Anna Anderson
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Anastasia Manahan (her official name in later life) usually known as "Anna Anderson" (c. 1900 - February 4, 1984) was the best known of several women who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra. She likely believed the claim herself. Anastasia was born on June 18, 1901 and was presumed executed with her family on July 17, 1918. Others have identified Anna with Franziska Schanzkowska (born December 16, 1896- disappeared 1920). Both identifications are controversial.
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Appearance
She was first discovered after having attempted suicide in the Spree River in Berlin in 1920, and was a patient in a mental hospital under the name Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown) for two years before claiming to be the Grand Duchess after several patients and staff at the hospital noted a resemblance.
Miss Unknown, who called herself Anna Tschaikovsky, claimed to have been rescued from the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg where the Imperial family was murdered, by a Russian Polish soldier named Tschaikovsky, whom she had later married and moved with to Bucharest, where he was killed in a street brawl. There is no evidence for the existence of this Tschaikovsky. Some people, including a few relatives and close acquaintances of the Imperial family, were convinced that she was indeed Anastasia.
Disputed identification
In 1925, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, Anastasia's aunt, who had survived the Revolution and settled in Denmark, came to Berlin to meet Tschaikovsky, who was now going by the name Anna Anderson. Olga declared that Anna Anderson was not her niece, Grand Duchess Anastasia, saying that she was "not who she believes she is." Other people, like Anastasia's childhood nurse Alexandra Gillard or Empress Alexandra's close friend Lili Dehn, identified her as Anastasia.
At around the same time, Anastasia's uncle, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (Alexandra's brother) hired private investigators to discover her real identity. They suggested that she was in fact Franziska Schanzkowska, an ethnic Polish Pomeranian factory worker in Berlin, who had disappeared at around the same time that Fräulein Unbekannt was discovered.
In 1938, Anderson initiated a suit in German courts to claim an inheritance and prove that she was Anastasia. The case dragged out until 1970, when the court determined that she had not proved herself to be the Grand Duchess.
Marriage and death
In 1969 Anderson married an American supporter John Manahan. He was 49 and she was around 70. They lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died in 1984. Her body was cremated in accordance to her wishes.
DNA examinations
In 1991, the bodies of the royal family were exhumed, and it was discovered that Alexis and one of the daughters was missing. DNA testing was done to make sure that the remains were actually those of the imperial family, but also to compare Anderson's DNA and see if it matched. The mitochondrial DNA of the bodies presumed to be those of Alexandra and three of her daughters were compared to those of the Duke of Edinburgh, whose mother's mother was a sister of Alexandra. This proved to be a match.
Anderson's DNA, however, did not match either that of the Romanov remains or of the Duke of Edinburgh, making it practically impossible that she was, in fact, Anastasia. Another DNA test, comparing her DNA to that of a relative of the missing Franziska Schanzkowska, was a match, making the identification originally made in the 1920s a likely one.
Anna's DNA was taken from tissue obtained during a 1979 operation Anna had undergone at the Martha Jefferson Hospital of Charlottesville for intestinal blockage. About one foot of her intestines had been removed, and about five inches of it, preserved in formalin, remained in the hospital's pathology department from that time. It was obtained by the testers following a long and complicated court battle.
Later, some hair samples were found in an envelope marked "Anna Anderson" amongst some books that had belonged to her. These hairs were likewise subjected to DNA tests and found to be identical to that of the tissue sample.
Supporters of Anderson (notably Peter Kurth) continue to dispute all of these findings, however, and many still believe that she was, in fact, the Grand Duchess. According to their arguments Schanzkowska's relatives were paid to say she was Franziska Schanzkowska. They also claim that Schankowska went missing in March, 1920 while Anderson was already in the hospital in February.
References
- Anastasia: The Life of Anna Anderson, Peter Kurth, Pimlico, 1995. [ISBN 0712659544]
- Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, Peter Kurth, Back Bay Books, 1997? [ISBN 0316507172]
- Anastasia: The Lost Princess, James Blair Lovell, Robson Books, 1998. [ISBN 0860518078]
- The Quest for Anastasia: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Romanovs, John Klier and Helen Mingay, Citadel Press, 1999. [ISBN 0806520647]
External links
- Article by Peter Kurth (http://www.peterkurth.com/ANNA-ANASTASIA%20NOTES%20ON%20FRANZISKA%20SCHANZKOWSKA.htm) - Anna Anderson's biographer takes a closer look at the 1994 DNA results.
- Article by Rey Barry (http://www.freewarehof.org/manahans.html) - Supporting article by journalist Rey Barry - friend of Anna Anderson and Jack Manahan.
- Anastasia: Duchess in Disguise (http://www.geocities.com/kransnoeselo/Front.html) - Comparative photographs from HIH Grand Duchess Anastasia Historical Society.
- Article by John Godl (http://www.serfes.org/royal/annaanderson.htm) - Explaining how Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, was identified as being Franziska Schanzkowska.