by D M Potts
The cremation of Mrs Manahan’s body and the disappearance of her blood sample left the problem of her identity open and the reported absence of Anastasia’s skeleton from the Siberian grave increased interest in the problem.
Modern medicine requires blood and tissues for many kinds of tests. Recently, samples of Mrs Anderson’s tissues, preserved for histological examination after intestinal surgery in 1979, have come to light in the Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville. In life Mrs Anderson was the subject of the longest legal case in Germany history, in death her five posthumous gut fragments immediately became the subject of a legal wrangle. The hospital authorities argued that under Virginian law they could only be handed over to her next-of-kin or authorized executor. Eventually they agreed to release them at the petition of Martha Botkin, whose grandfather had died with the tsar at Ekaterinburg. As the samples were fixed and embedded in wax gross preservation was good but the chemical process of fixation made the recovery of DNA difficult. However, in October 1994 Dr Gill of the Home Office Forensic Laboratory announced the results of comparisons of the mitochondrial DNA profiles from Mrs Manahan with those of the Russian royal women and one Carl Moucher, a great-nephew on the female side of Franziska Schanzkowska, the Pomeranian munitions worker identified by the Duke of Hesse’s detective. According to a television programme screened on 5 October 1994 the DNA profile did not match that of the royal women but that further work was required to determine whether or not it matched that of Carl Moucher, although it more closely resembled Moucher than three hundred other unrelated profiles. Simultaneously, it was announced11 that tests in America of the mitochondrial DNA profiles from samples of Mrs Manahan’s hair matched that of Moucher, but that profiles from a blood sample, supposed to be that of Mrs Manahan, did not. On balance it seems very likely that Mrs Manahan was Schanzkowska although a small doubt remains.
Labelled locks of hair from each of the four daughters, preserved in the Museum of Communism in Moscow, have recently come to light, and samples have been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory. Unfortunately only the roots of hair contain cells and therefore DNA, and so far no reports have been made as to the identity of the three daughters. Individual identification would require chromosomal DNA, not mitochondrial DNA, which is identical in all children of the same mother.
Although Mrs Manahan was the best-known case, the absence of the bodies of the tsarevitch and one of his sisters increases interest in the cases of other possible survivors. Radzinsky in his recent book has provided evidence that the tsarevitch himself might have survived in Russia. This seems very improbable in view of his vulnerability to the hazards of everyday life, let alone a firing squad, however drunk. Nevertheless, in the absence of his skeleton the tale is worth repeating.
One of the people who wrote to Radzinsky after his observations became public was a psychiatrist at Karelian Psychiatric Hospital Number I from Petrozavodsk, Dr K. Kaufman. She told of caring for a mentally sick man in 1947. ‘Amid incoherent utterances in a mass of other expressive exclamations the name ‘Beloborodov’ flashed by two or three times.’ Alexander Beloborodov was Chairman of the Ural Soviet and agreed to the tsar’s execution. Dr Kaufman said that the man’s birth was recorded as 1904, he suffered from haematuria (or blood in the urine), had a scar on his buttocks and had one undescended testicle. Like Mrs Manahan, he knew a lot about court protocol and the layout of the Winter Palace. He claimed that his father, the tsar, had pressed his face to his chest when the shooting began and that he had later been rescued from the cellar of the Ipatiev house. The Head of the Psychiatric Hospital Number I confirmed this story when Radzinsky contacted him. The patient had gone under the name of Semyonov. Mental hospitals are notoriously home to Napoleons and Jesus Christs and some of these are superficially convincing, but one would have to have been severely deranged to have claimed to be the tsarevitch in early Communist Russia.
Haemophilia never cures itself and prior to the availability of Factor VIII few haemophiliacs lived beyond the age of forty. There could be other causes of Mr Semyonov’s haematuria than haemophilia and it seems surprising that there was no additional clinical evidence of haemophilia, such as damaged joints, in a man supposed to have survived forty-three years with the disease. In July 1918 the tsarevitch was recovering from another episode of bleeding and, while he seems to have survived the first round of killing, his disease would certainly have complicated any recovery and made survival unlikely.
Dr Kaufman said she and her colleagues kept the patient’s identification secret and he was eventually discharged to a Soviet labour camp. An independent witness said he had been impressed with Semyonov and all the prisoners believed his story. But would the authorities really have permitted the tsar’s son to survive in Stalin’s Russia?
First reports from Russia stated that the missing daughter was believed to be Anastasia.12 More recently a Russian Government Commission has reported that the missing daughter was Marie. The results of the Amersham DNA tests have still to be published and the American historian Peter Kurth suggests that the Russian announcement is an attempt to pre-empt the Amersham report. ‘They are resentful of Western scientific judgements on what they regard as their own mystery. They want it to be a purely Russian affair. If the Western scientists say Anastasia is missing, the Russian scientists will say Marie is missing.’ At present, in 1995, the identity of the missing daughter is still not settled beyond question and there is a remote possibility that it was Tatiana who survived. This depends on the credence that can be given to another unverifiable and rather unreliable source, the diaries of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, DSO. All seventy volumes are stored in the Rhodes Library at Oxford and form the basis of Michael Occleshaw’s book The Romanov Conspiracies.13 At the time of the tsar’s death Meinertzhagen was in charge of British Military Intelligence for Russia, Persia, Afghanistan and Romania, and reported directly to King George V.
Meinertzhagen was almost a caricature of a professional army officer, dashing, moustachioed, courageous but with a liking for practical jokes. On 18 August 1918 he wrote a brief account of his activity during the previous month: ‘On July 1st everything was ready and the plane took off. Success was not complete and I find it too dangerous to give details. One child was literally thrown into the plane in Ekaterinburg and brought to England where she still is.’ Meinertzhagen appears to have typed his diary from earlier notes. Like most diaries it was an emotional safety valve, although he remained professionally discreet about his intelligence work. According to Occleshaw this last survivor, fearing assassination, lived under an assumed name, suffering from tuberculosis acquired in captivity. She married an English officer with the genealogically striking name of Owen Tudor but died young without children and is now buried in the north-east corner of the new graveyard at Lydd in Kent, under the name Larissa Feodorovna. When Tatiana’s mother was accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church, after her marriage to Tsar Nicholas, her new baptismal name was Alexandra Feodorovna, as the service took place in St Feodor’s Cathedral. Had there been any reference to this remarkable episode in the unpublished diaries of the tsar, Radzinsky would presumably have reported it, so the story is almost certainly fiction, but a comparison of the DNA from the bones in the grave at Lydd with those of the tsarina’s relatives would be interesting. Colonel Meinertzhagen is a most unreliable witness. Even his later reputation as an ornithologist has recently been clouded by detailed accusations of the theft of specimens from the British Museum of Natural History and the falsification of records.14
Shortly after Anna Anderson moved to America, yet another individual made a public claim to be a living daughter of the tsar: her story was exceedingly odd, although not totally impossible. She was Mrs de Graaf, a resident of Dorn, the small Dutch town where Kaiser Wilhelm had lived in exile from 1918 to his death in 1941. There is no evidence that Suzanna Catherine de Graaf ever met the man she claimed to be her half-cousin. She lived a quiet life as the local faith healer and psych
ic, held in some affection by a group of close-knit Dutch neighbours. In October 1968 she told a reporter from Figaro that she was a daughter of Nicholas II: not a survivor from Ekaterinburg, but a disowned fifth daughter born between Anastasia and Alexis.
In 1903 it had been publicly announced that the tsarina was pregnant. On 1 September her doctors reported that she had a pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy (something her ancestor Bloody Mary had also experienced). Mrs de Graaf claimed her adoptive father told her in 1937 that the pregnancy really ended in a live birth, and that the imperial family had concealed the birth and abandoned the infant to the care of others. ‘Russia,’ she commented, ‘demanded an heir to the throne. There were already four girls. . . . The reason for my repudiation: I was a girl, not a boy.’15
An improbable story, but Mrs de Graaf did have some curious supporting evidence. She owned a large number of crisp rouble notes, with consecutive serial numbers (although these could be bought for almost nothing after the Communists took over), some Romanov linen, china and other trinkets. The tsarina had been greatly influenced by the quack French doctor Philippe Vachot, who promised to determine the sex of her children. He complained that he had been consulted too late in the case of Anastasia: Mrs de Graaf claims Vachot spirited her out of Russia and that in 1912 she received a dowry of 12 million roubles.
The author James Blair Lowell16 has pieced together Mrs de Graaf’s history. Her legal father, Leendert Hemmes, was born in 1874 and made a living as a piskijker – or ‘piss watcher’ – a psychic who interpreted his clients’ urine and whose own father had been drowned at sea when he was four years old. There is no explanation as to why or how Vachot might have chosen Hemmes, and the suggestion that Leendert’s father might have travelled the Baltic or that Vachot (and Alexandra) were crazy enough to select a pisswatcher to care for a royal daughter is extremely tenuous. The most curious fact is that while Suzanna’s father never showed any talent and neighbourhood psychics are rarely wealthy, he did buy himself a handsome house in Rotterdam that still exists. Could he have received money from the imperial family?
Irina Yussopov claimed to have heard of a Romanov daughter called Alexandra who ‘died as a child’, and Mrs de Graaf adopted the name Alexandra. Gleb Botkin knew about Mrs de Graaf and wanted her story ‘thoroughly investigated’ and Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg17 took the trouble to visit her.
Alexandra and Nicholas, whatever their shortcomings, were doting parents. It is unlikely that they would have abandoned a fifth daughter, however strong the political pressures. On the other hand, the tsarina was certainly desperate and certainly under the sway of Phillipe Vachot. Mrs Anderson insisted her younger sister had been kidnapped by Vachot from a drugged tsarina, adding a ludicrous touch to an improbable tale. Perhaps the best that can be said is that if Mrs Anderson had been who she claimed to be, then the strange story of Suzanna (Alexandra) de Graaf (Romanov) would have to have been taken seriously.
Could Victoria’s gene help unravel her story? If true, she had a 50 per cent chance of being a carrier. Mrs de Graaf married twice, first to Antoon van Weelden by whom she had a son (also called Antoon and born in 1929) and second to Jan Barend de Graaf, by whom she had another son and then twin daughters (born in 1945). Mrs de Graaf died in 1968, so her blood cannot be examined to see if she was a carrier for haemophilia. It is certain, however, that neither of her sons were haemophiliacs, which makes it less likely that her story is true, but does not totally disprove it. One of the twin daughters died aged ten, the other is alive and according to Lovell looks remarkably like Tsarina Alexandra does in her photographs. It is possible, although not likely, that she is a carrier. If she were it would prove her mother’s claims beyond reasonable doubt.
A gentleman styling himself Prince Alexis d’Angou de Bourbon Conde Romanov-Dolgoruky, presently resident in Madrid, claims to be the son of Anastasia’s sister Maria, and heir to the Russian throne. His claim depends on the survival of Maria, rather than Anastasia or Tatiana, and her marriage to a Prince Nicholas Alexandrovitch Dolgoruky, a descendant of the Ukrainian royal house, both of whose parents lived lives of total obscurity. Even if his descent were verified his claim would not stand as Tsar Paul I introduced Salic law into Russia, that is descent through the male line only, as in Hanover, and this law has never been repealed. This would also exclude Georgi, the son of the Grand Duchess Maria, daughter of the last tsar’s uncle Grand Duke Vladimir. People in some parts of the former Soviet bloc, especially in Romania, have talked about restoring their monarchies. In the travail that has overtaken Russia as she struggles from Communism to a free market, Tsar Nicholas has been a source of pride for some groups. So, if all the pretenders’ claims are proved to be false, who is the real heir to Tsar Nicholas’s kingdom? According to Salic law the heirs would be Major Paul Romanov, one-time US marine major, and his eldest son. The major’s grandfather was Grand Duke Paul Romanov, brother of Tsar Alexander III. Grand Duke Paul was murdered by the Communists but his son Dimitri escaped because he had been banished from Russia for his part in the murder of Rasputin. Here Queen Victoria’s gene played a part in the survival of the royal line as well as the death of the last tsar and his family.
On 14 July 1998 the surviving skeletons were reinterred in the royal chapel of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, in St Petersburg, in a storm of controversy. While President Yelstin, clutching a candle, made a moving apologetic speech on behalf of the Russian people, the ceremony was boycotted by the Duma, the Russian Orthodox Church and most of the surviving members of the Romanov family. The Duma because it was dominated by the left, the church because it had claimed for many years to possess some relics of the murdered couple and in spite of the scientific evidence, was unwilling to admit that it must have been mistaken, the family because they cannot agree on the order of succession.
NINE
THE COBURGS AND HAEMOPHILIA IN IBERIA
After the defeat of Napoleon Belgium was united with Holland to provide a barrier to French expansion to the east, but the Roman Catholic Belgians, and particularly the French-speaking half of the population, were not happy under the rule of the Protestant House of Orange. When the Belgians revolted in 1831, they first offered their crown to a son of Louis Philippe, the King of France, but the other powers were not prepared to tolerate such an expansion of French influence only sixteen years after Napoleon. Knowing that, as Baron Wessenburg aptly put it, ‘He had a strong liking’ for a throne, the Belgians then offered it to Leopold. Although brought up a Protestant he was flexible in matters of religion; the throne of Greece would have required him to become Greek Orthodox. The cautious Leopold agreed to accept the throne if the London Conference of 1831 would guarantee the neutrality of Belgium. This guarantee was incorporated into the London Treaty of 1839. ‘Belgium of its own accord bound itself to remain neutral and its very neutrality is based upon that neutrality which the other powers guaranteed and are bound to maintain if Belgium kept its engagements.’ It was this guarantee which drew Britain into the First World War and which led eventually to the destruction of both the British and German empires and most of the thrones on to which Leopold was so carefully to introduce his relatives, but the guarantee was to secure the borders of Belgium for nearly a century. Being avaricious as well as ambitious, he also demanded a settlement of £83,000 from the British taxpayer to cover various imaginary debts, as a condition of surrendering his £50,000 p.a. pension, and in spite of ferocious opposition in the House of Commons, he had his way.
Spain and Portugal, with their Roman Catholic orthodoxy and Mediterranean culture, would seem to be unfavourable ground for Coburg ambitions, yet both were incorporated into the Coburg domain.
A few years after gaining the throne of Belgium Leopold expanded the Coburg empire again by marrying one of his numerous nephews, Ferdinand, to the Crown Princess of Portugal. The background to this coup was curious. After a brilliant period of expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Portugal entered a long
period of decline, and by the eighteenth century was the most isolated and backward country in Western Europe. The Portuguese royal house of Braganza produced the most inept, bizarre and eccentric kings in Europe, a succession of fairy-tale or black-pantomime characters. Under the medieval conventions prevailing at the Portuguese court the royal infants were brought up on a diet of flattery and servility, without any form of discipline. The royal tutors could do no more than humbly entreat their charges, and consequently some of the kings could not spell their own names but displayed an extraordinary range of behaviour from altruism to sadism, unrestrained by education or morality, further deformed by the inbreeding frequent in the family.
John V, nephew of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, built a fantastical palace where 9,000 were banqueted for a week on end and 10,000 troops were reviewed on the roof. His successor kept a seraglio of 300 nuns in the convent of Adivelas which became famous for the pornographic literature it produced. When Miguel (1828–34) wanted some amusement he would break into the home of one of his unfortunate subjects with a gang of friends and smash up all the furniture and crockery. To cap the joke he would then make his victim kneel in homage, under pain of instant execution. Alternatively, he would ride down the main street of Lisbon knocking off the hats of all the pedestrians with his stick while those in carriages were made to alight and kneel in the mud. When these frolics palled he would toss young pigs into the air and catch them on his sword or pluck chickens alive. The country was ripe for a Coburg takeover.