by Greg King
Twelve months after Rathlef-Keilmann’s book came Gilliard’s La Fausse Anastasie, a book filled with statements and declarations from the claimant’s opponents, including Baron von Kleist, Baroness Buxhoeveden, Princess Irene, and others. For a man so determinedly eager to denounce Anderson, Gilliard adopted a surprisingly benign tone when discussing her. Perhaps she believed that she really was Anastasia, though Gilliard doubted this; she was, he admitted, a “pitiful creature” who “awoke in all who met her tender sympathies.”5 Convinced that she was too unstable to have engineered what he believed to be a false claim, to have learned the multitude of detail about Anastasia’s life she seemed to possess, he pointed fingers at everyone surrounding the claimant, suggesting they had victimized her and filled her head with stories to advance her case.6 Just as Gilliard served as Rathlef-Keilmann’s chief villain, so, too, did the former tutor accuse his nemesis of blatant deception. “All of the facts she presents,” he wrote, “are so distorted—when they are not simply made up out of whole cloth—that it becomes difficult for the reader who is not forewarned not to believe in the extraordinary adventure which is told.”7
These two books offered the public two wildly irreconcilable views of Anderson’s case. Other claimants came and went, appeared to great fanfare, and then disappeared, but their tales weren’t debated by principal actors, in public, in the pages of newspapers and magazines, and in dueling books. It was Rathlef-Keilmann, published in Germany, Great Britain, and North America, widely distributed and promoted, serialized in magazines and newspapers, who won the publicity battle: Gilliard’s book, published only in French, quickly came and went, disappearing from stores soon after its printing. Thus it was Rathlef-Keilmann’s version of events that the public came to know, that captivated imaginations and left readers indignant over “Anastasia’s” callous rejection by her surviving relatives. And Rathlef-Keilmann had an unseen ally on her side: desire. Ten years had passed since the presumed execution, and still there were no bodies, no actual evidence that the Romanovs had all been killed, merely assumptions of what had happened and theories regarding the destruction of their remains. The veil of plausibility with which Rathlef-Keilmann’s book thus wrapped the claimant offered the public an appealing alternative to the shocking and bloody end in a grim Ekaterinburg cellar, a story that—for all of its twists and heart-wrenching developments—still somehow seemed redolent of the power of the human spirit to triumph over evil.
But if Gilliard’s book fell into obscurity, it—or more correctly, descriptions of it by those sympathetic to Anderson—assumed a pivotal role in her case, advanced as evidence that the former tutor was nothing short of a fraud himself, a man who repeatedly lied about the claimant. In typical fashion, Gleb Botkin thus declared that Gilliard’s book was filled with “deliberate untruths,” that he had used “retouched photographs and other faked or planted evidence,” and had done it all as a paid agent of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse.8 The anger stemmed from Gilliard’s attacks on several dozen of the claimant’s asserted memories, as related to him in Rathlef-Keilmann’s letters and in the latter’s book, errors he contended revealed that she could not be Anastasia. Those sympathetic to Anderson’s case took Botkin’s lead: Gilliard’s “vicious, vituperative” book was filled with “gross errors” and “inventions” designed to “put an end” to her “career.”9
But what, precisely, was Gilliard supposed to have done in his “vicious, vituperative” book? Three issues were central, three of Anderson’s alleged memories as recorded by Rathlef-Keilmann, three claims that Gilliard completely rejected. “There was a palace at home,” Rathlef-Keilmann quoted the claimant, “the windowsills and columns of which were made of malachite.”10 Gilliard dismissed this as “nothing but pure fantasy.”11 Anderson’s supporters stumbled over themselves to point out the famous Malachite Hall in the Winter Palace, as well as another, similarly decorated room in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Why, they asked, did Gilliard lie?
In fact, he hadn’t. On January 1, 1926, Rathlef-Keilmann sent him notes of her conversations with the claimant, notes that quoted Anderson as saying, “In several rooms at Tsarskoye Selo, the sills of the windows were of malachite.”12 This, Gilliard correctly replied, was wrong: there were no rooms in any of the palaces at Tsarskoye Selo with malachite-decorated windows. But when Rathlef-Keilmann reproduced the notes in her book, she edited out the claimant’s reference to Tsarskoye Selo, replacing it with the less definitive “at home.”
It wasn’t the only such contradiction. Anderson told Rathlef-Keilmann that she had been awarded her own infantry regiment and named honorary colonel in chief when she was fifteen. She could not remember the name of the regiment, just that that the soldiers wore dark blue uniforms, that she had reviewed them on horseback, and that the review had been held at Tsarskoye Selo.13 Anastasia, of course, had indeed been named honorary colonel in chief of the 148th Caspian Infantry Rifle Regiment by her father when she turned fourteen, in 1915, but perhaps the claimant simply misremembered the year.14 Rathlef-Keilmann sent these details to Gilliard; within a day, she wrote, he had replied confirming that everything the claimant had said was “quite accurate.”15
Really? Not according to Gilliard, who had the documentation to prove it. On receiving Rathlef-Keilmann’s letter, he asked Colonel Vassili Koliubakin, former commander of the regiment, about the claimant’s statements and learned that the unit had been posted to Galicia at the time and that no review—at Tsarskoye Selo or elsewhere—had taken place. Later, Koliubakin alone had offered his congratulations, on behalf of his men, to Anastasia in a room at the Alexander Palace. There had been no other delegations, no blue uniforms, and no parade, facts also confirmed by General Michael Repiev, who had commanded the infantry divisions to which Anastasia’s regiment belonged.16 This is what Gilliard communicated to Rathlef-Keilmann. And, as happened with the claimant’s erroneous description of a room at Tsarskoye Selo adorned with malachite windowsills, Rathlef-Keilmann again edited her notes to erase Anderson’s mistake before publishing them in her book. Now there was no mention of blue uniforms, or of a review at Tsarskoye Selo, though for some reason she retained the claimant’s statement “I myself took charge of the parade on horseback.”17 Gleb Botkin insisted, not very convincingly, that it all must have been Rathlef-Keilmann’s mistake, that the claimant had meant to say that the uniforms bore blue piping.18 Later, French journalist Dominique Auclères, who passionately believed in Anderson’s claim, apparently insisting that Gilliard had lied over the issue, swooped in to deliver what she believed to be the coup de grâce: the widow of a former regimental commander, she said, remembered that her late husband had recalled the ceremonial review on horseback—of “the Blue Regiment,” no less—that Anderson described. Unfortunately for Auclères, this source insisted upon a different year—1916; a different season—autumn, not summer; and a different place—Peterhof, not Tsarskoye Selo—none of which confirmed Anderson’s story except perhaps to those willing to reject the statements of the regimental commanders in an effort to embrace anything that supported her case.19
It was Auclères, too, who tried to take Gilliard to task over the issue of a samovar. “The park at home,” Anderson said, “was so beautiful: it was like a forest. When it rained and the weather was bad, I liked the chimney corner, the samovar on the table, and drinking tea with good things to eat.”20 This Gilliard attacked as “all very poetical” but untrue, writing that no samovar was ever used in the Alexander Palace. “It might seem curious, but it is nonetheless true,” he said.21 Auclères found a photograph showing a samovar in use at Mogilev when Nicholas II lived there during the First World War, proof—or so the theory ran—that Gilliard had lied.22 Yet Anderson hadn’t been discussing Mogilev at all, but Tsarskoye Selo, a point that seems to have escaped the notice of the French journalist.
And this was essentially it—Anderson’s supporters and generations who stumbled upon her tale branded Gilliard a liar because he correctly pointed out t
here were no palace rooms at Tsarskoye Selo whose windowsills were decorated with malachite, because officers he contacted refuted her erroneous statements regarding Anastasia’s regiment, and because he said—without contradiction—that no samovar had been used in the Alexander Palace. In none of these points did he lie; if anyone was deceiving the public here, it was Rathlef-Keilmann, who so selectively presented information and edited out errors from the claimant’s narrative. And because people assumed that Rathlef-Keilmann was reliable, because her notes remained unpublished, because her work won the battle of the books, and because La Fausse Anastasie disappeared from print, most of the public never knew what Gilliard had actually said.
But the conflict between these two books echoed a larger issue: what of the asserted memories Anderson relayed, memories so convincing, so intimate, her supporters believed, that they surely proved her identity? Thus Gleb Botkin said that there was “not a single impossible or obviously erroneous statement” made by the claimant, “while all her verifiable statements invariably proved to be correct in every detail.”23
“It was pointless, in the end, for anyone to argue about the substance of Anastasia’s memory,” wrote Anderson’s biographer Peter Kurth. “Reams of paper were wasted in a quarrel over detail.”24 This was fair enough, given the vagaries of childhood recall and the fact that many of the claimant’s utterances were subject to interpretation. But this was, to a large extent, a case built upon minor details, and some of Anderson’s statements, some of her asserted memories and declarations, were clearly wrong, and in a case often built minor detail upon minor detail by her supporters, such things mattered. The public might have been surprised, but they never knew: many of Anderson’s errors were obscure, recorded in notes by Rathlef-Keilmann and in the statements of others, buried, hidden—sometimes deliberately suppressed—in documents that were never published.
“I noted down all her utterances,” Rathlef-Keilmann recorded of the claimant, “in the hope that the material thus compiled would induce those most closely concerned to interest themselves in the fate of the unknown woman and to acknowledge her.”25 Anderson’s supporters eagerly seized on every verifiable fact revealed, every hint of intimate knowledge, but dismissed any errors—as had Gleb Botkin with the issue of the “blue” regimental uniforms—by blaming Rathlef-Keilmann, charging her with inaccuracies in recording the claimant’s words. But there were too many such instances, too many bizarre statements made to many others, to impose such a double standard, to lay the blame on anyone but Anderson herself.
There were the errors Rathlef-Keilmann recorded in her notes and edited out of her eventual manuscript, details about malachite windowsills at Tsarskoye Selo and Anastasia’s regiment, of course, but others as well. Anderson claimed that as a child she had visited England “several times” when, in fact, Anastasia had made only one such trip, in 1909.26 At Tsarskoye Selo, Anderson told Rathlef-Keilmann, “We lived upstairs: my two big sisters were together. I had a room next to that of Marie; there was no door between them, but a portiere.”27 But Anastasia had always shared a bedroom with her sister Marie, not only at the Alexander Palace but also in every other imperial residence; Gilliard pointed this out to Rathlef-Keilmann, who eliminated the reference from her published book.28 Once, eager to see her reaction, Inspector Grunberg had played the Russian national anthem on the piano in the claimant’s presence. She gave no sign of recognition. Puzzled by this, Grunberg finally stopped and asked her what he had been playing. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I haven’t listened.”29 Not surprisingly, Rathlef-Keilmann—who recorded the incident—elected not to publish the story.
Some things, though, did make it into Rathlef-Keilmann’s book, things just as perplexing to the notion that Anderson was indeed Anastasia. Who, Zahle had asked the claimant, was “Aunt Ella”? It was an easy request, the name used within the imperial family for Empress Alexandra’s sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, yet the claimant refused to answer—not, she explained, because she couldn’t, but rather because it was a “secret”; only after considering her reply overnight did she finally volunteer the information.30 Anderson said, erroneously, that Empress Alexandra had preferred her daughter Marie Nikolaievna as a companion when in fact she was famous for having favored her second daughter Tatiana Nikolaievna; that Anna Vyrubova had “such red hair,” when in fact it had been almost black; that although she recalled the Crimean palace of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaievich quite well, unbelievably, she couldn’t “remember just what ours was like”; and that Nicholas and Alexandra had separate bedrooms when in fact they always shared a room.31 Sometimes even Rathlef-Keilmann was incredulous at the things Anderson said and tried to convince her that she was wrong, as when the claimant insisted that Mademoiselle Catherine Schneider, the empress’s lectrice, “was with us until the last day, in the last night” at Ekaterinburg, when in fact she had previously been arrested and never set foot in the Ipatiev House.32
And, Rathlef-Keilmann aside, Anderson continued the litany of erroneous assertions. In 1928, on her way to America, she told Agnes Gallagher that “in 1916,” Trotsky had come to the Alexander Palace and had “been very rude” to her father. Trotsky, she explained, had “helped himself” to the family’s jewelry before leaving.33 During her stay in New York, Gleb Botkin arranged a publishing contract, so that Anderson could write her “memoirs.” After several lengthy interviews the idea was dropped—because the details she gave were simply too uninteresting for general readers, wrote Peter Kurth, but more likely because her lawyers and Botkin realized that much of what she said was so demonstrably wrong that publication would only hurt her cause.34 Among her false statements, Anderson said that the imperial family had visited Romania in 1914 aboard their yacht Polar Star, when in fact they had gone aboard their yacht Standart; she adamantly insisted, “I never met the Kaiser,” a statement untrue for Anastasia; insisted wrongly that Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna had been “horribly hurt” during a 1888 train accident at Borki; that Alexander III had been “poisoned” by his doctors; that Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich “died in Russia before the War,” when in fact he was executed by the Bolsheviks, and that his first wife was “a Russian, a Princess Palovna,” when she had actually been Princess Alexandra of Greece; and that there had been no bathroom in the Ipatiev House.35
Temporary passport issued to Anna Anderson on her return to Germany from America, 1931.
But the public never learned of such things; they knew only of the frightened, thin young woman, nervous and excited, protective of herself and her identity. She riveted attention, captivating with her blue eyes and her expressive face that seemed, to her supporters, to embody all of the tragedy of Russia’s recent past. There was something so fragile about her, an almost palpable sense of pain that lent credence to her tale and often made even her most vitriolic enemies fall temporary victim to her charm. This was the woman who in 1931 walked out of the Four Winds Rest Home, quietly boarded a liner, and, accompanied by a nurse, returned to Germany, slipping into the nearest thing she would ever know to a happy life. Anastasia Tchaikovsky, the young, delicate phantom from the past who haunted magazines and books and captivated the world, was gone, replaced by Anna Anderson, who disappeared into obscurity; she would not reemerge from the shadows for a quarter century, when the possible princess had become a middle-aged hausfrau wrapped in dowdy clothes and snapping angrily at friend and foe alike.
On arriving in Germany, she had been shuffled off to the Ilten Psychiatric Institute near Hannover, a stay paid for—like her time at Katonah—by Annie Burr Jennings. Hans Willige, the chief psychiatrist at Ilten, had no idea that the woman named “Anna Anderson” was actually the famous Anastasia claimant. On being admitted, Willige recalled, she “showed no signs whatsoever of being mentally unbalanced. Rather, she gave the impression of someone very shy and suspicious.” Having reached this determination, Willige told her that she was free to go, but the patient declared that she would remain, “as here she fe
lt safe.” He became the last psychiatrist to examine Anderson, and offered his views only after reviewing her files from various Berlin institutions and from Stillachhaus. He was particularly critical of previous views that she suffered from any diminished memory, rejecting theories by Nobel, Bonhoeffer, Eitel, and Saathof that she had simply suppressed unpleasant events. After a year, Willige concluded that her “powers of observation and recall” were undamaged. She “frequently declined to give us information when it did not suit her,” he said, and at other times “she knowingly made false statements, quite consciously and willingly.” Thus, while he reported that she was “not insane” and “bore no symptoms of mental disease,” he deemed Anderson “a peculiar personality” marked by fears of persecution, “obstinacy,” “an unhealthy willfulness,” “unrestrained emotional impulses,” “a highly egocentric outlook,” and an “internal haughtiness,” all of which manifested themselves in a complex and confusing composition.36
Anderson’s June 1932 release from Ilten marked another restless, nomadic period in her life. She shuffled from place to place: from Ilten she briefly went to Bad Liebenzell in the Black Forest, then to stay with Frau Spes Stahlberg, a relative of Baron von Kleist; a sojourn with a family in Eisenach ended when she reconciled—perhaps out of necessity—with Rathlef-Keilmann, now forgiven for her 1928 book that Anderson had initially condemned as a betrayal. For a time the pair lived in Berlin, attending concerts and parties; then, in 1933, Rathlef-Keilmann collapsed and died of a burst appendix.37 Once again, Anderson was alone, an itinerant wandering through her own uncertain life, always dependent on the generosity of others. And it would be like this for the next sixteen years: small rooms in crowded apartments, lavish suites in castles, dingy chambers in squalid residential hotels, airy country estates flanked with gardens—nothing definite, nothing permanent.