by Greg King
And Anastasia? When the remains of Olga, Tatiana, and Marie were exhumed from the mass grave in 1991, each had their femurs intact; the discovery of a fragmented female femur, as Dr. Coble wryly noted, closed the door to any idea of “Yurovsky taking a portion of the femurs from the first grave and sneakily burying them nearby.”36 The shattered femur, shown to belong to a female, shown to be from a daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, shown to be a descendant of the empress—this and a few charred bone fragments were all that remained of Russia’s most famous Grand Duchess.37 The myth that Franziska had made seem so convincing, so real, for so many years, was over: Anastasia was no longer missing.
In 1967, in an unguarded moment while speaking with Alexei Miliukov, Franziska spoke of “who I am, and who I pretend to be.”38 It was the second and last time that she admitted her deception, but the remark passed unnoticed. Propelled by favorable assumptions and a shifting prism of truth, Franziska’s story spiraled beyond her own control and entered the realm of legend, where the few verifiable facts of her case slipped into obscurity as the myth assumed a life of its own.
Was she victim or villain? The portrait of Franziska that emerges is neither black nor white, neither entirely calculated nor ruled by a confused mind. From a nomadic childhood, a youth of indulgence and unsavory rumors, she developed into a singular young woman of fragile emotions and warring personalities, deprived of maternal affection and bereft of comforting influences. Her experiences in Berlin—the loss of a fiancé, pregnancy, the accident at AEG—shattered whatever stability she had temporarily achieved; a nervous breakdown led to involuntary commitment, to declarations of insanity. She found no comfort in her 1917 return to Hygendorf; attacked at Gut-Friederikenhof, left physically battered, she staggered from crisis to crisis, from impoverished despair to rumors of prostitution until the weight of a hopeless life drove her into the waters of the Landwehr Canal.
And what began as a ploy for a few extra privileges, a few special attentions, this claim to be Anastasia, soon became something more as the possibilities stretched before Franziska, weaving an alluring and ready lifeline to a woman desperately in need of salvation. It all came together in a most extraordinary way, a series of coincidences that coincided with desire. In 1922, when word of her claim spread through émigré circles in Berlin, there wasn’t any real evidence proving that Anastasia had perished in Ekaterinburg. Reported sightings, whispers of escape, and persistent rumors all played into Franziska’s hands, giving her story a veneer of unlikely plausibility—a situation that wouldn’t change until a decade after her death. She found a group of uncertain Russian émigrés still traumatized by the Revolution, a fractured collection of refugees divided by loyalties and beliefs and ruled by hope. Scarred by the loss of their country, their titles, and their fortunes, many were susceptible to any echo from their vanished past. Her claim played upon these dreams, where intriguing possibility joined force with a deeper need, a psychological desire, to make sense of overwhelming loss.
It was a performance so apparently convincing that even after the 1994 DNA tests, no one could answer any of the lingering questions. But Franziska’s claim—and her abilities—evolved in a natural fashion as she assimilated information and grew into the role of Anastasia. At first she said little, offering few details to support her claim, but increased exposure to former aristocrats, courtiers, and published materials allowed her to add names and dates to her tale, to recognize faces and places as she built her identity. She understood desire—the desire from those she met, those who wanted to be convinced, and from the world at large. And the world, through the efforts of Harriet von Rathlef-Keilmann, Gleb Botkin, Dominique Auclères, and Peter Kurth, through the sympathetic newspapers and magazines, through the performance of Ingrid Bergman, viewed her as a woman wronged, a tragic figure, the living embodiment of an exotic and brilliant vanished past. Anastasia was an unremarkable young woman when she stepped across the threshold of that cellar room in the Ipatiev House; it was her rumored survival as Anna Anderson that made her extraordinary.
Chance and coincidence aided Franziska, but she was, in her own right, a remarkable woman. Someone of fewer capabilities and dedication, who lacked the mental acumen to absorb the myriad details that came her way, would undoubtedly have failed in the difficult quest she set for herself. Martin Knopf, the detective working for Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, made an important observation: “There is a difference,” he wrote in his report on Franziska, “between being uneducated and incapable of education. She was quite capable of educating herself.”39 It was Franziska’s genius and her gift that she understood precisely what was needed to make her claim seem possible; that she knew when to retreat if danger threatened; and that she knew how to deploy her considerable personal charm to best present herself as a viable pretender. That she continues to arouse strong passions is scarcely surprising, given the length of her claim and the extent to which it became a part of twentieth-century popular culture; she still has believers, even in the face of the DNA results, people sincerely troubled—as we once were—by previously unanswered questions in her case. And she has an oddly vocal group of modern critics, those with no connection to the story but who, ruled by sentimental nostalgia for the vanished Romanovs, disdain the very mention of her name, insisting that discussion of her claim somehow insults the memory of the real Anastasia. But those who would confine Franziska to a grudging footnote do history a disservice, ignoring her singular place in the story of the last Romanovs.
If Franziska was coldly calculating, especially after her temporary disappearance in 1922, she also paid a high price for her charade, condemned to forever dwell in a world she could not escape. Hers became a kind of twilight existence: she could never force her claim and risk exposure, nor could she simply abandon the pretense for fear of legal repercussions. She once confessed to Tatiana Botkin that she bore a heavy burden on her conscience, perhaps an acknowledgment that years of deception had taken an emotional toll.40 Condemned to exist in a netherworld of uncertainty and ambiguity, Franziska could only transform herself into the curious figure of Anna Anderson, a phantom grand duchess forever doomed to haunt the Romanov story.
It is impossible to know if, in the end, Franziska’s brain ever crossed that intangible line between fantasy and reality, if she actually, in her last years, came to believe and embrace the lie she had woven over the decades. But in a very real sense, she became Anastasia. It was, after all, a more emotionally satisfying and perhaps even believable life than the one she had so willingly abandoned. Franziska lived for eighty-seven years; of these, she spent sixty-four, three quarters of her life, as the would-be grand duchess. This reality, this purloined life, ironically rescued the real Anastasia from obscurity. Through Franziska, Anastasia survived the execution in Ekaterinburg, appeared before a fascinated public in books and magazines, and gazed out from across time in the motion pictures that kept her story alive. It is the greatest irony in Franziska’s tale: the farm girl from an obscure German village turned the real grand duchess, whose name appropriately meant “Resurrection,” into a modern legend.
Notes
This book draws on a number of different archival sources and references. In addition to the authors’ collection of materials on the case of Anna Anderson, which includes numerous documents, letters, and the audio recordings of her conversations made in the 1960s by Alexei Miliukov, we have drawn on the following:
Nicholas Sokolov Archive: Copies of the multvolume dossier assembled by White Army investigator Nicholas Sokolov during his 1919–1924 inquiry into the murders of the imperial family. These were made available to us during research for our 2003 work The Fate of the Romanovs.
Polish State Archives, Warsaw: Census records for Pomerania and West Prussia, registry records from Borok and Sullenschin, and the records from the former German District Registry Offices of Kreis Stolp, Pomerania, and Sullenschin, West Prussia, items and entries referenced within individual source notes.
GARF: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskii Federatsii (State Archives of the Russian Federation), Moscow.
APRF: Arkhiv Presidentsii Rossiiskii Federatsii (Archive of the President of the Russian Federation), Moscow.
TsDOOSO: Tsentr Dokumentatsii Obshchestvennykh Organizatsii Sverdlovskoi Oblasti (Center for Documentation of the History and Party Organization of the Sverdlovsk Region), Ekaterinburg.
Ian Lilburn Collection: Archives, documents, and records collected and assembled by Anderson historian Ian Lilburn, and in his private possession in London.
Peter Kurth Collection: Documents and records collected and assembled by Anderson’s biographer Peter Kurth, and in his private possession.
Staatsarchiv, Darmstadt: The dossiers, records, depositions, legal notes by Dr. Hans Hermann Krampff and Dr. Gunther von Berenberg-Gossler, and evidence assembled by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse against Anna Anderson’s claim, and continued by his surviving son Prince Ludwig of Hesse. Previously kept at the Hessian royal family’s estate, Wolfsgarten, this was transferred to Darmstadt following the death of Prince Ludwig’s widow, Princess Margaret of Hesse. Most documents in the archive have not yet been assigned formal reference numbers. Where such numbers do exist, we give them in the individual source notes; those materials lacking specific reference numbers have been cited simply as “Staatsarchiv, Darmstadt.”
Hamburg: Anastasia Prozess, lodged in the Staatsarchiv, Hamburg (most material also reproduced in the Staatsarchiv, Darmstadt). This is the single largest collection of materials related to Anderson’s claim, spanning her thirty-seven-year legal battle to prove that she was Anastasia. Materials from petitions to the Central District Court (Amtsgericht) in Berlin, the High Court (Landesgeriht) in Berlin, and the Court of Appeal (Kammergericht) in Berlin, covering the years 1938–1957, are lodged in Hamburg under the files labeled Bln (for Berlin). When Anderson launched her civil suit against Barbara, Duchess Christian Ludwig of Mecklenburg, the Berlin materials were incorporated into the new record, which covered the trials at the Hanseatic High Court (Landesgericht) in Hamburg, 1957–1961, and the appeal to the Hanseatic Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) in Hamburg, 1964–1967. Material from the 1970 appeal to the West German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgericht) in Karlsruhe was appended to the existing Berlin and Hamburg records, and is all listed in the Staatsarchiv, Hamburg, under one general heading. To simplify matters, we have referred to all of these materials as “Hamburg,” and given the appropriate reference citations within the individual source notes—for example, Hamburg, IV, 470, indicating volume 4, page 470.
Introduction
1. Chavchavadze, 228.
2. See Longworth for further discussion.
3. See Troyat and Troubetskoy for further discussion.
4. Chavchavadze, 233.
5. Tatiana Botkin, affidavit of May 2, 1929, in Hamburg, Bln I/113–127.
6. Notes of Erika von Redern, secretary to Edward Fallows, from records and bulletin of Dalldorf Asylum, May 16, 1929, cited in Kurth, 6; Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer, report of March 18, 1926, quoting Elisabeth Hospital admission report of February 18, 1920, in Hamburg, XIV/2389–2402; See Auclères in Le Figaro, February 5, 1965, and September 24, 1969; Kurth, 330–331.
7. Schiller Report, cited in Kurth, 32; Dr. Theodor Eitel, report of December 22, 1926, in Hamburg, VIII/1394–1402.
8. See Horan, 141.
9. Dr. Serge Rudnev, report of March 1926, in Hamburg, XIV/2485–2488; Dr. Serge Rudnev, affidavit of July 18, 1938, in Hamburg, Bln I/134–138; diary of Faith Lavington, entry of November 15, 1927, in Hamburg, XXXIV/6402–6428.
10. Auclères, 249.
11. See Summers and Mangold, 227–228.
12. See Kurth, 57.
13. Rathlef-Keilmann, 106.
14. Olga Alexandrovna to Anna Anderson (hereafter AA in Notes), undated letter, autumn 1925, in “Application to the Amstgericht Court, Berlin, in the matter of the Estate of Anastasia Nikolaievna Romanov, Case No. 461.VE.733/38,” pleading submitted by Paul Leverkuehn and Kurt Vermehren on behalf of AA, October 31, 1938, and lodged in Hamburg under Bln, 33.
1 “My God, What a Disappointment!”
1. Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, diary entry of June 5/18, 1901, in Maylunas and Mironenko, 206.
2. Nicholas II, diary entry of June 5/18, 1901, in Maylunas and Mironenko, 206.
3. Eagar, 52; details drawn from imperial christenings described in Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 103–105; Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, 238–241; and Marie Pavlovna, Education, 66.
4. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 103–105; Eagar, 52; Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, 240; Marie Pavlovna, Education, p. 66.
5. Prince Christopher of Greece, 55.
6. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 76; Colonel Eugene Kobylinsky, statement of April 6–10, 1919, in Sokolov Archive, vol. 3, doc. 29.
7. Anastasia Nikolaievna, letter to Nicholas II, October 28, 1916 (Old Style), in Maylunas and Mironenko, 406; Anastasia Nikolaievna, letter to Nicholas II, May 8, 1913 (Old Style), in GARF, F. 601, Op. 1, D. 1156; Anastasia Nikolaievna to Nicholas II, letter of September 23, 1914 (Old Style), in Maylunas and Mironenko, 402.
8. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 93.
9. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 150.
10. Vyrubova, 76; Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 62–63.
11. Vyrubova, 77; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 157; Dehn, 78; Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 73.
12. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 75; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 158.
13. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 75.
14. Hough, 265.
15. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 75; Dehn, 79; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 158; Vyrubova, 78.
16. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 156.
17. Dehn, 78.
18. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 156.
19. Botkin, Au Temps des Tsars, 81; Dehn, 78.
20. Vorres, 111–112; Olga Alexandrovna to Princess Irene of Hesse, Princess Heinrich of Prussia, letter of December 22, 1925 (this letter is misdated 1926), in Hamburg, Bln III, 181–182; Alexandra Feodorovna to Nicholas II, letter of January 8, 1916, in GARF, F. 601, Op. 1, D. 1150.
21. Botkin, The Woman Who Rose Again, 23.
22. Vorres, 112; Xenia Georgievna, Mrs. Herman Jud, testimony of February 10, 1958, at the West German consulate, New York City, in Hamburg, IV/749–751.
23. Chavchavadze, 57; Xenia Georgievna, Mrs. Herman Jud, testimony of March 16–17, 1959, at the West German consulate, New York City, in Hamburg, VII, 1214–1230.
24. Eagar, 20–21; www.alexanderpalace.org; Dehn, 79.
25. Vyrubova, 77; Dehn, 79; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 156.
26. Dehn, 78–79; Eagar, 21.
27. Vyrubova, 77–78; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 157–158.
28. Dehn, 78.
29. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 157.
30. Vyrubova, 57–58.
31. Eagar, 39; Vyrubova, 58; Volkov, 65–66; Dehn, 46.
32. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 83.
33. Vyrubova, 56–59.
34. Mossolov, 62–64; Voyekov, 216.
35. Eagar, 272.
36. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, 320–321; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 150.
37. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 77.
38. Vyrubova, 79.
39. Ibid.
40. Vyrubova, 80; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 156.
41. Vorres, 112.
42. Grabbe and Grabbe, 69.
43. Mossolov, 241–242.
2 The Imp
1. Grabbe and Grabbe, 69.
2. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 12, 17.
3. Gilliard and Savitch, 14.
4. Ibid.
5. Charles Sidney Gibbes to Alexander Mikhailovich, letter of December 1, 1928, in Hamburg, XXIII, 4403–4404.
6. Alexandra Feodorovna to Margaret Jackson, letter of August 19, 1912, in Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 129.
7. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 77; Vyrubova, 73; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 156.
8. Gilliard and Savitch, 14.
9. Trewin, 10, 29.
10. Trewin, 13–17; Benagh, 11–18.
11. See Trewin for several examples of Anastasia’s later English compositions and her questionable grasp of the written language.
12. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 76–77; Gilliard, in the Illustrated London News, July 16, 1927, 102–103; Gilliard and Savitch, 14–18.
13. Verdict of the Bundesgerichthof (West German Federal Supreme Court), Karlsruhe, February 17, 1970, appended to Hamburg, loose.
14. Item No. 8, German Composition Book, “A. Romanova, February 16, 1916, Tsarskoye Selo,” receipt dated April 22, 1964, in Hamburg, XX, 3834.
15. Gilliard and Savitch, 18; Gibbes, statement of July 1, 1919, in Sokolov Archive, vol. 5, doc. 31; Buxhoeveden statement of March 12, 1922, in Gilliard and Savitch, 36.
16. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 75, 77.
17. Gilliard and Savitch, 15.
18. Vorres, 112.
19. Trewin, 74; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, 155–156.
20. Botkin, Real Romanovs, 179.
21. Rathlef-Keilmann, 51; Olga Alexandrovna to Princess Irene of Hesse, Princess Heinrich of Prussia, letter of December 22, 1925, in Hamburg, Bln III, 181–182; Gilliard and Savitch, 78; statement of Maria von Hesse in Gilliard and Savitch, 141.
22. Gilliard and Savitch, 16.
23. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, 75–76; Dehn, 78.
24. Vorres, 112.
25. Vyrubova, 77, 80.
26. Mossolov, 247.
27. Anastasia Nikolaievna to Nicholas II, letter of May 8, 1913 (OS), in GARF, F. 601, Op. 1, D. 1156.