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

[Abby]

I know exactly what you mean, Annie, and I've often thought that many times. Maybe she did it on purpose. Peter Kurth's website has the most excellent photos, I agree.

I felt kind of sorry for Anna Anderson after finishing each of her biographies. Whoever she was, it is a real mystery, and she lead one of the most intriguing lives I've ever heard of.

[AGRBear]

Or maybe -- MAYBE -- she smiled like this because she WAS Anastasia...  

Jumping crickets!  Have you discovered something new about Anna Anderson

Or, are you just seeing if we're paying attention

AGRBear

[Abby]

Haha! Somebody help me get all these worms back in the can!

[helenazar]

Candice,

I agree with you, Anna Anderson's features were so completely different from Anastasia's, even in her younger pictures. I don't see the resemblance AT ALL, and it's beyond me how anyone can think that she looked anything like Anastasia. On the other hand, looking at the pictures of Franciska Schankowska, it is obvious that she is the same person. I guess people see what they want to see, and it does make a nice story....

Helen

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.

[helenazar]

Abby, I think (and it's only my opinion) that Anna Anderson, aka Franciska Shankowska, was a mentally ill person who actually believed herself to be Anastasia. I don't think she was out to defraud anyone, or have financial gain, I think she really thought that this was her identity. This came through in her attitude and this is why she seemed so genuine. When someone really believes themselves to be something, they come off pretty convincing. Ask any psychiatrist, they will tell you this is often the case. Franciska Shankowska probably ended up with serious amnesia from the shock of the explosion she was involved in, then she didn't know who she was for a while, until someone suggested that she may be Tatiana, the last emperor's daughter (she does look a lot more like Tatiana than Anastasia in my opinion). Then someone else thought "she is too short to be Tatiana, she must be Anastasia". Of course this poor woman wanted to accept this as the truth, much better than being a Polish factory worker who is a "nobody". As to her knowing some things that were not privy to anyone else, this is a common phenomenon, and it is used by very good fortune tellers among others, someone already mentioned observing people's reactions and giving answers based on that. She may not have even realized that she is doing that, a human mind is a powerful thing, she probably thought her memories were real. And yes, it's true, there were just as many things she got wrong as she got right, and depending on whom you were talking to, her supporters or her enemies, you got the biased version of her answers, maximizing or minimizing the right ones. And of course the DNA tests put the final stamp on the whole thing. I have always found Anna Anderson's story very interesting and had been following the developments since the eighties, before the DNA tests, and I even thought "wouldn't it be neat of she really was Anastasia" but her apperance always really bothered me, I always thoughts is it possible for someone's features to change that much without plastic surgery? No, it's not. So I was really surprised when the DNA tests in the 90's showed that she was not Anastasia. It would have been nice if she was, but fact is, she was not.....

Helen

I know exactly what you mean, Annie, and I've often thought that many times. Maybe she did it on purpose. Peter Kurth's website has the most excellent photos, I agree.

I felt kind of sorry for Anna Anderson after finishing each of her biographies. Whoever she was, it is a real mystery, and she lead one of the most intriguing lives I've ever heard of.

[helenazar]

The sentence in my last posting should read "... I was not really surprised when the DNA tests.... Sorry, typo  

[helenazar]

Adele,

The mtDNA was isolated from two different sources and the results were identical. Even if the DNA was contaminated, it would not match Franciska Shankowska's nepew, which it did. I am a scientist and I understand DNA results very well. There is absolutely no way that two different labs would contaminate two different samples in the exact same way way as to get the same results... Carbon testing is different from DNA... Sorry  

Can there ever be a chance that DNA testing is contaminated somehow?  Is the test 100% certain?

The reason I'm asking is (1)  I'm not a scientist and (2) I know in the case of carbon testing, there can be, indeed, contamination.

I'm thinking, right now, of the Shroud of Turin; I was watching a PBS special on it the other evening and was appalled that the people who were repairing the shroud were not wearing gloves.  It was shocking to me.  If anyone even breathes on the part they use for carbon testing, it can render the test void (or inconclusive).  They didn't even mention this in the PBS Special, tho.

I once saw the gentleman being interviewed on TV---the man who invented Carbon testing---and he was listing all the ways the test can go wrong.   So, I am thinking perhaps the same is with DNA testing?

But maybe there's a scientist out there who can contribute to this discussion?

--Adele

[helenazar]

But Peter, Anna Anderson didn't speak fluent English, in fact her English sounded very ungrammatical, at least to me, from the documentaries I had seen of her...She sounded like someone who had learned the language (sort of) pretty late in life... But besides everything else, even disregarding the DNA tests, she just did not look anything like Anastasia! I know that this can be seen as a subjective thing, but I just don't see any resemblance at all !  

Actually, we know a great deal about Franziska's life before 1920 -- much more than has yet been published -- and we also know that none of her brothers and sisters understood a word of Russian when it was spoken to them.  If Franziska, in her various jobs as a farmer, a waitress and an assembly-line worker in a munitions plant, picked up other languages than German and the "Kaschoubian" dialect (*not* Polish!) of her childhood, it is nowhere on the record, and would belong in the same category, I guess, as the linguistic capacity of a lover I once had in Brussels, who worked as a telephone operator at the European Parliament and learned 5 or 6 languages badly, "in bed."

One day, someone may explain how "Franziska Schanzkowska" could play the piano without sheet music & speak fluent English, without lessons, after a single week on board the SS Berengaria, traveling from Cherbourg to New York.  But I doubt they will.  pkWe don't know much about Franziska's life before 1920, do we? She may have learned some English in Berlin before jumping to the Landwehr Canal, and even some French. I have met waiters who speak 3 or 4 languages and can't even write properly their own. As far as I know, she was from a region where she may have heard Russian often -so she could have been able to understand the language, but not to speak it.

[rskkiya]

Dear Helen

Zdrasvudye... Kak dila?  (hello, whats up?)

   Peter can be very polite when the mood takes him, but he also possesses a fanatical faith in Anastasia/Francisca...  Rational statements such as "she didn't speak fluent English" tend to make no impression on him...

Good luck!

R.

[Michelle]

Boy, I don't know, rskkiya. . . Peter's book, The Riddle of Anna Anderson makes a lot of sense to me, even if some people believe Peter to be "fanatical."  

[rskkiya]

My  personal experience with this gentleman is that he has been known to become somewhat hysterical when confronted with contrary evidence-(this is purely my oppinion and ought in no way bias your own observations  )

Nevertheless he has composed some fine collections of Imperial photographs and some gorgeous coffee table books...if thats your cup of formosa oolong!

R.

[helenazar]

Michelle,

Yes, many of the things Peter said in his book do make sense, but everything still does come down to the fact that Anna Anderson did not look anything like Anastasia and that the DNA tests done on two different samples of her DNA from two different sources clearly showed that she couldn't have been Anastasia. I have nothing against Peter, he seems like a nice guy who is really passionate about the subject, and everyone is entitled to believe what they are enclined to believe, but sometimes it's good to take all the evidence into consideration and make a rational judgment, no matter what we really wish were the truth. It doesn't really matter that much what each of us believes anyway, the Anna Anderson story made a very interesting subject to write about and to read about for years and has probably been most responsible for keeping the memory of the last imperial family alive to the public for many years, so does it really matter in the end?

Helen

Boy, I don't know, rskkiya. . . Peter's book, The Riddle of Anna Anderson makes a lot of sense to me, even if some people believe Peter to be "fanatical."  

[helenazar]

Yes, I agree, Peter made some great contributions in a form of photograph collections and books, as you mentioned, and I myself own a few and enjoy looking at them and reading them, even though I don't always agree with his beliefs. It doesn't bother me in the least that he is of a different opinion to my own about Anna Anderson, so what? And it shouldn't really bother, let alone infuriate, anyone else. We are here to have an exchange of ideas about subjects we are all interested in, not to argue about who is right and who is wrong in their opinions, observations and beliefs, nor are we here to prove anything to anyone beyond a reasonable doubt.

Peter, keep up the good work as an author.

Helen

My  personal experience with this gentleman is that he has been known to become somewhat hysterical when confronted with contrary evidence-(this is purely my oppinion and ought in no way bias your own observations  )

Nevertheless he has composed some fine collections of Imperial photographs and some gorgeous coffee table books...if thats your cup of formosa oolong!

R.

[Abby]

Helen, you speak very rationally, and I agree. With a case like the Romanovs', where even experts find themselves in heated arguments, we do ourselves no great service to argue about each other's beleifs, when in fact truth can be stranger than fiction and anyone could be right. I enjoyed the biographies of Anna Anderson (Lovell's and Kurth's) and even though some of the theories thrown out there were pretty wild, I have to remember that I wasn't there when all this was happening, and I am not an eyewitness to anything. I know probably a great deal less than I think I do about the whole murder/survival mystery, and all I DO know is what others have regurgitated so many times-- all of us here could probably write our own biographies on the Romanovs' last days, since we've read the same material over and over again.
I guess what I'm just trying to say is, we all should try to keep an open mind without straying too far from the hard evidence we know to exist.

[Forum Admin]

I agree, Helen has stated things in a concise and clear way.  I have spoken to Dr. Melton who performed the AA mtDNA testing, and Dr. Melton (who is a world recognized expert in forensic DNA analysis) is 100% convinced that AA was NOT Anastasia, and that the results are as accurate today as when performed. Bring on the thousands of pages of "extrinsic" evidence if you want, but this test is intrinsicly conclusive, IMO. Just because one cannot confirm AA WAS FS or not has no bearing on this result.