Jump to content

Anna Anderson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kpstewart (talk | contribs) at 21:35, 22 November 2009 (→‎Fictional portrayals: enlarged photo). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Anna Anderson
Profile of the head and far shoulder of a woman in her twenties with a prominent nose and mouth and a serious expression. Her one visible eye looks intently into the light. She is dressed plainly and her hair is gathered behind her head.
Born16 December 1896
Borowihlas, West Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (modern-day Poland)
Died12 February 1984(1984-02-12) (aged 87)
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Cause of deathPneumonia
Other namesFranziska Schanzkowska
"Fräulein Unbekannt"
Anna Tschaikovsky
Anastasia Tschaikovsky
Anastasia Manahan
Anna Anderson Manahan
SpouseDr. John Eacott "Jack" Manahan (1919 – 22 March 1990)[1]

Anna Anderson (16 December 1896 – 12 February 1984) was the best known of several impostors who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia.[2][3] The real Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The remains of the Tsar, Tsarina and all five of their children have been identified through DNA testing, and the results have been independently verified by multiple laboratories in different countries.[2][4]

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. The false claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention in March 1922. 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[5] factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many decades, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained "notoriety".[6]

Between 1922 and 1968, Anderson lived in the United States and Germany with various supporters and in sanatoria and nursing homes, 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 Virginian history professor who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric".[1] Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany. Ten years later, DNA tests were conducted on a lock of her hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue. The DNA tests showed that Anderson's DNA did not match the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs.[7][8] Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA matched the mitochondrial DNA profile of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska.[8] Scientists,[2][9] historians,[10] and major news agencies[11][12] accept that Anderson was Schanzkowska.

Biography

Dalldorf asylum (1920–1922)

On 27 February 1920,[13] a young woman attempted to take her life in Berlin by jumping off the Bendlerbrücke into the Landwehrkanal. She was rescued by a police sergeant and admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital in Lützowstrasse.[13] 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.[14] She had scars on her abdomen and head,[15] and spoke German with an accent described as "Russian" by medical staff.[16]

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: Tatiana, Olga, Maria and Anastasia.[17] On her release, Peuthert told Russian émigré Captain Nicholas von Schwabe, that she had seen Tatiana at Dalldorf.[18] Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana.[19] 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,"[20] and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess.[21] A few days later, the unknown woman noted that she had never said she was Tatiana.[22]

A nurse at Dalldorf, Thea Malinovsky, claimed years after the patient's release from the asylum that the woman had told her she was Anastasia in the autumn of 1921.[23] However, the patient herself could not recall the incident.[24] Her biographers either ignore Malinovsky's claim,[25] or weave it into their narrative.[26]

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.[27] Nevertheless, the woman was taken out of the asylum and hosted at his Berlin home by Baron Arthur von Kleist, a Russian émigré who had been a police chief in Russian Poland before the fall of the Tsar. The Berlin policeman handling 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."[28] She began calling herself Anna Tschaikovsky,[29][30] though Peuthert "described her everywhere as Anastasia".[31] 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.[32] 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.[33] 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.[34] Later, in the 1950s, Cecilie signed a declaration that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia,[35] but her family implied she was suffering from dementia.[36]

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 lost a lot of weight.[37] She was visited by the Tsarina's groom of the chamber Aleksei Volkov, Anastasia's tutor Pierre Gilliard, Gilliard's 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.[38] In March 1926, she convalesced in Lugano with Harriet von Rathlef at the expense of the Dowager Empress Maria's brother, 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.[39] 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.[40] 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.[41]

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.[42] 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."[43] 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."[44] 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.[45] Either inadvertently through a sincere desire to "aid the patient's weak memory"[46] or as part of a deliberate charade[3], Melnik coached Tschaikovsky with details of life in the imperial family.

Castle Seeon (1927)

Young woman wearing an apron and facing forwards
Franziska Schanzkowska, c. 1913

In 1927, under pressure from his family, Valdemar decided against providing Tschaikovsky any further financial support, and the funds from Denmark were cut off.[47] Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a distant relative of the Tsar, gave her a home at Castle Seeon.[48] The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia.[49] During her stay at Castle Seeon, Knopf reported that Tschaikovsky was actually a Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanzkowska who had been reported missing in Berlin in March 1920.[50] 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.[51] She became apathetic and depressed, was declared insane on 19 September 1916,[52] spent time in two lunatic asylums,[53] and went missing in early 1920.[54] 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 was recognized by Felix as his sister,[55] but Leuchtenberg's daughter, Natalie, remained convinced of Tschaikovsky's authenticity.[56] Leuchtenberg himself was ambivalent.[57] According to one account, initially Felix declared that she was his sister Franziska,[58] but the affidavit he signed spoke only of "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said Tschaikovsky did not recognize him.[59] Years later, Felix's daughter said in interviews for which she was paid that her father knew the woman was his sister, but he had chosen to leave her to her new life, which was far more comfortable than any alternative.[60]

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."[61] 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.[62]

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.[3][63] Botkin's publicity caught the attention of a childhood friend of Anastasia's, Xenia Leeds, a former Russian princess who had married a wealthy American industrialist.[64] Botkin and Leeds arranged for Tschaikovsky to travel to the United States onboard the liner Berengaria at Leeds' expense.[65] 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.[66] For six months Tschaikovsky lived at the Oyster Bay estate of the Leeds family.[67]

Portrait in oils of a young slim woman
Xenia Leeds, painted by Philip de László, circa 1920

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.[68] Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation, from an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate.[69] Tschaikovsky claimed that the Tsar had deposited money abroad, which fed unsubstantiated rumors of a large Romanov fortune in England.[70] 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.[71] Except for a relatively small deposit in Germany, distributed to the Tsar's recognized relations, no money was ever found.[72] After a quarrel, possibly over Tschaikovsky's claim to the estate (but not over her claim to be Anastasia),[73] Tschaikovsky moved out of the Leeds' mansion, and the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff arranged for her to live at the Garden City Hotel in Hempstead, Long Island, 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.[74] In October 1928, after the death of the Dowager Empress Maria, the 12 nearest relations of the Tsar, gathered for her funeral, signed a declaration, which denounced Anderson as an impostor.[75] 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."[76] Gleb Botkin answered with a public letter to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, referring to the family as "greedy and unscrupulous relatives" who were only denouncing Anderson for money.[77]

From early 1929 she lived with Annie B. Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue spinster happy to host someone she supposed to be a daughter of the Tsar.[78] For 18 months Anderson was the toast of New York society.[79] Then a pattern of self-destructive behaviour began that culminated in her throwing tantrums, killing her pet parakeet,[80] and on one occasion running around naked on the roof.[81] On 24 July 1930, Judge Peter Schmuck of the New York Supreme Court signed an order committing her to a mental hospital.[82] 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 just over a year.[83] In August 1932, Anderson returned to Germany accompanied by a private nurse in a locked cabin on the liner Deutschland.[84] Jennings paid for the voyage, the stay at the Westchester sanatorium, and an additional six months' cure in the psychiatric wing of a nursing home at Ilten near Hanover.[85] On arrival at Ilten, Anderson was assessed as sane,[86] but as the room was prepaid, and she had nowhere else to go, she stayed on in a suite in the sanatorium grounds.[87]

Germany (1931–1968)

Anderson's return to Germany generated press interest, and drew more members of the German aristocracy to her cause.[88] She again lived peripatetically as a guest of her well-wishers.[89] In 1932, the British tabloid News of the World published a sensational story accusing her of being a Romanian actress perpetrating a fraud.[90] Fallows sued 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.[88] 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.[91] The litigation continued intermittently without resolution for decades, with Lord Mountbatten footing some of his German relations' legal bills against Anderson.[92] The protracted proceedings became the longest-running civil lawsuit in German history.[93]

Anderson had a final meeting with the Schanzkowski family in 1938. Gertrude Schanzkowska was insistent that Anderson was her sister, Franziska,[94] but the Nazi government had arranged the meeting to determine her identity, and if accepted as Schanzkowska she would be imprisoned.[95] The Schanzkowski family refused to sign affidavits against her, and no further action was taken.[95] 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.[96] 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.[97]

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.[98] Lili Dehn, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia,[99] but when Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the Imperial children, met Anderson he denounced her as a fraud.[100] "If that's Grand Duchess Anastasia," he said, "I'm a Chinaman."[101] 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."[102] She became a recluse, surrounded by cats, and her house began to decay.[103] In May 1968, Anderson was taken to 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.[104] Her Irish Wolfhound and 60 cats were put to death.[105] Horrified by this, Anderson accepted her long-term supporter Gleb Botkin's offer to move to the United States.[106]

Final years (1968–1984)

Casually dressed balding old man with a large grey beard
Gleb Botkin, c. 1960

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 States.[107] She entered the country on a six-month visitors' 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.[108] Jack Manahan enjoyed this marriage of convenience,[109] and described himself as "Grand Duke-in-Waiting"[110] or "son-in-law to the Tsar".[111] The couple lived in separate bedrooms in a house on University Circle in Charlottesville, and also owned a farm near Scottsville.[112] Botkin died in December 1969.[113] In February the following year, the lawsuits finally came to an end, with neither side establishing Anderson's identity.[114]

Jack and Anderson, now legally called Anastasia Manahan,[115] became well known in the Charlottesville area as eccentrics.[1][116] Though Jack Manahan was wealthy, they lived in squalor with large numbers of dogs and cats, and piles of garbage.[1][117] On 20 August 1979, Anderson was taken to Charlottesville's Martha Jefferson Hospital with an intestinal obstruction. A gangrenous tumour and a length of intestine were removed by Dr. Richard Shrum.[118]

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.[119] A few days later, Manahan "kidnapped"[120] 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.[121] In January she may have had a stroke, and on 12 February 1984, she died of pneumonia.[122] She was cremated the same day, and her ashes subsequently buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon on 18 June 1984.[121]

DNA evidence

In 1991, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, 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.[123] 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.[123] 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.[2][4][124]

A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during her operation in 1979, was 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. The sample did match DNA provided by Franziska Schanzkowska's great-nephew Karl Maucher, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska.[3][8] 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 Schanzkowska 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".[125]

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.[8][126]

Assessment

Though the entire Imperial Romanov family, including 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia, was murdered by communists in July 1918, for years afterwards communist disinformation fed rumours that members of the Tsar's family had survived.[127] The conflicting rumors about the fate of the family created an atmosphere that allowed impostors to make spurious claims that they were a surviving Romanov.[128]

Most impostors were dismissed, however, Anderson's claim persisted.[129] 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.[130] 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.[131] 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".[132] 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."[133] The German courts were unable to decide her claim one way or another, and eventually, after 40 years of deliberation, found it was "neither established nor refuted".[134] Dr. Günter von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for Anderson's opponents in the latter years of the legal case, explained 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."[135]

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).[136] The book included the "fantastic tale"[137] 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",[138] while her detractors considered "this barely credible story as a piece of far-fetched romance".[138] 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 Frances Welch 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 or 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".[3][139] 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."[140] 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."[141] Prince Michael Romanov, a grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, stated the 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."[135]

Fictional portrayals

Smartly dressed lady wearing elbow-length gloves in a box at the theatre, with two male companions in full evening dress
Ingrid Bergman (left) as "Anna/Anastasia" in the 1956 film Anastasia. Though inspired by Anderson's claim, the film is largely fictional.[142]

Since the 1920s, many fictional works inspired by Anderson's claim to be Anastasia have been produced. 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,[143] which toured Europe and America with Viveca Lindfors in the title role. The play was so successful that in 1956 an English adaptation by Guy Bolton was made into a film, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman as "Anna/Anastasia", in an Academy Award-winning role.[144] 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 for themselves whether Anna really is Anastasia.[145] 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".[145] 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.[146]

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".[147] A contemporary reviewer thought Seymour's "tense, tormented portrait of the desperate Anna Anderson is quite extraordinary and really impressive".[148]

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."[149] The 1997 animated fantasy Anastasia depicts the central character ("Anastasia" or "Anya") as 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".[150] Similarly, other animated versions utilize parts of Anderson's discredited escape story for inspiration, and include scenes of Anastasia's escape on a cart or characters such as Alexander Tschaikovsky.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Tucker, William O., Jr. (5 July 2007), "Jack & Anna: Remembering the czar of Charlottesville eccentrics", The Hook, Charlottesville, Virginia: Better Publications LLC, retrieved 3 July 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ a b c d Coble, Michael D.; Loreille, Odile M.; Wadhams, Mark J.; Edson, Suni M.; Maynard, Kerry; Meyer, Carna E.; Niederstätter, Harald; Berger, Cordula; Berger, Burkhard; Falsetti, Anthony B.; Gill, Peter; Parson, Walther; Finelli, Louis N. (11 March 2009), "Mystery Solved: The Identification of the Two Missing Romanov Children Using DNA Analysis", PLoS ONE, 4 (3): e4838, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004838, retrieved 3 July 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  3. ^ a b c d e Godl, John (August 1998), "Anastasia: The Unmasking of Anna Anderson", The European Royal History Journal (VI), Oakland: Arturo Beeche: 3–8, retrieved 3 July 2009
  4. ^ a b Rogaev, Evgeny I.; Grigorenko, Anastasia P.; Moliaka, Yuri K.; Faskhutdinova, Gulnaz; Goltsov, Andrey; Lahti, Arlene; Hildebrandt, Curtis; Kittler, Ellen L. W.; Morozova, Irina (31 March 2009), "Genomic identification in the historical case of the Nicholas II royal family", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (13): 5258–5263, doi:10.1073/pnas.0811190106, retrieved 8 September 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ I, Anastasia, pp. 213, 217, 230; Klier and Mingay, p. 105; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 167; Massie, p. 178
  6. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 109; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 10, 53
  7. ^ Van der Kiste and Hall, p. 174
  8. ^ a b c d Stoneking, Mark; Melton, Terry; Nott, Julian; Barritt, Suzanne; Roby, Rhonda; Holland, Mitchell; Weedn, Victor; Gill, Peter; Kimpton, Colin; Aliston-Greiner, Rosemary; Sullivan, Kevin (9 January 1995), "Establishing the identity of Anna Anderson Manahan", Nature Genetics, 9: 9–10, doi:10.1038/ng0195-9, retrieved 3 July 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Sykes, Bryan (2001), The Seven Daughters of Eve, New York: Norton, p. 75, ISBN 0 393 02018 5
  10. ^ Massie, p. 249
  11. ^ Gutterman, Steve (23 August 2007), Bones turn up in hunt for last czar's son, Associated Press, retrieved 3 July 2009
  12. ^ Sieff, Martin (1 May 2008), Romanov mystery finally solved, United Press International, retrieved 3 July 2009
  13. ^ a b Berlin Police report, quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 89
  14. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 93; Berlin Police report, quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 89
  15. ^ Massie, p. 163
  16. ^ Nurse Erna Buchholz and Dr Bonhoeffer quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 95–96
  17. ^ I, Anastasia, p. 91; Klier and Mingay, p. 94; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 14
  18. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 94, Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 16–17
  19. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 21; Welch, p. 103
  20. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 95; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 25; Massie, p. 163
  21. ^ I, Anastasia, p. 93; Hall, p. 340; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 25
  22. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 95; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 26
  23. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 12
  24. ^ I, Anastasia, p. 91
  25. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 93–94, just describes Peuthert's claim.
  26. ^ Massie, p. 163
  27. ^ I, Anastasia, p. 93; Klier and Mingay, p. 95
  28. ^ Letter from Grünberg to his superior, Councillor Goehrke, quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 92
  29. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 96; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 53; Berlin police records, quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 112
  30. ^ She chose "Anna" as a short form of "Anastasia" (I, Anastasia, p. 98; Klier and Mingay, p. 96).
  31. ^ Grünberg's notes, quoted by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 112
  32. ^ I, Anastasia, pp. 100–112; Klier and Mingay, pp. 97–98; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 29–63
  33. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 97–98; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 51-52; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 103, 106–107; Welch, p. 108
  34. ^ I, Anastasia, p. 115; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 64; Klier and Mingay, p. 98; Massie, p. 168
  35. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 343; Massie, p. 168; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 116
  36. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 343
  37. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 84–85; Massie, p. 172; Welch, p. 110
  38. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 99–103; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 99–124; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 135–169
  39. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 91; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 102
  40. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 130
  41. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 104; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 130–134; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 180–187
  42. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 138
  43. ^ Tatiana Melnik's declaration on oath, 1929, quoted (in two negligibly different translations) by von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 193 and Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 141–142
  44. ^ Quoted (in two negligibly different translations) by Massie in p. 169 and von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 195
  45. ^ Massie, p. 170; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, .pp. 197–198
  46. ^ Gilliard, Pierre (1929) La Fausse Anastasie quoted in von Nidda, p. 198
  47. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 151–153; Massie, p. 181
  48. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 105–106; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 151–153; Massie, p. 181
  49. ^ Anderson's supporters claimed that Ernest Louis' hostility towards Anderson arose from her allegation that they had last met when he had visited Russia in 1916. Anderson claimed that in the midst of a war between Russia and Germany, Ernest Louis had visited Russia to negotiate a separate peace. Ernest Louis denied the allegation, which if true would have been tantamount to treason. There was no conclusive proof either way. (See: Klier and Mingay, pp. 100–101; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 93–95; Massie, pp. 177–178; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 127–129)
  50. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 105; Massie, pp. 178–179
  51. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 224; Massie, p. 249
  52. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 167
  53. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 415, note 93
  54. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 224; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 166; Massie, p. 250
  55. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 106; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 415, note 80
  56. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 180; Massie, p. 181
  57. ^ Massie, p. 181
  58. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 106; Report of Dr. Wilhelm Völler, attorney to Harriet von Rathlef, in the Fallows collection, Houghton Library, quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 172; Massie, p. 180
  59. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 106; Affidavit of Felix Schanzkowski, Fallows paper, Houghton Library, quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 174
  60. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 224
  61. ^ Letter from Prince Felix Yusupov to Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia, 19 September 1927, quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 186
  62. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 89, 135; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 193, 201
  63. ^ Klier and Mingay, p.108; Massie, p. 182
  64. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 108; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 202; Massie, p. 182
  65. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 202–204
  66. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 109; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 204–206
  67. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 109; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 214–219; Massie, pp. 175–176, 181
  68. ^ Clarke, p. 187; Klier and Mingay, p. 110; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 220–221; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 242
  69. ^ Clarke, p. 185; Klier and Mingay, pp. 110, 112–113; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 233; Massie, p. 184
  70. ^ Clarke, pp. 188–190; Klier and Mingay, p. 103; Massie, pp. 183–185
  71. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 112, 121, 125; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 230–231; Massie, p. 183
  72. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 117
  73. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 110; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 221–222; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 242
  74. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 110; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 227; Massie, p. 181; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 244
  75. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 111; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 229; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 238-239
  76. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 111; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 229
  77. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 111–112; Massie, p. 183
  78. ^ Massie, p. 182
  79. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 232; Massie, p. 182
  80. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 113; Letter from Wilton Lloyd-Smith, Miss Jennings' attorney, to Annie Jennings, 15 July 1930, quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 250
  81. ^ Letter from Wilton Lloyd-Smith, Miss Jennings' attorney, to Annie Jennings, 22 August 1930, Fallows papers, Houghton Library, quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 251; Massie, p. 182
  82. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 251–252
  83. ^ Massie, p. 182; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, pp. 250–251
  84. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 253–255; Massie, p. 186
  85. ^ Massie, p. 186
  86. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 125; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 259
  87. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 258–260
  88. ^ a b Klier and Mingay, p. 127
  89. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 271–279
  90. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 127; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 276
  91. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 115; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 289–356
  92. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 128; Massie, p. 189
  93. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 115
  94. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 129; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 283; Massie, p. 180
  95. ^ a b Klier and Mingay, p. 129
  96. ^ Klier and Mingay, p.123; Kurth Anastasia, p. 291; Massie, p. 184
  97. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 129; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 285–286
  98. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 130–131; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 263–266; Massie, p. 186
  99. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 153–154; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 288; Massie, p. 187
  100. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 304; Massie, p. 187
  101. ^ Kurth, Tsar, p. 214
  102. ^ Massie, p. 187
  103. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 140; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 334; Massie, p. 191
  104. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 140; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 370–371
  105. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 140; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 371–372
  106. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 142; Kurth, Anastasia, pp. 371–372; Welch p. 253
  107. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 142; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 370; Massie, pp. 191–192
  108. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 375
  109. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 375; Massie, p. 192
  110. ^ Massie, p. 192
  111. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 145
  112. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 381
  113. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 162; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 376
  114. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 139; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 377
  115. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 375
  116. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 162; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 388
  117. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 162; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 381; Massie, p. 192
  118. ^ Massie, p. 194
  119. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 163
  120. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 163; Massie, p. 193
  121. ^ a b Klier and Mingay, p. 164; Massie, p. 193
  122. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 164
  123. ^ a b Gill, Peter; Ivanov, Pavel L., Kimpton, Colin, Piercy, Romelle; Benson, Nicola; Tully, Gillian; Evett, Ian; Hagelberg, Erika; Sullivan, Kevin (February 1994), "Identification of the remains of the Romanov family by DNA analysis", Nature Genetics, 6: 130–135, doi:10.1038/ng0294-130, retrieved 29 June 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  124. ^ Discovery solves mystery of last Czar's family, CNN, 30 April 2008, retrieved 1 July 2009
  125. ^ Godl, John (25 March 2000), Remembering Anna Anderson, Boise, Idaho: Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes, retrieved 3 July 2009
  126. ^ Massie, p. 246
  127. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 70–71, 82–84; Massie, pp. 144–145
  128. ^ Klier and Mingay, pp. 84, 91; Massie, pp. 144–145
  129. ^ See, for example, Massie, pp. 144–162
  130. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 103; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 273
  131. ^ e.g. Kurth, Anastasia, p. 76: "Reams of paper were wasted in a quarrel over detail."
  132. ^ von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 83
  133. ^ Interview on ABC television, broadcast 26 October 1976, quoted in Klier and Mingay, p. 230 and Kurth, Anastasia, p. 383
  134. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 139; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 377; Massie, p. 190
  135. ^ a b Godl, John (26 March 2000), Remembering Anna Anderson: Part II, Boise, Idaho: Father Nektarios Serfes, retrieved 7 September 2009
  136. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 143; Kurth, Anastasia, p. 395; Massie, p. 294
  137. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 96
  138. ^ a b von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 81
  139. ^ Gilliard, Pierre (25 June 1927), "L'Histoire d'une imposture", L'Illustration quoted in Kurth, Anastasia, p. 179
  140. ^ Quoted by Klier and Mingay, p. 230
  141. ^ Letter from Mountbatten to Ian Jacob, 8 September 1958, Broadlands archive, quoted in Ziegler, Philip (1985), Mountbatten, London: Collins, p. 679, ISBN 0 002 16543 0
  142. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 270; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 273
  143. ^ Klier and Mingay, p. 132
  144. ^ Kurth, Anastasia, p. 268; von Nidda in I, Anastasia, p. 274
  145. ^ a b "The Problem of Anastasia: Two films on a single pitiful theme", The Times, no. 53770, p. 11, 20 February 1957
  146. ^ Wardle, Irving (18 August 1978), "New angle on the Anastasia affair", The Times, no. 60383, p. 10
  147. ^ Percival, John (23 July 1971), "Reworked ballet short on dancing", The Times, no. 58232, p. 16
  148. ^ Percival, John (11 October 1971), "Anastasia", The Times, no. 58295, p. 10
  149. ^ Erickson, Hal, "Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna", All Movie Guide, Macrovision Corporation, retrieved 8 July 2009
  150. ^ Anastasia, Sky Movies, retrieved 8 July 2009

References

  • I, Anastasia: An autobiography with notes by Roland Krug von Nidda translated from the German by Oliver Coburn, London: Michael Joseph, 1958
  • Clarke, William (2007), Romanoff Gold: The Lost Fortune of the Tsars, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, ISBN 0 750 94499 1 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
  • Hall, Coryne (1999), Little Mother of Russia: A Biography of Empress Marie Feodorovna, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, ISBN 0 856 83177 8
  • Klier, John (1995), The Quest for Anastasia, London: Smith Gryphon, ISBN 1 856 85085 4 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Kurth, Peter (1983), Anastasia: The Life of Anna Anderson, London: Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0 224 02951 7
  • Kurth, Peter (1995), Tsar, Toronto: Little, Brown, ISBN 0 316 50787 3
  • Lovell, James Blair (1991), Anastasia: The Lost Princess, London: Robson Books, ISBN 0 860 51807 8
  • Massie, Robert K. (1995), The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, London: Random House, ISBN 0 099 60121 4
  • Van der Kiste, John (2002), Once A Grand Duchess: Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II, Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, ISBN 0 750 92749 6 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Welch, Frances (2007), A Romanov Fantasy: Life at the Court of Anna Anderson, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN 0 393 06577 0 {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anna Anderson.

Template:Persondata Template:Link FA

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anna_Anderson&oldid=327353196"