Anna = Anastasia

[zackattack]

No. Sorry.

I was a bit doubtful at times, because she knew about Ernie's visit in Russia, and I still have no idea, how Franziska Schabowska of all people should have known about it.

The trip was not fact but unproven rumor.

Very true. But let me just add, as Louis_Charles pointed out in another post,  that Grand Duke Ernie, given his hopes of regaining his throne,  would have been just as horrified if he hadn't made the trip to Russia he was accused of making. And this would've been all the proof he would've needed to know that Anna Anderson,sight unseen, was an imposter.

[zackattack]

Well, I second the opinion above me. I would like to keep an open mind, but I suspect most of us say that she wasn't Anastasia, and that we are correct on that.. So No!

Let me just add to this: the term "open mind" only applies to subjective issues, and there is just no room for subjectivity here, as the issue is totally objective, she was not AN, and 99% likely to be FS.

This is a bit like looking at a chalkboard with the problem 1 + 1=2 written across it and thinking: " I know they say that 2 is the correct answer here, but I'll keep an open mind just in case!"

Thanks. I was trying to avoid using the 'flat earth' analogy again. Once something has been proven wrong, it's over. No, not just 'to me', but it's actually true, she's not AN, just as the earth is not flat, and 1 +1 =2. Some people still think you can put this is still in the 'what do you want on your pizza' opinion category, but it is not a personal position thing anymore. We have a right answer, and we know that anything else is the wrong answer.

Or how about...."1 + 1=2? I don't like that answer   :-? ....I'll wait for a second opinion....okay I don't like that answer either  ...now I'll wait for a third opinion! ....Not good enough! Was there tampering with the teacher's manual?!..... 1+1=2 is just what THEY want you to think! The answer must have been switched! GASP .....It's a conspiracy! They are all trying to stifle me! They are trying to shut me up , but I won't let them!  I'm calling my attorneys! WWWAAAHHH! WWWAAAHHH! "  

 

[Rachael89]

What a charming, eloquent, smiley filled impression of an AA suporter ZackAttack  .

Rachael

P.S. :Sarcasm Alert:

[reashka]

I don´t have the deep knowledge on AA issue that all of you have, but, to be honest, I never believed someone could survive to the cellar of Ipatiev House. From the bottom of my heart...I wish that the children could survive, but my mind tells me that it was not possible.

I Agree, and also on Rachel's, AA doesn't resemble AN, and then there's the DNA result, so No.

[Rebecca]

[size=12]No, Anna Anderson was not Anastasia Nicholaievna. She was Franziska Schanzkowska.

I totally agree with many of the previous posts. The DNA results are crucial, but there are other things to. Anna Anderson did not look like Anastasia Nicholaievna. Not at all. There is not even the slightest resemblance, apart from the fact that they are both females, have two eyes, a nose, and so on.

Zackattack's posts gave me a good laugh. They are hilarious. Thank you!  [/size]

[CorisCapnSkip]

I don't know if any expert has compared UNRETOUCHED photos of FS to AA, but what's creepin' me out is if AA has to be either FS or AN, she doesn't look exactly like either one of them to me, but if anything more like AN than FS.

Again, it's possible that FS either had plastic surgery (but who would pay for it?) or just by luck her features altered to further resemble Anastasia when she reemerged as AA--which would explain why no friend or associate of FS recognized her as FS--although how she changed hair color, height, shoe size and characteristics of her hands and feet remain a mystery.

So it seems we have an "unknown third party" planted by space aliens to cause confusion!

THE DARN ALIENS SUCCEEDED ON THIS ONE!   8-)

[La_Bella_Regina]

Well, I second the opinion above me. I would like to keep an open mind, but I suspect most of us say that she wasn't Anastasia, and that we are correct on that.. So No!

Let me just add to this: the term "open mind" only applies to subjective issues, and there is just no room for subjectivity here, as the issue is totally objective, she was not AN, and 99% likely to be FS.

This is a bit like looking at a chalkboard with the problem 1 + 1=2 written across it and thinking: " I know they say that 2 is the correct answer here, but I'll keep an open mind just in case!"

Thanks. I was trying to avoid using the 'flat earth' analogy again. Once something has been proven wrong, it's over. No, not just 'to me', but it's actually true, she's not AN, just as the earth is not flat, and 1 +1 =2. Some people still think you can put this is still in the 'what do you want on your pizza' opinion category, but it is not a personal position thing anymore. We have a right answer, and we know that anything else is the wrong answer.

Or how about...."1 + 1=2? I don't like that answer   :-? ....I'll wait for a second opinion....okay I don't like that answer either  ...now I'll wait for a third opinion! ....Not good enough! Was there tampering with the teacher's manual?!..... 1+1=2 is just what THEY want you to think! The answer must have been switched! GASP .....It's a conspiracy! They are all trying to stifle me! They are trying to shut me up , but I won't let them!  I'm calling my attorneys! WWWAAAHHH! WWWAAAHHH! "  

 

Just read this. Gave me quite a good laugh!!!

[bookworm857158367]

My vote is still "maybe" but I lean towards "no."  I still have a lot of skepticism that she was the Polish factory worker. Too many people either recognized this woman as Anastasia or said she was a "lady of the best circles." I don't think Franziska had the education or the breeding to pull off that sort of deception, even with coaching. There's also physical similarities -- the similar scars, the foot deformity, the match between her ears and Anastasia's.

Of course the DNA match with Franziska's family members would be the best evidence in favor of her being Franziska. The photos of Anna Anderson also look quite similar to photos posted elsewhere of Franziska's siblings.

I do think there's a strong likelihood that Anastasia and/or Alexei survived the initial massacre. Eye witnesses reported that several of the children were still alive when they were carrying the bodies out to the truck. There were also a few minutes when the bodies were lying unattended and guards who had not been involved in the killings were left alone with them while the others were looting or being sick or loading the dead onto a truck. There was a witness at one of the Anna Anderson trials in the 50s who reported seeing an injured girl being cared for by his land lady at a boarding house near the Ipatiev home. Then Red soldiers came to take this injured girl, supposedly Anastasia, away. Anastasia and Alexei are missing from that grave and I don't think it's plausible they could have been burned without physical evidence being left behind. They've combed that area in the years since and found no sign of those missing bodies.

 I think Anastasia survived. I don't know what happened to her after that night. Maybe she died a day or two later; maybe she was the claimant who became a nun and died in a convent; maybe she was the poor Anastasia claimant whom the Soviets sent to an insane asylum. Maybe she was Anna Anderson after all and the DNA testing was faulty in some way, maybe because someone succeeded in fixing them. I don't think that's likely, but it's an outside possibility.

[Annie]

I absolutely believe the late Anna Anderson was Anastasia. She posessed information that no one on the outside could have possibly know,

1. Like what?
2. HOW could this be verified, since 'no one outside the family could possibly know' and they were all dead?!

and it was confirmed many times by Lili Dehn,

Oh you mean the get your coat comment? The one that was in Sophie Buxhoevedon's 1920's book that AA mentioned in the 1950's? Sure, anyone who read the book would know that! And as far as 'goodbyegoodbye' 'my Empress said that' ANYBODY who knew Alexandra could have told her this!

Xenia Leeds,

Not very close to the family and only met her a couple times as a young child. What could she possibly prove?

Tatiana Botkin,

A likely suspect in the feeding of info to AA, along with her brother. I don't believe anything she 'verified', she probably told her to say it!

and even the Crown Princess Cecile.

Please tell me what she knew! Fifteen years older than AN, they did not grow up together, and by the time AN was 3, Cecile was married and moved to Germany. In the few visits home she made, her very young second cousin was not likely around, seeing as kids under 15 were not even allowed to attend adult parties or functions. Then by 1914, war broke out, and Cecile, being married to the German heir, could not go home again. I don't see how Cecile is such an authority. Also, she and her husband the Crown Prince were known to have gone eccentric after they lost their titles after the war.

I question the antics of Pierre Gilliard as he always came across as a sneaky little liar in the way that people would always point out how he was lieing.

You disregard him because you don't like him and don't like what he has to say. He knew AN much better than those you mention about.

Besides that, the things she told to people like Lili, Xenia, and Gleb Botkin as well as Dr. Rudnev were not things she could have known unless someone very close to Russia's imperial family was feeding her.

And they were.

 

When Alexandra Tegleva and Alexei Volkov went to see her in a hospital in 1925, they both sobbed and burst into tears.

Someone posted a quote from Volkov just the other day that said he said she was obviously being coached and was not AN. If he 'cried' it was out of disappointment that AN wasn't really alive.

posted by Stepan in "Final Frontier" thread:

In an interview with  the Russian newspaper Poslednie Novosti published in Tallin,  Volkov denied that AA was Anastasia. Volkov commented negatively on the people who surrounded Madame Tshaikovsky during his visit. "The conduct of the people who surrounded Madame Tshaikowsky seemed to me very suspect.They intervened all the time,completed her inadequate answers and excused all her errors under the pretext that she was ill."  I suppose one of these people was Harriet von Rathlef-Keilman who took care of her during this time 1925- 26.  Gilliard called her AA´s impresario.

So if he cried, it was because he was disappointed AN was not really alive, and someone was shadowing her memory by faking her identity.

[Annie]

I have recently checked those books out and am reading them again, but now that I know she's not AN I only see how hilarious she is biting those lips, and little clues sneak in that add up- like Tatiana Botkin hanging out with her earlier than I thought- it's fun now, like pieces of the puzzle coming together, seeing how the stuff I used to wonder about makes sense now, I can see how FS pulled this off, though we'll never know who all helped her.

Just because Gilliard said she didn't know German doesn't mean a thing, maybe he didn't know or forgot, they didn't learn or know much, and maybe the classes were when he wasn't around. He was correct to say he never heard them speak it, they spoke Russian, and English because it was Alexandra's main language, and French for the court. Who would they speak German with? Even Ella, Ernie and the Kaiser spoke and wrote to them in English.  German would have been AN's worst language, yet it was AA's best? What's wrong here? That's another thing that really nailed it for me, AA didn't speak English very well, and AN grew up with parents who spoke it well to each other every day. Her accent sounds like somebody who strugggled to learn it late in life, which FS did. i don't know why it means so much to you bigbee, she just wasn't AN and it's not that big of a deal, really. The sun will come up tommorrow and it doesn't affect your life at all.

[Annie]

My opinion is not my opinion, it IS fact. Once something is proven, it's not an 'opinion' anymore, it's history. If you can't come up with a reasonable excuse for why AA's DNA matched FS's family and not Alexandra's then it's really over. You know, even if the DNA didn't match either family, you might have some hope of a mistake, but what are the odds it didn't match the royal family and did match FS's family? That's pretty conclusive.

It's like guys getting accused of being a baby's daddy, and they get a DNA test, they know it's their kid even if it's only 97% not 99% like AA was. That does affect their life and even they don't think the DNA was wrong, tampered with, planted by the other guy she slept with, etc. So why would it matter to you if a person you don't even know isn't who you hoped she'd be? I hoped AN survived too, but she didn't. She wouldn't want us to get nasty over it (and I mean the other forum too!)

[Annie]

I think it's ironic how you say that Gilliard knew Anastasia so well but you think he just 'forgot' what languages they spoke.

It's very realistic to think that he never heard them speak German since they did not use it. He may not have known of the lessons, the kids didn't have a school where all the teachers knew each other, each were tutors and the German tutor could have come in at a different time, and likely less frequently.

But even if he did lie it doesn't mean he thought AA was AN, it meant that, like the LAPD and OJ, he tried so hard to make his case that he hurt it by adding stuff that made him look bad. But he knew AA was not AN.

You see, where we part ways on this is that your entire concept is based on the people who confirmed her memories as being in a huge plot to raise up a fraud while I see absolutely not a shread of evidence to support that theory.[/color]

So I suppose you believe all those who supported AA were always perfect, never lied, never made a mistake, never recalled anything incorrectly? If you put it off on one you have to consider it could have happened with anybody.

And my entire concept is NOT based on those confirming her memories, quite the opposite, I always say he said she said doesn't count because everyone conflicted and none of it can be proven.

[ChatNoir]

 It's very realistic to think that he never heard them speak German since they did not use it. He may not have known of the lessons, the kids didn't have a school where all the teachers knew each other, each were tutors and the German tutor could have come in at a different time, and likely less frequently.  

How many times must I repeat that Gilliard himself scheduled the Grand Duchesses for German lessons in Tobolsk?

Kind regards
Chat Noir

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Anna Anderson was so obviously not Anastasia it's not even funny.

What I want to know is why there's even a conspiracy about it.  She looked nothing like Anastasia, sounded nothing like Anastasia, couldn't speak the languages Anastasia spoke, could speak a language Anastasia couldn't (German), was denied as being Anastasia by the people closest to the real Anastasia and was proven by DNA testing to not be Anastasia.

So, do tell, where is the conspiracy? I fail to see it.

I KNOW it's hard to accept that something you believe in so vehemently is wrong, but you've got to accept it.  Yes, there is some evidence to suggest that AA could have been AN, but that evidence is far outweighed by the evidence on the opposite side of the fence.  DNA being the main player, not to mention the denials by the people closest to the real Anastasia; Anastasia's own FAMILY, her aunts and uncles, grandmother, etc, said she wasn't Anastasia, and they should have known.  Much more so than distant relatives who probably saw Anastasia about 3 times in her lifetime wanting their fifteen minutes of fame when it came to the case.

There simply wasn't the motive or the opportunity to fake the DNA tests.  Funnily enough, the world doesn't revolve around Anna Anderson or the royal family.  The results weren't going to be THAT earth shattering or THAT interesting to very many people to bother inventing some elaborate plan to switch DNA samples and fake tests.  Scientists value their reputation too much to want to get involved in the silly plots you're suggesting, 'Anna Sue'.

AA wasn't AN.  End of story.

Rachel
xx

[OlgaNRomanovaFan]

Plus the DNA tests were carried out by four independent labs who all returned the same result that AA was not AN, making conspiracy even less likely.