Anastasia: From Wealth To Misery

Did the only survivor of the Russian czar family live inconspicuous in an American university city?

In the meantime, the court documents comprise nearly 8,000 pages, but concerning Anastasia’s identity they have come to no decision. Anna became more than 80 years old and lived as wife of Dr. John Manahan in a safe environment. The question, if she was the real Anastasia, stays further a historical mystery.

Did the only survivor of the Russian czar family live inconspicuous in an American university city?

The nurses of the mental hospital in Dalldorf, one of the biggest psychiatric clinics in Berlin, felt deep sympathy with the unidentified young woman who had been brought there in February 1920, six weeks after her suicide trial in the Landwehr-Canal.

The plunge caused her already very weak lungs to bleed. She was chronic anaemic and showed distinct symptoms that she had suffered from rough violence some time ago: Above her right ear was a trough in her skull like when a bullet had hit the bone. Her jaw was injured, some teeth were knocked out, some of them were loose. The top and span of one foot had three-cornered scars which derived from a sharp object. The officers who questioned the blue-eyed, dark-haired woman during her two years’ stay at Dalldorf, were convinced that she was a Russian refugee and that she was silent because she feared a repatriation. Some of the nurses could have shed more light on the dark secret of this woman, for although the patient spoke German fluently, she murmured in Russian language during her sleep from time to time. Some of them she confided to be grand duchess Anastasia who should have been shot together with her father and all family members in the summer of 1918.

But it was a fellow-patient who informed the outer world of a possible member of the Romanow-family. Clara Peuthert, who had lived in Moskow before the Revolution, was dismissed from Dalldorf in March 1922. Soon afterwards she told to a former White-Russian officer that she believed to have recognized grand duchess Tatjana, Anastasia’s elder sister, among the patients of the mental hospital. Evidently she had not spoken with the patient who called herself Anastasia. After this conversation, a former police officer from the Russian Poland, Baron Arthur von Kleist, visited the mysterious woman. In July 1922, Baron von Kleist had spread the news and “Anastasia” got into the light of publicity. However, it has to be mentioned that the woman, who later was called Anna Manahan, stated her identity as a Romanow privately but she never tried to convince the whole world of it.

One of the many people to which belong also members of the Romanow clan, who visited Anastasia was Tatjana Botkin, the daughter of the czar’s family doctor who presumably died together with the family. Tatjana Botkin had in mind to unmask the “impostor”. But instead of she recognized the nameless woman despite her emaciated outer appearance immediately as Anastasia. After some research a strong resistance from the part of the German relatives of the czarina was stated. It was evidently that “they” feared something and were very troubled as if the investigation could bring something embarrassing or even dangerous. In 1928, Anastasia went as a guest of princess Xenia Georgiewna, one second-degree cousin of Anastasia, to New York. Here, she changed her name into Anna Anderson to avoid the rush of the press. In 1931, she went back to Germany and then made friendship with a cousin of the Romanows and stayed during the next 13 years relatively peaceful as guest at different European courts.

During the Second World War Anna Anderson was fixed in the Sovjet Union. Certainly this was an event similar to a nightmare when she was certainly the person she pretended to be. After the war she became more and more excentric. She settled as a hermit together with an elder woman in a house in the Black Forest which had been bought for her, surrounded by some cats and four wild wolf-hounds.

Later the court of appeal in Berlin dismissed the petition for her legal recognition that was handed in by her attorneys. From 1957 till 1970, that case was nearly continually tried by the German courts. It is stated by documents, that King George V. Suppressed a British plan to rescue his cousin Nikolaus. Presumably he was afraid to endanger his own position when engaging himself for the czar. In 1953, Anna Anderson was justified by a statement of a very authentic source, the German Crown Princess Cecile, daughter-in-law of the German emperor.

In the meantime, the court documents comprise nearly 8,000 pages, but concerning Anastasia’s identity they have come to no decision. Anna became more than 80 years old and lived as wife of Dr. John Manahan in a safe environment.

The question, if she was the real Anastasia, stays further a historical mystery.