One of the most famous lies of all time is that the youngest daughter of Russian Tsar Nicholas Romanov survived the Bolsheviks murdering the Tsar, their four daughters and a son in a country town basement in July 1918.
The soldiers had been ordered to aim for the hearts before the firing began.
But soon the story began that the youngest daughter of the Romanov family, Anastasia had survived. Especially since the bodies were only found in 1979. That is to say the bodies of the whole family with the exception of a girl. She was to be found alone in another grave, but why she was not buried with her parents and siblings is unknown.
The Romanov Imperial Family
Identified with the help of the British Royal Family
The remains were not confirmed as belonging to the Imperial family until the advent of DNA technology in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and scientists were finally able to study the bones. And it is with the help of the British royal family, who agreed to hand over a DNA sample, being closely linked to the Romanov family.
But DNA technology wasn’t advanced enough at the time to confirm which girl was missing, only that it was the Imperial Family plus four of their servants.
It wasn’t confirmed to be Anastasia’s remains until 2007, but until then no one was completely sure.
Could it be that Anastasia really survived?
Anastasia was the youngest of the girls.
Can’t you see we look alike?
It can be taken for granted that the Empress and her daughters sewed a lot of jewels and precious stones into their dresses when the news came that the family would be moved from their palace. This fueled rumors that the bullets landed on the jewelry and saved the life of 17-year-old Anastasia. If one of the soldiers or servants then helped her escape.
Photo taken when the woman was admitted to the psychiatric hospital.
Two years later, in 1920, a policeman saves a young woman from a suicide attempt who threw herself into an icy canal in Berlin. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital but declined to give her name. The nurses called her “Miss Unknown”.
A year later, the unidentified woman was still a patient in the hospital. As a child, she was seen reading an article in a magazine titled “Did Anastasia Survive the Massacre?” and, among other things, a photo of Princess Anastasia.
A while later, the unidentified woman asked a nurse if she had seen anything special about the photo in the article, and the nurse said no. The unknown nurse asked if she really didn’t see that they looked exactly alike?
A romantic story
Within weeks, Russian nobles who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution began to flock to the hospital to see the missing princess. Everyone wanted to know if a family member was alive, and many had no doubts about his story. And moreover, everyone brought stories from life within the court, and Anastasia absorbed them, learning more about life in the palace every day.
Miss unknown
The story was also romantic with twists, an amazing rescue, and a young princess’s will to live that melted hearts around the world.
But almost everyone did not believe the story. Baroness Buxhoeveden, who had been one of the Imperial Family’s ladies-in-waiting but managed to escape the country in time, visited “Anastasia” in hospital and after having a detailed conversation with she, she pronounced the verdict that she was a traitor. It would be out of the question that it was Anastasia. Not only was there no sign of them, but the new Anastasia knew absolutely nothing about the princess, the family, or court life.
“Anastasia” immediately went on the defensive, saying the Baroness had betrayed the Imperial Family and did not want to reveal her betrayal. Because she openly lied.
Again, “Anastasia” found herself in trouble in 1927 when a young German woman told a newspaper in that country that it was her former roommate, a Polish worker named Franziska Schanzkowski. The Schanzkowski family members when they met “Anastasia” agreed it was Franziska, but “Anastasia” denied it and said they were all confused about the women.
Franziska Schanzkowska, probably in 1913.
Lived on Russian refugees
The woman took the name Anna Tschaikovsky, and from 1922 to 1968 she wandered between private homes and castles of her followers in Germany, Switzerland, and often visited the United States, where her life was mainly financed by them. She was regularly in and out of institutions due to mental and physical illnesses, but her whole story in those years is the subject of an entire book, as so much has been written.
Just before her permanent residence in the United States expired in 1968, she married a history professor, Jack Manahan, who was a well-known eccentric in Charlotteville, Virginia. He believed her story and fought for his wife to be recognized as Anastasia. Anna/Anastasia and lived with her husband in the south until his death in 1984. She was cremated and her ashes buried in Germany, but hair at home and samples from Anna’s many hospital visits have facilitated access to DNA.
But who really was Anna Anderson?
Fleeing from poverty but filled with despair
It is almost certain that Anna was in fact the Polish Franzisca Schanzkowski, one of the many women who claimed to be Anastasia, but the best known of them.
Anna in her later years.
While Anastasia grew up in unimaginable wealth, Anna, four years her senior, grew up in extreme poverty in the Polish countryside. Determined to escape the life that awaited her, which was the same ordeal her parents were struggling with, she moved to Berlin as soon as she was old enough.
She found a job in a munitions factory and got engaged, but her fiancé died on the battlefields of World War I in 1916. Shortly after his death, Anna accidentally dropped a grenade on the floor of the factory where she worked, blowing on her boss. pieces.
Depressed over the death of her fiancé and guilty over the death of her boss, Franzisca stopped contacting her family in Poland, but the last thing she heard from her was a birthday card she had sent to his brother in 1920.
It was as if Franzisca had disappeared from the face of the earth. But instead, Princess Anastasia came forward and is widely considered to be one of the most amazing lies in history. But maybe Franzisca herself believed her own lie? Nobody knows.
Plus, one, if not two, generations of children have grown up, many of whom still believe Anastasia survived, thanks to the hugely popular cartoon released in 1997.
Read News about Celebrity, and Gossip on The Eastern Herald.
