Anastasia Claimant - Anna Anderson a.k.a Franziska Schanzkowska

[LisaDavidson]

Peter - I do not feel that I misquoted you in crediting you with your excellent insight into the context of the AA story. However, I have sufficient respect for you that if you feel misquoted - I will apologize.

As to the number of scientists I know - hey - I only know a few, the majority of my friends being historians or members of the auto racing community. As in the past, I respect your views on AA even if I don't share them.

[stepan]

 Hallo everyone!  I have read Tatiana Botkin´s books(her memoires and the book about Anna Anderson,Anastasia retrouvée) and I understand that the Botkin´s diden´t meet the imperial children very often but I remember that they met in the crimea and were invited onboard the "Standart" to play with the grand duchesses and Alexej. They also saw them on other occasions and once during the war The empress and two of her daughters came to Botkin´s house on the Sadovaya street to inspect the patients  who stayed in Botkin´s house. Their father told them a lot what he saw and heard in the palace and often his stories were abour Anastasia who was a very funny little girl. Anyhow the Botkins apparently knew the family enough to be able to recognize them. Both Tatiana and Gleb seem to have been convinced that Anna Anderson was genuine. In her book Anastasia retrouvée she wrote that "from the first day I saw her I knew that Anna Anderson was Anastasia.I have never hesitated about that. Every gesture and trait in her caracter reminded me of the girl I knew in Tsarskoe selo".(My translation ) Tatiana tried to convince many people in France, among them white generals and grand dukes that Anderson was the grand duchess. They listened politely and some like grand duke Nikolaj Nikolaevich was really upset and said that Tatiana must get an audience with Maria Feodorovna because she was the only one who could decide anything in the matter. This never happened and finally Tatiana gave up her tries to convince people but her conviction was as strong as her brother Gleb´s was and remained so for the rest of her life. Gleb used to end his letters to Anna Anderson with the blessings of the godess Aphrodite. "May the godess bless your imperial highness".  Once the french jounalist Dominique Auclere asked Tatiana what she would say if Anna Anderson one day would tell her that she was not the grand duchess. Tatiana answered that "then she would really be crazy because it´s she allright".  But the mystery remains and it will probably go on forever. Because in spite of what the DNA says noone has been able to explain how AA could know what she did,the almost identical bodies etc. But that is what is so fascinating about it isen´t ? It catches our imagination like all unsolved mysteries and this is one of the greatest of the twentieth century.

[Janet Whitcomb]

Stepan, thank you for telling us about some of the contents of Tatiana Botkin's book.  For those of us who do not read French, it's terrific for someone to tell us about what she wrote!

[AGRBear]

According to another thread, the real Anatasia would not have called herself "Ana" or "Anna" since this is not the "nickname" used for Anatasia.  

I know she called herself Anna Anderson and before this  "Anastasia", before this [she claimed] she was Mrs. Alexander Tschaikowsky...

Back to her stay in  Dalldorf Asylum where she said she was Anastasia....

Who started to call her "Ana"?  I assume not anyone who was Russian since this is not the correct "nickname".  Anyone know who did?  German nurses?  German doctors?  Even so,  why was this incorrect name continued?  She continued this name by using the name Anna Anderson?

What I'm really asking is:  Why didn't she use the name Nastasia or Stasia instead of "Ana"?

AGRBear

[Johnny]

I am not so sure about it, but I think I read somewhere that she never called herself anything. Anna Anderson was sort of like the Jane Doe of the time, a common ultranational name that was used to identify her, since she initially didn't even remember her name or at least didn't want to share it.

[Candice]

I can understand how people can make a mistake with likenesses, but  Anastasia Romanov and Anna Anderson's features are very different.  Even when comparing images of their body structure, I found a great difference too.

Two very different people.

[IlyaBorisovich]

I've read that Anastasia played the guitar, or the balaliaka (it escapes me which).  Did Anna Anderson display any talent for stringed instruments?  Her piano playing has been mentioned in this thread, but what about any other instruments?

Ilya

[Candice]

I under stand that Anastasia played the balaika, guitar, mandalin and a few other Russian string instruments.

[rskkiya]

I read that Alexie was interested in the Balaliaka.( there was a teaching pamphet at the Ipatiev house in his room) but I thought that his sisters mostly played the piano.

I'm probably wrong tho...

 

[Lanie]

Letter from Tatiana to Nicholas, 10 Oct 1915: "Anastasia is sitting beside me in the room and playing the balalaika."

Letter from Anastasia to Nicholas, 3 Oct 1915: "Tell Aleksey that I play the balalaika as well as the sisters." -- Sisters as in the other girls, I suppose?  So maybe each of the girls played the balalaika, with differing success (sort of like the piano as well?)..

[Abby]

I was left really scratching my head after reading "Anastasia: Riddle of Anna Anderson" and Anastasia: the Lost Princess".

She knew so many tiny details that it was astounding. How could she have known this stuff, as an imposter? If she wasn't Anastasia, she must have had contact with the Imperial family through a servant, or a staff member, or SOMETHING, to know how Anastasia bathed Shura in perfume, and the brown velvet texture of Alexandra's dress in a b/w photo, and the style of the tsar's pipe, and all the details about Felix Dassel from the war hospital--- how did she KNOW?! HOW!

And yet, DNA proves her to be F. Schanzkowska?!
It just doesn't add up. If Anderson was the factory worker, how did she know all that? I could've beleived the evidence easier if it proved her not to be Anastasia and not to be F. Schanzkowska, either.

And the scars, and hallux vagus?! This is another story...

[tian79]

I’ve also wondered about all the things AA knew, but then again she also made mistakes.
Didn’t she say that Gibbes limped and Gilliard was hired as Aleksei’s tutor?

[rskkiya]

Hello all,


Regarding "Anna's" identity....
A non Grand Duchess could have gotten the scars in the explosion in the munitions plant  the very plant where where Fransisca  S. (Anna) worked, and the foot condition would come from standing for long hours in poorly made shoes... So its not that difficult to explain, really.

I was under the inpression that the DNA results had more or less closed this issue...

Oh I nearly forgot about her "knowing so many things"...well humans are social creatures and will often give subtle feedback (a smile, shining eyes, a half surpressed gasp) when someone else have made a lucky guess...so that "guess" becomes something that "works"...  

After all if people used to believe in "Clever Hans" the counting horse, why not Anna A.

R.

[Alexa]

Hello all,


Oh I nearly forgot about her "knowing so many things"...well humans are social creatures and will often give subtle feedback (a smile, shining eyes, a half surpressed gasp) when someone else have made a lucky guess...so that "guess" becomes something that "works"...  


R.

I agree.  Personally, I think she kept her ears and eyes open and soaked up as much information as she could, only to feed it back when approprite.  Besides, we don't hear much about all the things she had to have gotton wrong.  Kind of makes me think in terms of ESP; if a person gets a feeling not to get on a plane, and the plane takes off and lands safely, nothing more is thought of it.  If that plane crashes, the person is believed by some to have had a premonition and is suddenly psychic.  That's the way I feel about AA's stories.  The one's that were wrong have been forgotton about, but the ones she got right are pushed on the masses.

[Annie]

Has anyone else noticed how AA, even as an elderly lady, almost always posed for pictures holding her mouth in the same flat, lip biting grin Anastasia was often seen to be sporting in photos? It seemed like a particular mannerism common to Anastasia, and I think she thought, or someone told her, that her features resembled Anastasia most with her mouth held in that position. I can't post all the pictures right now, but Mr. Kurth's website has a lot of good examples.