Re: So who WAS she, then?

[AGRBear]

If not Anastasia or Franziska Schanzkowska, then who was Anna Anderson?  How about this theory? Could Mrs. Unknown [FU] been a very well informed revolutionary who ended up liking the good life and enjoyed the game of being whom her new rich and royal friends wanted her to be, and, too,  she probably believed she should have been born a Grand Duchess, and, in old age,   her mind allowed her to be who she wasn't?

AGRBear

PS  If not a revolutionary:  Perhaps you'd have to start with a list of who she wasn't.  I assume the DNA proves Anna Anderson wasn't a Romanov's chambermaid's [servent's] child born out of wedlock?

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For those of you who are reading this thread for the first time, Penny Wilson, who started this thread, started this off by saying that there might be evidence found that Anna Anderson might not have been FS.  So, if  AA wasn't FS then who was she?

Penny pulled off her post after a great deal of harasement but has since returned. Unfortunately, we can't recover her posts.
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[Candice]

AGRBear, I watched the DNA analysis take place on TV years back and AA's DNA was compared to her male cousin Shanzkowska, and it did clearly match his. I don't know his first name, but he was on the documentary as well.  

[IlyaBorisovich]

 I assume the DNA proves Anna Anderson wasn't a Romanov's chambermaid's [servent's] child born out of wedlock?

I think the truth is much more mundane than that.  My most likely scenario is that she was the daughter of someone connected to the palace, who had contact with the Imperial family, and always dreamed of being a Grand Duchess.  I think she was envious of their lifestyle and promised herself one day she'd live like that.  Being in the palace would give her the opportunity to observe and remember things that she could later attribute to Anastasia.  We might christen her "the girl who dreamed of being a Grand Duchess," and who found a way to live her dream.

Ilya

[Robert_Hall]

Ilya, I think that is the most logical scenario I have heard out of all this.
Cheers,
Robert

[IlyaBorisovich]

Ilya, I think that is the most logical scenario I have heard out of all this.
Cheers,
Robert

Robert, I thank you.  I guess the old saying is true, "even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then."  

Ilya

[Dashkova]

Ilya, your post really makes a lot of sense to me, and it also reminded me of the story of Helen Jewett, who was taken into a wealthy household, educated to a degree, then could not accept what social mores could offer a person of her station, so she reinvented herself, more than once, and though her life was short and her end tragic, and she had a career as a high class prostitute, she still achieved a certain glamour, desirability, devotion from educated men.

Maybe AA came out of a similar situation.

[AGRBear]

We can't let the mundane have the final word.

I have an article here from the United Press.  No date on the article.

Evidently  a "retired Richmond" Va. talks about his uncle having been  Nicholas II's  "double".

This uncle of his was hired by Nicholas II because he looked like him and was given an apartment in the Winter Palace and for his services was given a country villa.

He thinks the Bolsheviks killed his uncle, his wife and five children.

This is a stretch but here goes a wild theory:  Do you think one of the "double's" children could have been Anna Anderson who witnessed her  family being killed by the Bolsheviks.  One could see how confusion might have occured by one of the children, a girl about Anastasia/Maria's age. She, too,  had suffered a lost in the same way, execution by Bolsheviks.  Then in 1920 having escaped to Berlin, here she was seeing the person she thought was her father, who was really Nicholas II and not her father, in a mag. or newspaper, how this might have confused her even more.  She had  just jumped into the canal.  She was in a mental institution... Not all was right with Anna at that point in time...

 Hope I haven't confused  you.  If I have,  let me know.

The dentist thought his uncle's  family was killed at Tsarko-Selo.

The family came from Steblov.....

AGRBear

[Forum Admin]

From all the records we have seen, Nicholas NEVER used a double to impersonate him.  Spiridovitch himself relates numerous occassions here Spiridovitch was in a carriage or car or railroad train, to confuse the anarchists, so why would he do so when there was a "double" for such a job? I don't believe a word of it.

[IlyaBorisovich]

We can't let the mundane have the final word.

Why not?  Why must the truth behind any mystery be a complicated mess from somewhere beyond left field?  I've found that the mundane often carries a much higher degree of probablility than the farfetched.  What is so unsatisfactory, or anti-climatic about a mundane solution to a mystery?  Just because this was a high profile case doesn't mean the truth can't be mundane.

Ilya

[AGRBear]

Wilson is looking for a needle in the hay stack and just saying it's mundane isn't going to give her any clues.  So,  quit being old stick in the muds and let your imaginations fly.  Believe me,  it's painless and fun.  



AGRBear

PS  The article was real, not from my imagination.  The Dr.'s name was Meistoff.  I forgot to mention that....  The theory was from my imagination.  

[Robert_Hall]

I am sticking with Ilya's "mundane" theory. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than listenting to the same broken record repeatedly.  Why do some insist on cloak & dagger conspiricies, shades-of-Hitler doubles and bizarre escapes via the moon?
I guess if we found the court rosters & employment records, SOMEONE would have had a daughter that fits the bill !
Cheers,
Robert

[AGRBear]

Life is too short to be sooooo serious, Robert.  

The thread is:
>>Let's assume -- for the sake of this thread alone -- that Fraulein Unbekannt (FU) was neither Grand Duchess Anastasia (GDA) nor Franziska Schanzkowska (FS).
 
Who was she? <<


AGRBear

[Dashkova]

Wilson is looking for a needle in the hay stack and just saying it's mundane isn't going to give her any clues.  So,  quit being old stick in the muds and let your imaginations fly.  Believe me,  it's painless and fun.  

 

AGRBear

PS  The article was real, not from my imagination.  The Dr.'s name was Meistoff.  I forgot to mention that....  The theory was from my imagination.  

There are usually rather mundane needles found in haystacks. Penny Wilson is a professional historian and that means what she is most interested in is the truth, right?
I agree that there are SO many who insist that this case is somehow *special* in some way, that it must have some romantic/dramatic/important secret to unravel.  This is kind of an immature approach to history.

The Helen Jewett comparison is a very probable answer to the AA dilemma.  The mundane may not capture our imaginations and may well disappoint, but this is most frequently where truth is found.

[olga]

Ilya's mundane theory sounds best to me.

[rskkiya]

If not Anastasia or Franziska Schanzkowska, then who was Anna Anderson?  How about this theory? Could Mrs. Unknown [FU] been a very well informed revolutionary who ended up liking the good life and enjoyed the game of being whom her new rich and royal friends wanted her to be, and, too,  she probably believed she should have been born a Grand Duchess, and, in old age,   her mind allowed her to be who she wasn't?

AGRBear

Agrbear?
   Why on earth do you think that she was a revolutionary? Is this related to the "Stalin planted her for misinformation" Theory?
Rskkiya