Anna Anderson

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Anna Anderson (1920)

Anna Anderson (* 22. December 1896 in Borrek degradation , county Karthaus , West Prussia , as Franzisca Czenstkowski, later Franziska Schanzkowsky or Schanz Frankowski; †  12. February 1984 in Charlottesville , Virginia ), married Anastasia Manahan, was one of the then to the German Reich belonging Kaschubei originating factory worker. Until the end of her life she claimed to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolajewna Romanowa , daughter of the last Tsar Nicholas II . Anderson ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Berlin in the early 1920s , where she initially gave no information about herself and finally assumed the identity of Anastasia. She stated that on July 17, 1918, she was the only one to have survived the murder of the Tsarist family by the Bolsheviks in the course of the Russian Revolution . At first she became known as Fraulein Unknown because of her fate, which was still unknown at the time, later she was officially named Anna Tchaikovsky and even later Anna Anderson.

Her life has been filmed several times: the best known is the Hollywood film Anastasia from 1956 with Ingrid Bergman in the title role . Also in 1956 was the film Anastasia, the last daughter of the tsar with Lilli Palmer in the title role.

The Anna Anderson case

Francisca Anna Czenstkowski, born on December 22nd, 1896 in Borrek Abbau (Borrowilaß), Karthaus district , West Prussia , daughter of the tenant Anton Czenstkowski and his wife Marianne geb. Witzke, was initially a factory worker. The farmer's daughter Franziska Schanzkowsky had been reported missing to the police in Berlin since March 9, 1920 .

In the early 1920s, Schanzkowsky slipped into the role of the Russian tsar's daughter Anastasia Nikolajewna Romanowa , who died on the night of 16./17. July 1918 had previously been murdered with her family under state secrecy in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg and buried in an inaccessible forest area. At that time, the world public was largely ignorant of the actual events surrounding the disappearance of the Russian tsarist family. The tabloid press therefore interpreted the fate of the young, unknown woman, who had been dragged out of the Berlin Landwehr Canal after attempting suicide on February 17, 1920 , as the appearance of the Grand Duchess, who presumably escaped the bloody massacre .

In the historical appraisal, it was never possible to clarify with certainty whether Franziska Schanzkowsky deliberately deceived the public or whether she actually believed she was the surviving daughter of the Tsar due to a nervous problem. Later investigations showed that Schanzkowsky was almost urged by the treating doctors to slip into the role of Anastasia. She adopted the pseudonym Anna Anderson and played the role of the misunderstood Grand Duchess throughout her life. It was not until ten years after her death that a DNA test clarified beyond any doubt that she could not have been related to the Russian tsarist family Romanov, since in 1994 this then completely new method had advanced so far that a DNA test could be carried out on any human material .

Life

Since 1922 she claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia and thus the fourth and youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fjodorovna , formerly Alix von Hessen-Darmstadt. In the 1930s she was accepted by Spes Stahlberg, b. Kleist-Retzow, in Berlin. From 1929 she was represented by the American lawyer Edward Huntington Fallows (1865-1940). In 1938, he entrusted the lawyers Paul Leverkuehn and Kurt Vermehren with representing their claims to the assets of the royal family in Germany before German courts. The Scottish genealogist Ian Lilburn acted as their expert . From 1938 to 1970, they therefore led civil law suits in German courts that were supposed to lead to recognition as the daughter of the Tsar. On February 17, 1970, the Federal Court of Justice decided in the Anastasia decision in the final instance that the previous judgment of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg , according to which she had not proven to be identical with the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolajewna of Russia, was not objectionable for legal reasons.

Anastasia Manahan's grave in Seeon

In July 1968 she had already moved to Charlottesville in the US state of Virginia, where she married the historian John Eacott Manahan († 1990) on December 23, 1968 and lived in seclusion until her death. She passed away on February 12, 1984 after a long and serious illness and was cremated the same day. Her urn was buried on June 18, 1984 in the orthodox part of the cemetery of the Church of St. Walburg in Seeon in Bavaria , where her patrons, the family of the Dukes of Leuchtenberg , who owned the former Seeon monastery between 1852 and 1934 , were buried are. The tombstone bears the wrong year of birth 1901 and the first name in Cyrillic and Latin script.

Between July 11 and 13, 1991, the remains of the tsarist couple and three daughters were recovered in Yekaterinburg . On July 28, 1992 it was announced that the remains of Tsarevich Alexej and one of the daughters, either Grand Duchess Maria or Grand Duchess Anastasia, were missing.

For a DNA comparison with bone and blood samples from the recovered remains and from living relatives of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna , DNA material was taken on June 21, 1994 by Anna Anderson-Manahan from a preserved tissue sample that had been removed from an operation on May 20. August 1979 at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville. On October 5, 1994 it was announced that the DNA test clearly showed that Anna Anderson-Manahan could not be a descendant of the Tsarina. On April 2, 1996, the final results on the remains recovered in 1991 were published. It was announced that it was about the Tsar couple and the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana and one other daughter.

On August 24, 2007, a team of Russian archaeologists said they had found the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria in July 2007, which was confirmed by a DNA analysis. Accordingly, the bodies found in 1991 were the bodies of the tsar and his wife as well as the daughters Anastasia, Olga and Tatiana.

The film Anastasia is based on the story of Anna Anderson and earned her further popularity and money during those years.

literature

  • Hugh Brewster: Anastasia's Album. The youngest daughter of the last tsar tells her story . Langen-Müller, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7844-2596-8 .
  • Greg King, Penny Wilson: The Resurrection of the Romanovs. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken 2011, ISBN 978-0-470-44498-6 .
  • Peter Kurth: Anastasia, the last daughter of the Tsar. The secret of Anna Anderson . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1989, ISBN 3-404-11511-2 .
  • Robert K. Massie : The Romanovs - The Final Chapter . Berlin Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8270-0070-X .

Web links

Commons : Anna Anderson  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ZDF broadcast, September 9, 2004: The Romanov Files ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), ZDF info March 5, 2013 Scandal Royal - The Romanovs - Myth of the Zarenmord Documentation 2011
  2. ^ IMDB entry for the film 1956
  3. ^ Sullenschin registry office, Karthaus district, West Prussia Births 1896 No. 196 December 24, 1896.
  4. ↑ Rüdiger Schmitt (University of Regensburg, Chair of Genetics, 2003): Genes and ciphertexts in the human genome (PDF; 52 kB) ( Memento from January 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Alexander Stahlberg: The damned duty - memories 1932 to 1945 . Ullstein, Berlin 1987 (last 13th edition of the extended new edition 1994, Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-33129-7 ), p. 65.
  6. ↑ See Edward Huntington Fallow's "Anastasia" papers: Guide. ( Memento of July 13, 2010 on the Internet Archive ) in the Harvard University Library
  7. ↑ BGHZ 53, 245ff.
  8. ↑ PM History (Edition 12/2009)
  9. ^ Robert K. Massie: The Romanovs. The last chapter. Knaur Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-426-60752-2 , p. 228.
personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schanzkowski, Franziska (real name); Tschaikowsky, Anna; Manahan, Anastasia (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German factory worker, alleged Russian tsar's daughter
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Borrek dismantling, Karthaus district (West Pr.)
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1984
Place of death Charlottesville , Virginia