Anna Anderson claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. She was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin in 1920. Anderson lived in Germany and the U.S. between 1922 and 1968. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina’s brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska.
About Anna Anderson in brief
Anna Anderson claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. She was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin in 1920. Anderson lived in Germany and the U.S. between 1922 and 1968. She emigrated to the United States in 1968. Anderson’s body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson’s hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that her DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of theRomanovs. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina’s brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was an impostor but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention. In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unknown woman was Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II. On seeing the woman, Buxhoeveden declared \”She’s too short for Tatiana,\” and left convinced the woman was not a Russian Grand Duchess. A few days later, the woman told her she was a nurse at Dalldorf, The Malinovsky Asylum. After the woman’s release from the asylum, she did not recall the incident.
Her biographers ignore either her claim, or weave it into their narrative. In 2007, the locations of the bodies of the last Tsar, Tsarine, and all five of their children were revealed. Multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. After her death in 1984, Anderson’s remains were cremated and buried in a churchyard in Castle See on, Germany, where she was buried with her husband, Jack Manahan, who was later characterized as \”probably Charlottesville’s best-loved eccentric\”. Her ashes were also placed in a grave in the same churchyard as her husband’s mother, who died in 1953. The woman had scars on her head and body and spoke German with an accent described as \”Russian\” by medical staff. She refused to identify herself and was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse in Berlin as Fräulein Unbekannt. As she was without papers and refused to identifying herself, she was admitted for the next two years. On her release, a Russian émigré Captain Nicholas von Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana. However, there was no resemblance between the woman and Tatiana and a Russian police chief who had been a chief of police in Berlin before the fall of the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1921, the patient was taken out of the Asylum and given a room in the home of Baron Arthur Kleist.
You want to know more about Anna Anderson?
This page is based on the article Anna Anderson published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
