How did AA/FS pull off the masquerade of "Anastasia"?

Now that King and Wilson have demonstrated with certainty that Anna Anderson was indeed FS, and science has proven Anna Anderson could never have been Anastatsia, the question remains, just how and why she was able to pull it off.  Please discuss the issues here, so we don't bog down the book discussion thread.

Thanks!

I was wandering about this exact issue too, FA. Thanks to have opened this discussion right here. You know that I was supportive of Mrs. Anderson claim and that I was sincere on it. Even today I'm amazed about what King and Wilson had discovered. With all these documents and DNA tests we can now accept for sure that AA was FS.

My principal question about AA 's ability to pull off the masquerade of "Anastasia" is, in fact, very simple. If she was not the Grand Duchess, how could she even imagine that any member of the Imperial Family that knew "her" from before would acknowledge her as the person she really wasn't? Wilson and King assures that she knew all time what she was doing and it could be true, but...Did she really believed that Empress Maria Fyodorovna (she always begged to be sent to see her in Denmark) would said: " Oh! This is my granddaughter! How happy I am having found her alive!" if she wasn't Anastasia? Could she think that Olga Alexandrovna, the aunt that loved Anastasia as her own daughter would accept her only for she was something similar to her niece on the upper part of her face? . I doubt it...

I've always believed that AA was AN not only for I always found them like twins in pics, but for the fact that if she was not the lost Grand Duchess her case wouldn't last so many decades as it did. There s not only physicall similarities, but also the "Anastasia way of being" , that only her family would know. It's obvious that Olga Alexandrovna didn't found it in AA, nor Irene, nor Felix Yussupov...But then...HOW IN HECK did she all this charade?

You could answer: "It lasted so long for people wanted to believe that someone had survived", but it doesn't explain the facts, since there were lots of pretenders and no one could be taken seriously by anyone. None of those cases lasted seven decades as Mrs. Anderson did...Yes; Gleb Botkin helped her, coached her and all...Mrs. Rathlef did it too. But their help somewhat harmed AA's claim, since Rathlef feeded her with a lot of errors that AA would repeat making herself ridiculous...So, how she did it? My answer, by now is I DON'T KNOW.

RealAnastasia.

RA: In the book we try to show that it probably all begin as a kind oj joke at Dalldorf-if she pretended to be a Grand Duchess, the nurses treated her with respect and brought her presents. It was when everyone else tried to PROVE it on her behalf that Franziska essentially became trapped in her own lie-she could admit it or she could go on. And she decided-for whatever reasons-fear of imprisonment, fear of going back to her miserable life-to keep it going.

We try to show how no matter what she may have said she NEVER actually wanted to meet people who had known Anastasia and usually did not talk to them, turned to the wall, and avoided questions. She may well have said that she wanted to see the Dowager Empress, but probably knew that this would not take place. She certainly showed no joy at meeting Irene or Olga Alexandrovna.

The "How" she did it involved hundreds of details and cannot be easily described in a post, so perhaps if you have specific questions about particular persons or events we can answer them for you easier.

She pulled it off because there were a lot of people that WANTED to believe her.  They shoved their doubts into a box.  Also, maybe that saw AA never met the real Anastasia or hadn't seen her in years.  Plus, the fate of the real Anastasia was still a mystery in those days, so their was doubt.

No doubt the Dowager Empress would have shot her down right then and there, but by that time her health was failing and she didn't want to deal with the fact that her son and his family were all dead (or rather two sons, if you include Michael).  So the surviving Romanovs more or less kept quiet until Marie died, then they opened fire on AA. 

It was just a convergence of circumstances that allowed FS to "become" Anastasia, and play that role for the rest of her life.  By the time the means came to expose her, she was dead.

I see the impersonation as kind of a "perfect storm". The death of the IF was deeply shocking to everyone (except perhaps the Bolsheviks) that the expatriate Russians in Berlin were especially susceptible to the idea of a surviving grand duchess. Franziska didn't start out with an end game of impersonating the tsar's daughter, like Greg and Penny, I think initially it was just a short tern bid for more attention. She was so damaged that she literally became another person because she could not bear to live as Franziska and as "Anna Anderson" she did not have to work for her keep and was the one served. AA had enough resemblance to the girls that she could carry it off and she only had to tolerate people who'd known the real Anastasia for a very short time.

My thought is that anyone less intelligent or less damaged could never have carried it off.

Absolutely. She was lucky in her physical features, her timing, and in those she most often met, lucky in whom she was surrounded by, lucky by the uncertainty-but above all of that she had to have possessed some considerable charm at times (when not throwing tantrums) to have won people over. That charm meshed with desire and then you get Lisa's "perfect storm."

RA: In the book we try to show that it probably all begin as a kind oj joke at Dalldorf-if she pretended to be a Grand Duchess, the nurses treated her with respect and brought her presents. It was when everyone else tried to PROVE it on her behalf that Franziska essentially became trapped in her own lie-she could admit it or she could go on. And she decided-for whatever reasons-fear of imprisonment, fear of going back to her miserable life-to keep it going.

We try to show how no matter what she may have said she NEVER actually wanted to meet people who had known Anastasia and usually did not talk to them, turned to the wall, and avoided questions. She may well have said that she wanted to see the Dowager Empress, but probably knew that this would not take place. She certainly showed no joy at meeting Irene or Olga Alexandrovna.

The "How" she did it involved hundreds of details and cannot be easily described in a post, so perhaps if you have specific questions about particular persons or events we can answer them for you easier.

Yes. It seems she avoided to meet certain Romanov family members. And it’s true that she often turned to the wall trying not to establish eye-contac with persons who had personally known the real Anastasia (not me! The real one..hahaha), but I think she asked Tatiana Botkin about going visit her “grandmother”, Empress Maria living currently in Denmark. Tatiana answered her that her “Grandmamma” wanted nothing to do with her , and that her “auntie” Olga had said she don’t believe AA was Anstasia. The claimant became furious and desperate, since apparently she wanted to see her “granny”. She repeated over ando ver: “I want to see my grandmother! I will prove it! (her claim), I will prove it!”  (this quotation can be found in Peter Kurth’s book: “Anastasia; The Riddle of Anna Anderson, pag 161) Was she realizing that if Maria Fyodorovna would meet her, she would also deny her claim as a fraud?

It seems that she also wanted to see Ernest of Hesse. Or at least, this is what Harriet Rathlef wrote. Maybe AA didn’t want to and she just tried to arrange a meeting without consulting the issue with her protegée. And certainly, she was not shy at the time of meeting Gleb Botkin and Tatiana, people who were never as close as they claimed to be, to the IF, but that knows Anastasia’s features perfectly to said if she was the “real thing” or not. It’s true that people of her intimacy whispered in her ear who were Gleb and Tatiana BEFORE they visited her , but even if she know who they were by the moment she met them, she must have been afraid of showing her face to both Botkinses. Certainly, she could said who they were, for she had been informed about their identity, but they could deny her as Anastasia. She was certainly very lucky when they took her side of the store and they became her champions!

On the other hand I find pretty convincing your argument about how the whole “affaire Anastasia” began. It’s posible that –at least initially – AA-FS was wanting some notoriety among her friends in Dalldorf, so, she said she was a former Grand Duchess. She would not work and people should treat her with respect…But things got complicated when Clara Peuthert went to search the “help” of Monarchist circles of Russian emigrés of Berlin. By then AA couldn’t take her Franziska personality again…And never did.

RealAnastasia.

She pulled it off because there were a lot of people that WANTED to believe her.  They shoved their doubts into a box.  Also, maybe that saw AA never met the real Anastasia or hadn't seen her in years.  Plus, the fate of the real Anastasia was still a mystery in those days, so their was doubt.

No doubt the Dowager Empress would have shot her down right then and there, but by that time her health was failing and she didn't want to deal with the fact that her son and his family were all dead (or rather two sons, if you include Michael).  So the surviving Romanovs more or less kept quiet until Marie died, then they opened fire on AA. 

It was just a convergence of circumstances that allowed FS to "become" Anastasia, and play that role for the rest of her life.  By the time the means came to expose her, she was dead.

Yes, Tim…But I can’t explain what the case lasted so many decades only for people “wanted to believe. They were two trials about “Anastasia” in Germany. No trial could begin if there are no cause at all. People could be gullible, romantic, delusional and all…But no trial would start for these kind of reasons.  It must have been something “solid” to admit the whole thing going to be to a trial. A trial is not a joke …and much less TWO TRIALS.

In both cases, AA was not identified as Anastasia, but lawmen couldn’t establish she was Franziska, either! This is that still puzzles me, even if I know SHE WAS FRANZISKA.

Penny and Greg established beyond any doubt that AA was FS , without the help of any DNA proof.. They only analyzed documents that were available about the case. Documents that were known by German judges at the time. What could have been the reasons that keep these judges saying that they couldn’t establish AA was Franziska Schanzkowska?

RealAnastasia.

Yes. It seems she avoided to meet certain Romanov family members. And it’s true that she often turned to the wall trying not to establish eye-contac with persons who had personally known the real Anastasia (not me! The real one..hahaha), but I think she asked Tatiana Botkin about going visit her “grandmother”, Empress Maria living currently in Denmark. Tatiana answered her that her “Grandmamma” wanted nothing to do with her , and that her “auntie” Olga had said she don’t believe AA was Anstasia. The claimant became furious and desperate, since apparently she wanted to see her “granny”. She repeated over ando ver: “I want to see my grandmother! I will prove it! (her claim), I will prove it!”  (this quotation can be found in Meter Kurth’s book: “Anastasia; The Riddle of Anna Anderson, pag 161) Was she realizing that if Maria Fyodorovna would meet her, she would also deny her claim as a fraud?
On the other hand I find pretty convincing your argument about how the whole “affaire Anastasia” began. It’s posible that –at least initially – AA-FS was wanting some notoriety among her friends in Dalldorf, so, she said she was a former Grand Duchess. She would not work and people should treat her with respect…But things got complicated when Clara Peuthert went to search the “help” of Monarchist circles of Russian emigrés of Berlin. By then AA couldn’t take her Franziska personality again…And never did.

RealAnastasia.

She may have been insistent on wanting to meet the Dowager Empress, but she must have known by this point it would never happen-so there was little risk in her insisting after Olga Alexandrovna had already rejected her.

She knew how to "play" to both expectation and to behave in ways that confounded people-as in her refusal to cooperate with supporters. It never made sense and lent her an aura of credibility because surely an imposter would TRY to prove her claim and do everything to show that she was real. But of course Franziska had very real reasons for NOT pushing for meetings and forcing "recognitions" from those who had known Anastasia.

As I have previously pointed out, Penny and myself learned, on examining all of the documentation from Darmstadt, that lawyers for Duchess Barbara and Prince Ludwig never really tried very hard to prove that she was Franziska. They never introduced into court, for example, half of the statements they took from former friends of Franziska from Hygendorf or even those made by her sister Gertrude-primarily because they cared more about refuting stories that Anastasia was spotted alive in this or that place, or that Ernst Ludwig had visited Russia in 1916. The entire countersuit claiming she was actually Franziska was a last minute thought, tacked on to the defense case, and thus never actively pursued beyond a few witnesses.

Had the situation been reversed and had the lawyers really tried, and actually sued AA for deliberate fraud by insisting that she was Franziska, the trial would have played out differently. The main point in the trials in Hamburg, though, was never to prove that she was Franziska-it was to offer enough evidence so that the court would not rule that she was Anastasia.

'Penny and Greg established beyond any doubt that AA was FS , without the help of any DNA proof.. They only analyzed documents that were available about the case. Documents that were known by German judges at the time. What could have been the reasons that keep these judges saying that they couldn’t establish AA was Franziska Schanzkowska?'

Judges tend to be cautious, and it is a legal truism that it's easier to prove a negative than a positive. As I understand it, in the two trials AA was trying to prove that she was Anastasia, and what is important to me is the judges' conclusion that she had failed to prove this, not their conclusion that the oppomnents had failed to prove that she was FS instead.

Ann

   I think the lack of remains was a major factor in keeping the ball rolling during AA's lifetime, & at first glance the soviet attitude to her claim makes no sense. For I don't believe the soviets were not interested in the events of Ekaterinberg at that time. We know the surviving witnesses were hauled in by the KGB and questioned in the 1960's. They knew of the burial site, so why not spill the beans then ? Could it be they took a sneaky look at pigs meadow and found the body count was wrong. Is it possible they too could have believed the Grand Duchess escaped the net. Yet one more reason why AA got away with it for so long.

         

Exactly, the Soviets could have ended all this decades ago by saying:  "Yes, Anastasia is dead, here's her body!"  But they didn't.

The reason is simple, the Soviet Union was a criminal state, run by thugs and murderers.  On July 17, 1918, they committed the crime of murder against the Imperial Family and then, like the criminals they were, covered up said crime.  Thought intimdation and threats, they forced all who had taken part in the crime to keep quiet.

FS, although indirectly, profitted from the actions of these criminals because there was no real evidence at that time that Anastasia was dead.  What someone heard about, or heard from soneone else, is hearsay.  Hearsay is inadmissable in a court of law, civil or legal.

Exactly, the Soviets could have ended all this decades ago by saying:  "Yes, Anastasia is dead, here's her body!"  But they didn't.

FS, although indirectly, profitted from the actions of these criminals because there was no real evidence at that time that Anastasia was dead.  What someone heard about, or heard from soneone else, is hearsay.  Hearsay is inadmissable in a court of law, civil or legal.

Not in this case! The tribunals in Hamburg were bogged down with hearsay evidence from Person X or Y who claimed to have heard Z or A from someone. That's what made getting at the heart of the issue difficult

As I have previously pointed out, Penny and myself learned, on examining all of the documentation from Darmstadt, that lawyers for Duchess Barbara and Prince Ludwig never really tried very hard to prove that she was Franziska. They never introduced into court, for example, half of the statements they took from former friends of Franziska from Hygendorf or even those made by her sister Gertrude-primarily because they cared more about refuting stories that Anastasia was spotted alive in this or that place, or that Ernst Ludwig had visited Russia in 1916. The entire countersuit claiming she was actually Franziska was a last minute thought, tacked on to the defense case, and thus never actively pursued beyond a few witnesses.

Had the situation been reversed and had the lawyers really tried, and actually sued AA for deliberate fraud by insisting that she was Franziska, the trial would have played out differently. The main point in the trials in Hamburg, though, was never to prove that she was Franziska-it was to offer enough evidence so that the court would not rule that she was Anastasia.

Oh…That’s was not an intelligent attitude of Ernest –Ludwig. If he had only showed to the world the documents that Knopf had demosntrating that AA was Fs, this case would have ended in the last years of the 1920’s…What a pity!  

RealAnastasia.