1964, King first became interested in history at the age of twelve, after watching two films about Imperial Russia's last royal family, the Romanovs: Nicholas and Alexandra , and...
that describe her as an impostor were written after the DNA tests proved she was not Anastasia.
Assessments vary as to whether she was a deliberate fraud, a young woman traumatized into adopting a new identity, or used by her supporters for their own ends. Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic, who was French language tutor to the five children of Tsar Nicholas II from 1905 to 1918. Years after the Imperial Family was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in July 1918, Gilliard wrote a book Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family...
denounced Anderson as "a cunning psychopath". Writer Michael Thornton thought, "Somewhere along the way she lost and rejected Schanzkowska. She lost that person totally and accepted completely she was this new person. I think it happened by accident and she was swept along on a wave of euphoria." Lord Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
, a first cousin of the Romanov children, thought her supporters "simply get rich on the royalties of further books, magazine articles, plays etc." Prince Michael Romanov, a grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia was a daughter of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and the elder of Tsar Nicholas II two sisters. She married her cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikailovich of Russia, with whom she had seven children....
, stated the Romanov family always knew Anderson was a fraud, and that the family looked upon her and "the three-ringed circus which danced around her, creating books and movies, as a vulgar insult to the memory of the Imperial Family."
Fictional portrayals
Since the 1920s, many fictional works have been inspired by Anderson's claim to be Anastasia. In 1928, the silent film Clothes Make the Woman was based very loosely on her story. In 1953, Marcelle Maurette wrote a play based on Rathlef's and Gilliard's books called Anastasia, which toured Europe and America with Viveca LindforsViveca Lindfors
Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors , better known under her professional name of Viveca Lindfors, was a Swedish stage and film actress.-Life and career:...
in the title role. The play was so successful that in 1956 an English adaptation by Guy Bolton
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
was made into a film, Anastasia. The plot revolves around a group of swindlers who attempt to raise money among Russian émigrés by pretending that Grand Duchess Anastasia is still alive. A suitable amnesiac, "Anna", is groomed by the swindlers to impersonate Anastasia. Anna's origins are unknown and as the play progresses hints are dropped that she could be the real Anastasia, who has lost her memory. The viewer is left to decide whether Anna really is Anastasia. The film was released at the same time as Is Anna Anderson Anastasia? starring Lili Palmer, which covers much the same ground, but the central character is "perhaps even more lost, mad and pathetic, but she, too, has moments when she is a woman of presence and dignity". Playwright Royce Ryton
Royce Ryton
Royce Thomas Carlisle Ryton was an English playwright. During the war he served in the Royal Navy; afterward, he went to train as an actor at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. As an actor, he played in many repertory theatres, including Bromley, Minehead, and Worthing. He also toured...
wrote I Am Who I Am about Anna Anderson in 1978. Like the earlier plays, it depicts Anderson as "a person of intrinsic worth victimized by the greed and fears of others" and did not attempt to decide her real identity. In 1965, the musical Anya
Anya (musical)
Anya is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Guy Bolton and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. As they had done with Song of Norway and Kismet , Wright and Forrest developed the musical score using themes written by a classical composer, in this case Sergei...
, based on Guy Bolton's play and using the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, opened on Broadway starring Constance Towers
Constance Towers
-Early life:Towers was born in Whitefish, Montana, the daughter of Ardath L. and Harry J. Towers. According to her official Web site, a contract from Paramount Pictures was offered to her at age 11 but was declined...
as Anya and Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
as the Dowager Empress—it was not successful.
Kenneth Macmillan
Kenneth MacMillan
Sir Kenneth MacMillan was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He was artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 1970 and 1977.-Early years:...
's ballet Anastasia, first performed in 1967, used I, Anastasia, an autobiography as inspiration and "is a dramatic fantasy about Anna Anderson, the woman who believes herself to be Anastasia ... Either in memory or imagination, she experiences episodes from Anastasia's past ... The structure is a kind of free-wheeling nightmare, held together by the central figure of the heroine, played by Lynn Seymour
Lynn Seymour
Lynn Seymour is a retired Canadian ballerina and choreographer.She was born Lynn Springbett and studied ballet in Vancouver....
". A contemporary reviewer thought Seymour's "tense, tormented portrait of the desperate Anna Anderson is quite extraordinary and really impressive". Anna Anderson was also used as a narrative device in Youri Vámos
Youri Vámos
Youri Vámos was born in Budapest. He trained in ballet from a young age at the State Ballet School in Budapest. He was a soloist at the Hungarian State Opera and then later accepted a contract as a first soloist at the Bavarian State Opera....
' 1992 ballet for Theater Basel
Theater Basel
Theater Basel is the municipal theatre of the city of Basel, Switzerland, which is home to the city's opera and ballet companies. The theatre also presents plays and musicals in addition to operas and operettas....
, Sleeping Beauty – Last Daughter of the Czar, based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Sleeping Beauty.
NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
ran a two-part fictionalized mini-series in December 1986 titled Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna is a 1986 TV movie, starring Amy Irving, Olivia de Havilland and Jan Niklas. The film was loosely based on the story of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia and the novel The Riddle of Anna Anderson by Peter Kurth. It was Christian Bale's first film and Rex...
which starred Amy Irving
Amy Irving
Amy Davis Irving is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award...
and won her a Golden Globe nomination. In the words of Hal Erickson, "Irving plays the leading character in a lady-or-the-tiger fashion, so that we never know if she truly swallows her own tale or if she's merely a clever charlatan." The central character ("Anastasia" or "Anya") of the 1997 animated fantasy Anastasia
Anastasia (1997 film)
Anastasia is a 1997 American animated musical film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. It was the first feature film to be released by Fox Animation Studios....
is portrayed as the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia, even though the film was released after DNA tests proved that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia. The film is an entirely fictional musical entertainment, and in the words of one reviewer, "historical facts are treated with particular contempt".