Anna Anderson Discussion of Evidence

What do you think of 'Lenin and Krupskaya: Between Comrades' as thesis topic?

Super Cool  

Darling dashkova
'Lenin and Krupskaya- Between Comrades"  
I want a copy asap!
Sounds a real delight!

[anyone]

Agreb...
The "wool over the eyes" was not a retort to anyone here - I was simply trying to point out Dashkova's astute academic skills.

She didn't want to speak it in public because it was the language of those who killed the Romanovs.

That's rather convenient.

Correct me if I'm wrong,   I thought it was Marie who had the scar on her finger from getting it caught in some door and not Anastasia.

Can someone, maybe Annie who has mentioned these scars a number of time,  give me a source about the finger scar and also the one about the scar on the forehead?
 
Thanks.

AGRBear

Hi Bear - From Kurth's Anastasia : The Riddle of Anna Anderson (page 85) :

"Harriet von Rathlef had prepared a list of other identifying marks : a small white scar on the shoulder blade from a cauterized mole; another scar at the root of the middle finger of the left hand, which Anastasia said had been caught in a carriage door when she was very young; and a third 'indistinct' scar on the forehead."


From Klier and Mingay's : The Quest for Anastasia (page 157) :

"Anna also had a small blemish on her forehead, similar to the Grand Duchess Anastasia, which was generally covered with a fringe when she was a girl.  Anna had a scar on the base of the middle finger of her left hand, which made her finger stiff and which Harriet von Rathlef attributed to an accident when a footman closed a carriage door too early and trapped the hand.  This incident did happen, but according to Grand Duchess Olga, it was Anastasia's sister, Grand Duchess Maria, who suffered from having her finger trapped in this way. "

From "The Last Grand Duchess" by Ian Vorres, description of GD Olga's (the girl’s aunt) first meeting with and her impressions of AA:

p. 174

When Olga entered the room, the woman lying on a bed asked a nurse: “Ist das die Tante?”[Is this the Aunt?]  “That”, confessed Olga, “at once took me aback. A moment later I remembered that the young woman having spent five years in Germany, would naturally have learnt the language, but then I heard that when she was rescued from that canal in 1920, she spoke nothing but German – when she spoke at all- which was not often.  I readily admit that a ghastly horror experienced in one’s youth can work havoc with one’s memory but I have never heard of any ghastly experience endowing anyone with a knowledge they had not had before it happened. My nieces knew no German at all. Mrs Anderson did not seem to understand a word of Russian or English, the two languages all the four sisters had spoken since babyhood. French came a little later, but German was never spoken in the family”.

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna:

“My beloved Anastasia was fifteen when I saw her for the last time in the summer of 1916. She would have been twenty four in 1925. I thought Mrs Anderson looked much older than that. Of course, one had to make allowances for a very long illness and the general poor condition of her health. All the same, my niece’s features could not possibly have altered out of all recognition. The nose, the mouth, the eyes were all different.”

P. 175

The Grand Duchess [Olga Alexandrovna] remarked that the interviews were made all the more difficult by Mrs Anderson’s attitude. She would not answer some of the questions, and looked angry when those questions were repeated. Some Romanov photographs were shown to her, and there was not a flicker of recognition in her eyes. The Grand Duchess had brought a small icon of St Nicholas, the patron saint of the imperial family. Mrs Anderson lookes at it so indifferently that it was obvious the icon said nothing to her.

P. 176

Olga Alexandrovna: “…That child was as dear to me as if she were my own daughter. As soon as I sat down by that bed in the Mommsen Nursing Home, I knew I was looking at a stranger… I had left Denmark with something of a hope in my heart. I left Berlin with all hope extinguished. "

P. 176

Olga Alexandrovna:

“…The mistakes she made could not be all attributed to lapses of memory. For instance, she had a scar on one of her fingers and she kept telling everybody that it had been crushed because of a footman shutting the door of a landau too quickly. And at once I remembered the incident. It was Marie, her elder sister, who got her hand hurt rather badly, and it did not happen in a carriage but on board the imperial train. Obviously someone, having heard something of the incident, had passed a garbled version of it to Mrs Anderson.

“Then again I heard that a party in Berlin, when she was offered some vodka, Mrs Anderson said : ‘How nice! It does remind me of the days at Tsarskoe Selo!” Vodka certainly would not have brought any such reminder to my niece… My nieces never touched either wine or spirits – and indeed how could they at their age?…”  

Correct me if I'm wrong,   I thought it was Marie who had the scar on her finger from getting it caught in some door and not Anastasia.

Can someone, maybe Annie who has mentioned these scars a number of time,  give me a source about the finger scar...

From The Last Grand Duchess by Ian Vorres, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (the girls' aunt):

P. 176

“…The mistakes she made could not be all attributed to lapses of memory. For instance, she had a scar on one of her fingers and she kept telling everybody that it had been crushed because of a footman shutting the door of a landau too quickly. And at once I remembered the incident. It was Marie, her elder sister, who got her hand hurt rather badly, and it did not happen in a carriage but on board the imperial train. Obviously someone, having heard something of the incident, had passed a garbled version of it to Mrs Anderson."

Darling dashkova
 'Lenin and Krupskaya- Between Comrades"  
I want a copy asap!
Sounds a real delight!

Oh, thank you. I'm afraid it will be a little *while*, though the framework goes up over my so-called winter break.  ~~sigh~~

Truly a most fascinating couple.  I've been reading Krupskaya's memoirs this week, and my favorite resident Russian was just telling me how Stalin plotted to kill her, but she was SO beloved by the people that he didn't dare.

Evanescence (and others) I would very much like to read your rebuttal of Mr Atchison's comments and of the quotes Helen has posted.  

She didn't want to speak it in public because it was the language of those who killed the Romanovs. ALSO Anna understood Russian and spoke back in different languages (man, she knows a lot of them and I only know like three). The Schanzkowsa family didn't understand and didn't speak Russian.


Well, golly gee, the place where FS lived with her family was contantly changing borders and they weren't exactly Polish as we know Polish people nowadays. Gertrude noted that the family didn't speak Polish but spoke Kashoub.

Again, none of the language stuff on either side is a factor for me because it's all hearsay what she knew, when, what this or that person heard. I throw it out as evidence both pro and con. It's too loosely based and undocumented.

She didn't contradict that she was Tatiana but she didn't confirm it either. I think it was Baroness Sophie (one of Alix's late ladies-in-waiting) who commented that she was too short to be Tatiana.

She never even thought of the IF at all until someone gave her the idea. Then it must have sounded like a good one. And when Sophie left saying she was too short to be Tatiana, she didn't open her arms and yell out that it was Anastasia, did she? Because she didn't look like her and she didn't think so.

Cool, can you show me some?

                                                                         -Sarah

I told you I don't have a digital copy, but the pics I'm thinking of are in either Kurth's or Lovell's books, I'm sure you must have those! Botkin was very active in supporting her cause and writing stories for the paper in NYC. He was her strongest and most lifelong supporter. He died in 1969, the same year she married John Manahan.

Helen, thank you so much for finding and posting those quotes! I hope they finally put an end to the ridiculous notion that Olga did recognize her and was being told not to by somebody. She would never have done that, and judging by pictures of her and the places she lived in her final years she certainly wasn't being paid off by anyone.

And speaking of paying off, I have to ask all AA supporters, WHY would anyone, the Queen especially, still be doing such a thing when it is obvious there is no lost mass fortune? It doesn't make sense.

...finally put an end to the ridiculous notion that Olga did recognize her and was being told not to by somebody. She would never have done that, and judging by pictures of her and the places she lived in her final years she certainly wasn't being paid off by anyone.

Olga didn't do very well financially at all in exile. She and her family ended up moving to Canada, where she died a number of years later living with a Russian emigre couple above a store in a small apartment in a pretty shabby area of Toronto. I don't believe for an instant that she was paid off to deny her niece, nor do I think she would ever have done such a thing. Why should we believe people like Andrei et al, and not Olga? This is the woman who gave up her title pretty much, to divorce a prince and marry a commoner. This is the woman who didn't give a rat's butt about clothes or ceremony. And by all accounts she loved her nieces, especially her goddaughter Anastasia very much. Why would she do such a thing? I don't believe it, no matter what anyone says, it would be totall out of character for her.
Out of all the eyewitnesses who did or didn't  'recognize' AA as AN, I tend to believe Olga Alexandrovna most, she knew AN the best - and she did not recognize AA as AN, even though she tried to be nice to her as a human being because she felt this was a scik and wretched woman with mental problems. This is what was distorted as her recognition and then denial of AA. There was no reason for her to lie about this, and out of all the Romanovs, she would have been the one to go against the family's wishes (if this were the case which I seriously doubt) and accept AA as her niece. So this is my take on this.