by Greg King
In May 1994 the court awarded custodianship of Anderson’s tissue to a third party suggested by Schweitzer, and Botkin’s daughter and son-in-law arranged for testing. On June 19, 1994, Dr. Peter Gill arrived in Charlottesville to collect a sample from the tissue. British producer Julian Nott, filming a television documentary on the case, recorded the process as five small segments were cut from the tissues preserved in paraffin blocks, transferred into sterile containers, and sealed. To avoid any contamination or challenges to the chain of custody, the samples remained with Gill until he placed them in protective storage at the Forensic Science Service Laboratory in Great Britain.11
While legal arguments had temporarily entangled the disposition of the Charlottesville tissue sample, another source of the claimant’s genetic material came to light. In September 1990, a North Carolina woman named Susan Grindstaff Burkhart learned that a Chapel Hill bookstore, the Avid Reader, had purchased much of John Manahan’s library following his death. Passionately interested in the Anastasia case since age twelve, she was looking through the boxes of books in the store’s basement one afternoon when she found several samples of Mrs. Manahan’s hair. One large clump, apparently collected from a hairbrush, was tucked inside an empty wine box packed in a box of books; other strands, cut locks of hair, were found in several of the books, held in tiny florist card envelopes inscribed by Manahan with “Anastasia’s Hair” and various dates. She purchased the volumes containing the envelopes, along with some of the large clump of hair, for $20; the remaining hair was sold to Lovell. When Grindstaff Burkhart closely examined the larger hair sample, she found that some of the hair still had roots attached, as if it had been pulled out of the head when being brushed. She discussed this with her husband, who worked in a DNA research laboratory, wondering if it would be possible to extract a usable genetic profile from the follicular strands; with this idea in mind, she carefully preserved the samples under sterile conditions in a safety deposit box. When the genetic identification of the Koptyaki remains was under way, royal genealogist and author Marlene Eilers put Grindstaff Burkhart in touch with Anderson’s biographer Peter Kurth, who arranged for the hair to be tested. Kurth traveled to Durham, North Carolina, in September 1992 to personally receive the hair sample, which Grindstaff Burkhart recalls was “prepared under strict procedures by a DNA researcher” at the lab where her husband was employed. Several strands of hair were taken to Dr. Gill at the Forensic Science Service, and six other strands were sent to Syd Mandelbaum; Mandelbaum, in turn, arranged for these strands to be tested by Dr. Mark Stoneking and Dr. Terry Melton of Pennsylvania State University.12 “My only hope in all of this,” Grindstaff Burkhart recalls,” was to help prove Anna Anderson’s claim.”13
Over the next few months, three independent scientific institutions analyzed samples of Anderson’s genetic material. In the United Kingdom, Dr. Gill and his colleagues at the Forensic Science Service Laboratory tested two tissue samples derived from different paraffin blocks preserved at Martha Jefferson Hospital, as well as strands of the claimant’s hair from the large sample found by Susan Grindstaff Burkhart. The tissue samples were degraded, but Gill and his colleagues obtained usable profiles; testing established that they had come from a female. The profile of the tissue also matched that of the hair, confirming all had come from the same person. Now the question turned on whether Anderson matched the Koptyaki remains. Gill and his team derived a nuclear DNA sequence for the bowel tissue through the use of short tandem repeats, or STRs, to determine parentage. But when this profile was compared with that found in the remains of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, and confirmed in those of their three recovered daughters, it differed in four places; a difference of only two genetic loci excludes the possibility of descent. This mismatch, Gill’s team noted, was “inconsistent with the hypothesis” that Anderson was a child of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra.14
Next, the scientists analyzed the mitochondrial DNA profile derived from the bowel tissue and the hair sample against the mitochondrial DNA sequence of the duke of Edinburgh that had been found in the exhumed remains of Alexandra and three of her daughters. This revealed six discrepancies between the Hessian sequence and Anderson.15 These two results were definitive. Nuclear DNA excluded the possibility that Anderson was a child of Nicholas and Alexandra, while deviations in the mitochondrial profile of the tissue and hair samples from the Hessian sequence precluded matrilineal descent from the empress. Scientifically, the woman known as Anna Anderson could not have been Anastasia.
Concurrent with the tests at the Forensic Science Service Laboratory, Syd Mandelbaum arranged for Dr. Mark Stoneking of Pennsylvania State University, assisted by his colleague Dr. Terry Melton, to test six strands of the clump hair discovered by Susan Grindstaff Burkhart.16 Only mitochondrial DNA testing was done on these samples; the genetic profile for the clump hair, down to the same six mismatches, was identical to those found by Gill. These tests again precluded the possibility that Anderson had been Anastasia.17
The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland, under the direction of Dr. Victor Weedn, performed a third test, commissioned, like the work of Gill, by Richard and Marina Schweitzer. This was meant to provide additional genetic reinforcement in the case and to ensure that all of the profiles derived remained consistent from facility to facility. Weedn examined new slices from the bowel tissue at Martha Jefferson Hospital and compared their mitochondrial DNA profile to that derived by both the Forensic Science Service Laboratory and by Pennsylvania State University. This new sequence matched those previously established for the tissue and for the two different hair samples. Again, the six mismatches, consistent in all of the samples, precluded any possibility that Anna Anderson had been Anastasia.18
After half a century of arguments, of contradictory recognitions and denunciations, of warring photographic comparisons and handwriting analyses, these DNA tests conclusively and damningly overturned popular belief: Fraulein Unbekannt, Anastasia Tchaikovsky, Anna Anderson, Anastasia Manahan—whatever name the world’s most famous royal pretender had answered to, the one to which she had absolutely no claim was that of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaievna of Russia. The bowel tissue examined by Gill and his colleagues genetically matched different samples examined by Weedn; the follicular hair from the envelopes found in the books was identical to the clump hair from the wine box; and the profile for the two different hair samples matched that derived for the bowel tissue. The three laboratories, working independently and relying on different samples, had achieved a uniform genetic profile for Anderson, one that excluded the possibility that she had been a child of Nicholas and Alexandra.
But if not Anastasia, who had she really been? Since the late 1920s, there had been rumors, assertions, accusations, and declarations—all rejected, mocked, ignored, or dismissed by Anderson’s supporters—that she was actually a woman named Franziska Schanzkowska, described as a Polish factory worker who had gone missing in Berlin sometime at the beginning of 1920. Some of her opponents had taken it all quite seriously: in his Fausse Anastasie, Gilliard simply described it as accepted fact, but the stories that trickled out to the public were unconvincing, the evidence in favor of this unlikely solution so contradictory that even many who completely rejected the idea that Anderson was Anastasia refused to consider this a viable possibility. “Whoever she is,” commented Princess Nina Georgievna, “she is no Polish peasant.”19
However unlikely it seemed, though, Franziska Schanzkowska was the only actual identity—other than Anastasia—that had ever been ascribed to Anderson. Knowing this, producer Julian Nott located members of the missing girl’s family and obtained a blood sample from her great-nephew Karl Maucher. This was sent to Gill’s team: if Anderson failed to match the profile for Anastasia, a comparison with the Maucher sample might conclusively confirm or refute the Schanzkowska story. When the first results showed no match to the Hessian profile, therefore, the Forensic Science Service Laboratory analyzed the Maucher sample against that f
ound in the Anderson tissue and hair. Maucher was the son of Margarete Ellerik, daughter of Franziska’s sister Gertrude; as such, he and the missing Polish factory worker would share the same mitochondrial DNA profile. And this is exactly what Gill and his team found: five identical matches between the sequence established for Anderson’s tissue and hair samples and the blood donated by Maucher. While two such mismatches could refute a genetic relationship, mitochondrial DNA could not prove identity; the most that Gill could say was that “Karl Maucher may be a maternal relative” of the claimant.20
Working independently of these scientists for German producer Maurice Philip Remy, Dr. Charles Ginther of the University of California at Berkeley obtained and sequenced a blood sample donated by Margarete Ellerik, Maucher’s mother. The resulting mitochondrial DNA profile proved identical to that of her son and to that found in the Anderson tissue and hair samples.21 But, with a genetic link established, the question of just how likely it was that Anderson had in fact been Schanzkowska came down to a statistical analysis contrasting the obtained profile against sequences collected in genetic databases. The profile shared by Anderson and Maucher, Gill found, was extremely rare—so rare that it did not appear in any database they examined. This rarity strengthened the odds that the two were indeed related. The tests undertaken by Stoneking and Melton of Pennsylvania State University established that the hair sample they examined matched the hair analyzed in Great Britain; the profiles for these samples of hair, as they now found, also matched the Maucher and Ellerik blood sequence, as did the bowel tissue tested by Weedn at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Gill estimated the probability of a random match between Anderson and the Maucher profile at “less than one in three hundred” and placed the odds that the woman known as Anna Anderson had been Franziska Schanzkowska at roughly 98.5%.22
In a case filled with extraordinary twists of fate, this was the most extraordinary of all, this genetic turn, this intrusion of modern science into the Edwardian fairy tale. There was the bowel tissue, it was true, but alone it offered only a single compelling strike against Anderson’s claim: it was the hair discovered by Susan Grindstaff Burkhart that, in many ways, provided the final, undeniable proof. “I was devastated when the results came back,” she recalls. “This was not how the fairy tale was supposed to end.”23 Those who had known the Manahans in Charlottesville had deplored the disintegration of their house, the accumulation of clutter, Jack’s well-known habit of saving anything and everything connected to his wife as a historic artifact. And yet, in the end, his diligence had unwittingly helped solve one of the twentieth century’s greatest mysteries.
The world learned the news, learned that a few millimeters of preserved tissue and loose strands of hair had destroyed the most enduring of royal legends. But in the aftermath of scientific certainty, a certainty that contradicted nearly everything the world had been led to believe about Anderson’s case, came the questions: Who was Franziska Schanzkowska? How had she managed to seem so convincing? How had she apparently fooled so many people who had known the real Anastasia? How had she come by her impressive roll of asserted memories, her linguistic skills, her scars? The DNA verdict did nothing to address these issues. The questions would remain unanswered.
Until now.
19
A Girl from the Provinces
A cold, frozen landscape stretched out as far as the eye could see: meadows green six months earlier and dotted with apple and cherry trees now blanketed in snow; forested hills rising against the dark sky; lonely, reed-rimmed lakes fringed by the white-frosted spikes of fir and pine trees. Now, this December evening, the northern edge of the Lippusch Forest, straddling the border of Pomerania and West Prussia, was still, unwelcoming, silent but for the wild boar and deer that crept over the marshes and bogs, nosing through the drifts to lap at the icy rivers trickling into the glassy lakes.1
Spidery wisps of smoke, fueled by peat burning in open hearths, curled over the cluster of little farmhouses and huts—sixteen in all—comprising the “noble village of Borowilhas,” a tiny hamlet of 117 that clustered along a single road, muddy in spring and fall, dusty in summer, and now nearly impassable with snow.2 And yet figures moved about, harnessing horses and oxen in the bitter cold, for this was Thursday, December 24, 1896—Christmas Eve—and the people who lived in Borowilhas, conservative and Catholic, were off to celebrate. It was a measure of their devotion, for this was a real trek: Borowilhas had no church, and attending Mass meant a journey over the frozen countryside to the little town of Borek, three miles to the north.
And, at one farmhouse, the activity, anticipation, excitement—it was all magnified. It was an old sod building, weathered and worn, divided in two, where “pigs, sheep, and hens,” as a later visitor found, lived under the same thatched roof as the inhabitants. There were no comforts: a worn, dangerously crumbling hearth offered the only warmth to stave off the northern winter.3 Here, just eight days earlier, on Wednesday, December 16, a rotund, middle-aged man and his hard-faced wife had greeted the birth of their first daughter. They may have been Catholic, but the couple, like their neighbors, were first and foremost Kashubians, descendants of Baltic Slavs who had settled in the area sometime in the Middle Ages. This heritage infused nearly every aspect of life: Kashubians kept to themselves, formed their own communities, celebrated their own festivals, practiced their own crafts, sang their own songs, and even spoke their own language.4 They also knew and respected the centuries-old superstitions, knew that unseen evil lurked in the surrounding forests and must be battled at every turn. Following custom, the new baby would have been wrapped in one of her mother’s aprons and a rosary placed around her neck to ward off any goblins or vampires waiting outside the house, and the heart of a freshly killed black cat hung in the fireplace to counter any hexes cast by a witch.5
Kashubian tradition also dictated that a new infant be baptized on the first Sunday following his or her birth, lest the child fall victim to the nefarious influences waiting to corrupt the innocent.6 But the deep snow of 1896 made this an impossibility, and the parents, despite the superstitions, waited until this Christmas Eve to do their religious duty. And so they bundled themselves up and set out with their neighbors across the frozen countryside to Borek’s seventeenth-century Church of St. Mary. Here, as candles burned and the congregation sang, the baby was christened after the fourteenth-century St. Frances of Rome, received into the Roman Catholic faith as Franziska Anna Czenstkowski.7 Thus, in circumstances far removed from the glittering pageantry that welcomed the 1901 christening of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaievna, began the adventures of Franziska Schanzkowska, Anna Anderson, the most famous royal claimant in history.
Birth registry for Franziska Schanzkowska.
Princess Nina Georgievna was correct in one respect: Franziska Schanzkowska was no Polish peasant. The place of her birth, today called Borowy Las, sits squarely in modern Poland, but in 1896 the entire region belonged to Germany: Borowilhas lay in West Prussia, just a few miles east of the border with the German province of Pomerania. Polish forces had occupied the land, as had Russian settlers, the Teutonic Knights, and invading Prussian and Swedish soldiers before Berlin finally seized control in the late eighteenth century.8 The Czenstkowski family, as Franziska’s ancestors spelled their name, did, though, have ties, however tenuous, to the old Polish kingdom. In 1683, King Jan III Sobieski had raised several members of the family to the drobna szlachta, or petty Polish nobility, after they helped his army repel forces of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna.9 The reward was not uncommon, but it gave the family certain rights not enjoyed by ordinary peasants and later allowed them to use the honorific “von” before their surname as a mark of their status. With the raise in rank came a minor grant of land in the area then known as Kartuzy, the marshy countryside that in the nineteenth century edged the borders of Pomerania and West Prussia.10
The countryside around Borowilhas.
Did these past noble trappings som
ehow influence Franziska in later making her claim? Was it all some misguided attempt to capture what had been lost? For lost it had been: by the time of her birth, whatever privileges had once enveloped the von Czenstkowski family were gone. They still had the thirty-acre farm in Borowilhas, originally given to them by the king when they were ennobled, along with its sod house in which Franziska was born, but not much else.11 Since his birth in 1842, her father, Anton, had struggled, struggled in Borowilhas, struggled during his mandatory three years with the Prussian Army, struggled to find a place for himself. Embittered by his lot in life, said to have harbored a passing interest in socialism, he had dropped the honorific “von” from his surname as an unwelcome reminder of just how far the family had fallen.12
Anton married late: he was fifty-four when Franziska was born. His first wife, Josefina Peek, died in 1892 after two years of marriage; in 1894, he wed twenty-eight-year-old Marianna Wietzke.13 As far as anyone could tell, it was a marriage of convenient practicalities, for aside from a shared Kashubian heritage, Franziska’s parents had little in common. Anton was gregarious and carefree, a man who disliked work but enjoyed drinking to excess with his friends; Marianna, in contrast, was an abrasive woman who seems to have left vivid and unfavorable impressions on those she encountered.14
Kashubian farmers using a cow to plough their field, turn-of-the-century postcard.
Like Anastasia, Franziska grew up with four siblings. She was not her parents’ first child: a son, Martin Christian, had been born in November 1895, but he died in infancy, as did another son, Michael, who arrived on Franziska’s third birthday, in 1899. Of the others, a second daughter, Gertrude, was born in 1898; Valerian in 1900; Felix in 1903; and Maria Juliana in 1905. Franziska’s early life was nomadic, defined by an unsettled restlessness, a succession of gruesome and grueling farms and villages where the family struggled to eke out a living. In 1897, they left Borowilhas, settling in the West Prussian village of Zukovken (now Treuenfelde), some ten miles to the north, where Anton worked as a tageloehner, or daily agricultural laborer, just one of the many desperate and dispossessed driven by poverty to indenture themselves to ensure that their families were housed and fed.15 It was a brutal existence, recorded one critic, ruled “with the rod and the whip,” where “drunkenness, theft, idleness, and the most degrading forms of immorality” were common.16 In 1900, Anton signed a three-year contract with a Pomeranian agricultural estate at Glischnitz, bringing his family with him to work and live; in the spring of 1905, they were in the Pomeranian city of Schwarz Dammerkow (now Czarna Da’brówka); and by 1906 they were working at Gut-Wartenberg, an agricultural estate just outside the Pomeranian town of Bütow (now Bytów).17