Anastasia Manahan, usually known as Anna Anderson (c. 22 Dec1896 — 4 February 1984), was the best known of several women who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last autocratic ruler of Imperial Russia, and his wife Tsarina Alexandra. Grand Duchess Anastasia was born on June 5, 1901 and was, by most accounts, killed with her family on the night of July 17, 1918 by Bolsheviks in the town of Ekaterinburg, Russia. Most historians believe that Anderson was actually Franziska Schanzkowska, a Kashubian factory worker. A private detective investigation had identified Anderson as Schanzkowska, who was born on December 26,1896, in Pomerania, East Prussia (now modern-day Poland), as early as the 1920s. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA is also a match to the Schanzkowski family, which indicates that she was most likely Schanzkowska. Her supporters continue to deny that she was Schanzkowska in spite of the two separate DNA tests conducted that matched Anderson's DNA to the Schanzkowski family.

Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. Following Anderson's death, the DNA tests were conducted on samples of her tissue that had been stored at a Charlottesville, Virginia hospital following a medical procedure. The DNA tests showed that Anderson's DNA did not match the Romanov remains or Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (a relative of the Romanovs), but was consistent with the mitochondrial DNA profile of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska.

Seventeen year old Grand Duchess Anastasia was, by most accounts, murdered along-side the rest of her family on the night of July 17, 1918 in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Her death has been reportedly verified according to eyewitness testimonies. Yakov Yurovsky, the Chekist operative and commissar who oversaw the execution of the Romanovs, stated that the entire imperial family and entourage, including Anastasia, were killed. There are also eyewitnesses who testified to her survival, among them a man who lived across the street from the Ipatiev House. However there is no proof to back up these claims other than his testimony in court.

Anna Anderson's first claim to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia occurred after her failed attempt at suicide in Berlin 1920, although it was not until 1922 that her claim became world famous. Later, she explained that she had gone by train and walked to Berlin to seek out her "aunt," Princess Irene, sister of Tsarina Alexandra. Once she reached the palace, she claimed that no one would recognize her or, worse, that they would discover she had borne a child out of wedlock. In shame, she attempted to take her own life by jumping off a bridge into the cold water of the Landwehr Canal.

She was rescued by a passing official and became a ward of the state as a patient in a mental hospital in Dalldorf. The young woman was covered, according to her doctors at the asylum, with half a dozen bullet wounds and lacerations, including a star shaped scar behind her head (the doctors originally believed this led to her original loss of memory). The doctors also surmised that the woman was probably a “Russian refugee” because of her Eastern accent. Also noted was a triangular shaped scar on her foot. Because she rarely spoke and refused to provide hospital staff with any information about herself, the nurses nicknamed her Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown). She did, however, claim to Nurse Thea Malinovsky in 1921 that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia. However, the Nachtausgabe originally recorded the date as 1922. Anderson remained in the asylum for two years until Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed she recognized Anderson to be the Grand Duchess Tatiana, based upon photos of the Grand Duchesses she saw in a magazine.

Baroness Sophie von Buxhoeveden, a former lady of waiting at the Russian Imperial Court, was the first to visit the asylum in order to determine if Anderson's claim to be a daughter of Tsar Nicholas II was legitimate. Upon arrival, the baroness pulled Anderson up off the bed and claimed that she was “too short to be Tatiana”. She left believing Anderson a fraud, and never wavered in her opinion. Anderson later stated that she never claimed she was Tatiana, but that she was Anastasia.

Thus began a series of events that would shape Anderson's life forever, regardless of who she really was. Miss Unknown, who began calling herself Anastasia Tschaikovsky (she told confidantes the name of the Russian soldier who rescued her, married her, and eventually fathered her a son was Alexander Tschaikovsky) claimed to have survived the massacre in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where the Imperial family is believed to have been murdered. She said that as the assassination began she passed out, and after falling to the ground, she was shielded from additional harm by the body of her sister, Tatiana. The still unidentified Tchaikovsky and his brother, supposedly part of the executioner's squad, noticed she was still alive amongst the corpses after the execution and were able to sneak her out of the building past manned armed guards. After her rescue, she was supposedly brought to Bucharest by Alexander and his brother Serge, their sister Veronica, and their mother. She claims to have had a child with Alexander, and they got married in Bucharest. It was in Bucharest, she said, that Tschaikovsky was killed in a street brawl. According to Greg King and Penny Wilson, authors of 'The Fate of the Romanovs', it is now possible to accurately name the ten men who formed the execution squad plus the names of the guards at the Ipatiev House. None of them had the name of Tschaikovsky as claimed by Anna Anderson. No evidence of the existence of her alleged rescuers has ever been found.

At no time did the claimant make any attempt to approach the closest family member who had last seen Grand Duchess Anastasia outside of Russia in 1914, her Mother's first cousin, Queen Marie of Romania, during her entire alleged time in Bucharest. Upon her release from the asylum in Berlin, Anastasia was taken in by Baron Von Kleist, a Russian emigré who believed her claim. It was suspected by some that the Baron himself was the inventor of Anderson's claim to have been spirited out of Russia by cart. It was also suspected by her opponents that the Baron had also put together an agreement stating that he would receive 50,000 crowns upon the claimant's recognition by the Dowager Empress. However, Anastasia felt he was putting her on display and making a spectacle out of her, so she ran away and was taken in by Inspector Grünberg.

While Anderson was staying with the inspector, Empress Alexandra's sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, came to visit her under an assumed name. Princess Irene failed to recognize Anderson as her niece. Princess Irene's son, Prince Sigismund later sent Anderson a list of questions that he said only Anastasia could know how to answer. It is claimed that Anderson answered every question correctly. However, the Princess Irene herself was not impressed. “I saw immediately that she could not be one of my nieces. Even though I had not seen them for nine years, the fundamental facial characteristics could not have altered to that degree, in particular the position of the eyes, the ear, etc. .. At first sight one could perhaps detect a resemblance to Grand Duchess Tatiana.” During dinner the claimant had reportedly simply left the table and gone to her bedroom. She later claimed her departure was not to do with social pressures but because she realized she had been tricked: she had not been told that her aunt was to be among her fellow guests.

In 1925, Anderson developed an infection in her arm and was again placed in a hospital. Sick and near death, she lost a lot of weight. It was during this time that Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, the younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II and Anastasia’s aunt, who had survived the Revolution and settled in Denmark, came to Berlin to see the woman who claimed to be her niece. She spent several days with the patient and exchanged letters with her for a time. Writer and illustrator Harriet von Rathlef suggested that Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna appeared conflicted about Anderson's identity, as were Imperial tutor Pierre Gilliard and Gilliard's wife, Alexandra Tegleva, who had been Anastasia's nanny. However, according to Dr. Sergei Rudnev (the doctor treating Anderson), Gilliard never referred to the young woman as “Her Imperial Highness” as Rathlef had claimed and said that the woman in the hospital was not the Grand Duchess. The fact she couldn't speak or read Russian, English or French at the time like all the tsar's daughters, was sufficient proof for Gilliard that Anderson was an impostor. Both Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna and Gilliard later declared they had known that she was a fraud. Gilliard denounced Anderson as being "a cunning psychopath".

Grand Duchess Olga did reportedly feel sorry for Anderson. She sent Anderson presents consisting of a small photo album and a knitted shawl. According to Coryne Hall, author of "Little Mother of Russia", Olga discussed Anderson with her mother, Dowager Empress Marie. Exactly what she told her mother is unknown but the Empress made it plain that she was not interested and was angry with her for travelling to Berlin. "What do you think? she exclaimed, "That I would sit here .. and not rush to my granddaughter's side?"

In Olga's authorised biography, "The Last Grand Duchess" by Ian Vorres, her version of the story is told :

"When Olga entered the room, the woman lying on a bed asked a nurse: “Ist das die Tante?”[Is this the Aunt?] “That”, confessed Olga, “at once took me aback. A moment later I remembered that the young woman having spent five years in Germany, would naturally have learnt the language, but then I heard that when she was rescued from that canal in 1920, she spoke nothing but German – when she spoke at all- which was not often. I readily admit that a ghastly horror experienced in one’s youth can work havoc with one’s memory but I have never heard of any ghastly experience endowing anyone with a knowledge they had not had before it happened. My nieces knew no German at all. Mrs Anderson did not seem to understand a word of Russian or English, the two languages all the four sisters had spoken since babyhood. French came a little later, but German was never spoken in the family”.

“My beloved Anastasia was fifteen when I saw her for the last time in the summer of 1916. She would have been twenty four in 1925. I thought Mrs Anderson looked much older than that. Of course, one had to make allowances for a very long illness and the general poor condition of her health. All the same, my niece’s features could not possibly have altered out of all recognition. The nose, the mouth, the eyes were all different.”

The Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna remarked that the interviews were made all the more difficult by Mrs Anderson’s attitude. She would not answer some of the questions, and looked angry when those questions were repeated. Some Romanov photographs were shown to her, and there was not a flicker of recognition in her eyes. The Grand Duchess had brought a small icon of St Nicholas, the patron saint of the imperial family. Mrs Anderson looks at it so indifferently that it was obvious the icon said nothing to her.

“That child was as dear to me as if she were my own daughter. As soon as I sat down by that bed in the Mommsen Nursing Home, I knew I was looking at a stranger… I had left Denmark with something of a hope in my heart. I left Berlin with all hope extinguished. "

Olga Alexandrovna offered an explanation and clarification of one of Anderson's famous 'memories':

“…The mistakes she made could not be all attributed to lapses of memory. For instance, she had a scar on one of her fingers and she kept telling everybody that it had been crushed because of a footman shutting the door of a landau too quickly. And at once I remembered the incident. It was Marie, her elder sister, who got her hand hurt rather badly, and it did not happen in a carriage but on board the imperial train. Obviously someone, having heard something of the incident, had passed a garbled version of it to Mrs Anderson."

Prince Christopher of Greece commented on the visit of his first cousin, Grand Duchess Olga to Anna Anderson,"Even when the Grand Duchess Olga, the favourite aunt of the Czar's children, was brought to see her, she gave no sign of recognition and could not remember the pet name by which she was always known in the family." Another Imperial tutor, Charles Sydney Gibbes, met Anderson much later in Paris and denounced her as well. He was certain she was a fraud. "If that's Grand Duchess Anastasia," Gibbes exclaimed, "I'm a Chinaman." It is curious that Anna Vyrubova, closest friend and confidante of Tsarina Alexandra, was never asked her opinion on the claimant. It was mentioned by Tatiana Botkin that since she was a "disciple of Rasputin" association with her was not welcome, but a more likely reason is that Anna, more than anyone else left alive, could have exposed the claimant as a fraud, and having become an Orthodox nun, her testimony in court would be harder to discount than the others framed as liars by Anderson's supporters.

Other people who knew the young Anastasia quite well, like the Grand Duchess’s childhood nurse Alexandra (Shura) Tegleva failed to identify Anderson as Anastasia. Tegleva accompanied her husband, Gilliard, to meet with Anderson in 1925 and confirmed that Anderson's foot disorder, hallux valgus (bunions), was similar to that of the real Grand Duchess. "This is somewhat like Anastasia's body," she declared. Anderson asked Shura to cover her forehead with perfume, a ritual that Shura remembered from Anastasia's childhood when she wanted her nanny to "smell like a flower." "Shura", like many others, never made an official statement in support of Anna Anderson. However, the Empress's close friend Lili Dehn did identify her as Anastasia.

Prince Christopher of Greece, first cousin of Nicholas II, wrote about her in his memoirs, "Dozens of people who had known the Grand Duchess Anastasia were brought to see the girl in the hope that they might be able to identify her, but none of them could come to any definite conclusion. ... The poor girl was a pathetic figure in her loneliness and ill health, and it was comprehensible enough that many of those around her let their sympathy over-rule their logic. But at the same time there was little real evidence to substantiate her story. She was unable to recognise people whom the Grand Duchess Anastasia had known intimately, ..."

Gleb Botkin and his sister Tatiana Botkin, nephew and niece of Serge Botkin, who was at the time head of the Russian emigre' society in Berlin, and son and daughter of the Imperial Family's personal physician Dr Eugene Botkin who perished with his imperial patients in the Ipatiev House in 1918, were two of Anderson's greatest supporters. Gleb and Tatiana Botkin spent much of their youth near the Imperial Family. Gleb Botkin's uncle, Serge Botkin, presided over the Russian Refugee Office in Berlin. He represented the interests of Russian exiles in Germany and came to the aid of Anderson. There has been much speculation by many, including John Godl, that the Botkins may have been the brains behind the whole charade, helping her with memories, in exchange for fame and financial gain should the claim pay off. Both Botkins wrote books about Anderson. Others, including Peter Kurth, author of Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, believe that the Botkins were sincere in their belief that Anderson was Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia.

Dr. Von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for the opposition in the Anderson trials of the 1950's, believes that although wishful thinking in Russian émigré circles played a part in the affair money was the principal motivation behind Anderson's claims, the supposed lost fortune of the tsar estimated at US$80,000,000.

"I believe it was at the beginning of the 1930's a corporation (Grandanor) came into existence," he says, "which sold certificates in proportion to tsarist gold roubles allegedly held by the Bank of England and redeemable if or when Anderson should "inherit" said funds. These papers were not worth anything. They served only to enrich the initiator".

Gleb Botkin met Anna Anderson in May 1927, and declared instantly she was Anastasia. He later decided to take her with him to New York, where he provided articles on Anderson to newspapers. In an effort to attract attention to Anderson, Botkin attacked the sisters of Nicholas II and the Romanov family in general.

Although no immediate relation of Nicholas II believed Anderson's claims, the continued saga was, for many, like salt being rubbed in an open wound. The Romanovs believed that Gleb Botkin and his accomplices were seeking monies, which they did not possess. The Dowager Empress relied on a pension from her nephew King George V and her daughter Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna lived in a grace and favour house also provided due to the kindness of King George V. . They believed that the Botkins wanted to use the money for their own ends and treated him with contempt.

Grand Duke Andrew Vladmirovich, first cousin of Nicholas II, who had some contact with Anastasia before the revolution, met Anderson in 1928 before she set out to New York with Gleb Botkin. He wrote to his cousin Grand Duchess Olga, "There is for me no doubt; she is Anastasia." Prince Felix Yussopov, husband of Princess Irina of Russia, daughter of Grand Duchess Xenia, wrote to Grand Duke Andrei about Anna Anderson, "I claim categorically that she is not Anastasia Nicolaievna, but just an adventuress, a sick hysteric and a frightful playactress. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be in doubt of this. If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar ... These false pretenders ought to be gathered up and sent to live in a house somewhere." The Tsar’s former mistress who married Grand Duke Andrei after the revolution, Mathilde Kschessinska met Anna Anderson towards the end of her life out of curiosity.

Certain people (in this case, Captain Felix Dassel) would question her, having trick questions such as “The billiard table was on the second floor” and Anna would reply, “You remember nothing. Billiard was on the first floor.” Prince Christopher of Greece commented on Anna Anderson's supposed knowledge of imperial residences that the Grand Duchess Anastasia knew extremely well, ".. her descriptions of rooms in different palaces and of other scenes familiar to any of the Imperial Family were often inaccurate."

At around the time when Anna was suffering from yet another severe illness, she claimed that Alexandra's brother, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, had been visiting Russia in 1916 during the First World War. The Romanov family believed that the allegation, which would have been tantamount to treason, might have been revenge for the family's intense criticism and opposition to their activities. There has never been proof; travel documents, photographs or any tangible evidence to support the allegation. The only evidence ever produced was witness testimony solicited by Anderson's legal teams, which was dismissed as unsubstantiated hearsay by the courts. The Grand Duke's "supposed" trip, and the incident has been flatly denied repeatedly by the Hessian royal family. The diary of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig places him in Verdun in France during the time of the "supposed trip". The Hamburg Tribunal overseeing the Anderson case eventually ruled, "The trip did not take place." Ernst Ludwig hired a private investigator, Martin Knopf, to investigate her claims. It was strongly implied that Anderson was a missing Kashubian factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska, who had been injured from dropping a grenade in munitions factory where she worked. Anderson claimed that her scars were from the execution, which she barely escaped.

To see if this story was true, the Danish Ambassador Zahle and Anderson supporter Harriet von Rathlef set up a meeting between Anderson and Franziska Schanzkowska's brother Felix. When Felix saw her from a distance, he declared, "That is my sister Franziska." At the end of the day, when asked to sign an affadavit, he, without explanation, changed his mind. "I will not sign it. That is definitely not my sister." He then pointed out several differences between his sister and Anna Anderson. However, it must be considered that claiming such a sister would not have helped either of them, and would have caused numerous legal and financial woes for her, and possibly her relations, should it be revealed she filed a false claim. Felix Schanzkowski was later quoted by his daughter as saying "We left her to her 'career' as 'Anastasia.'" Protocols from Dalldorf allege that she spoke Russian with the nurses. Nurse Erna Buchholz alleged that she "spoke Russian like a native." Later, she refused to speak Russian, and although she clearly understood it, she would only respond in German. She explained her unwillingness to speak Russian by saying that she was unwilling to use the language spoken by the people who murdered her family, as they were not allowed to speak any other language in the Ipatiev House. Prince Christopher of Greece said "In the first place she was unable to speak Russian, which the Grand Duchess Anastasia, like all the Czar's children, had talked fluently, and would only converse in German."

In 1938, Anderson's lawyer initiated a suit in German courts to claim an inheritance which was handed out to relatives of Empress Alexandra who declared all the Imperial family to be dead. Anderson’s lawyers declared that Grand Duchess Anastasia was still alive. Her supporters fought for her claim. Experts were called to compare the features of Anna Anderson with the Tsar's daughter. Her ear was declared by an expert, Moritz Furtmayr, to be identical in 17 anatomical points to Anastasia's, and her handwriting was declared by Dr. Minna Becker to be identical to that of the Grand Duchess. Anderson's legal teams, like their opposition, were articulate and well organized. German Courts heard an almost endless procession of handwriting experts, historians and forensic scientists scrutinizing photographs and documents usually contradicting opposing depositions. Her opponents including Anastasia's first cousin,Lord Mountbatten, nephew of Tsarina Alexandra and the Grand Duke of Hesse, fought just as hard, to prove she was the missing Kaschub factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska.

As early as 1928, twenty-four hours after the Dowager Empress's death a statement signed by twelve Romanovs and three of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna's family was relased making their views abundantly clear, It was their, "unanimous conviction that the person currently living in the United States is not the daughter of the Tsar." The signatories were: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna and her six sons and her daughter, Princess Irina, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, the Grand Duke of Hesse and his sisters Princess Irene of Prussia and Victoria, Dowager Marchioness of Milford-Haven. To the end of his life in 1979, Lord Mountbatten and other members of various royal families believed this to be the case.

The legal case dragged out until 1970, when the court determined that she had not proven herself to be the Grand Duchess.

Dr. Von Berenberg-Gossler, opposing attorney in the Anderson case, said he believed the desire of the press to sensationalize the story led to only one side being told, which caused only the romanticized version to survive. He said during Anderson's German court cases the press were always more interested in reporting her side of the story than the opposing side's less glamorous perspective. He claimed that editors often pulled journalists off the story after they reported testimony delivered by Anderson's side. He claimed journalists ignored rebuttal evidence, which meant the public seldom received a complete picture of the evidence presented.

After moving to the United States in 1928, Anderson lived for several months on Long Island with Mrs. William B. Leeds (born Princess Xenia Georgievna Romanova of Russia), a daughter of Grand Duke George Mihailovich of Russia and Princess Maria Georgievna of Greece and Denmark, until she was asked to leave. Prince Christopher of Greece described the stay, "She stayed with my niece, ... who showed her the greatest kindness, Then her treatment of the Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the last Tsar, led to a quarrel with William Leeds, who turned her out of the house." Princess Xenia Georgievna, who had played with Anastasia when they were children, was of the opinion that Anna Anderson was Anastasia and didn't change her mind even when she asked Anderson to leave her home. "One of the most convincing elements of her personality," Princess Xenia recalled later. "was a completely unconscious acceptance of her identity. She was herself at all times and never gave the slightest impression of acting a part. I am firmly convinced that the claimant is, in fact, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia." Gilliard pointed out that Princess Xenia had last seen her second cousin when Xenia was ten and Anastasia was twelve. Xenia responded that she didn't recognize Anastasia visually, but felt she was qualified to tell the difference between a member of the Romanov family and a "Polish peasant woman." Anderson bore a strong family resemblance to Tsarina Alexandra's family and her moodiness and temper also reminded Xenia of her cousin Anastasia. Xenia's sister, Nina, met Anderson for five minutes and came to no conclusion about her identity. Princess Nina did indicate that Anderson seemed to her to be a "lady of good society" who could speak Russian. It is interesting to note what Prince Dmitri, son of Grand Duchess Xenia wrote about what Princess Xenia had stated, "Xenia's irresponsible statement should be somewhow refuted ... We know she left Russia in 1914 aged 10 years old, I also know that Nina (her sister) and Xenia never saw Uncle Nicky's family very often, and when they did see them that was when they were very young."

When Anderson later came to live in the Garden City Hotel on Long Island, she booked in as Mrs. Eugene Anderson to avoid the press. From 1947 to 1968 she lived in Bad Liebenzell-Unterlengenhardt, a small village in the Black Forest near Stuttgart. In 1968 upon returning to the U.S., Anderson, around the age of 70, married an American supporter, John Eacott Manahan. The couple lived in relative squalor in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she died of pneumonia in 1984. Her body was cremated according to her wishes. This is very controversial, since Anastasia Nicholaievna Romanov had been born and raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, which firmly opposes cremation. This leads many of those who doubted Anderson to believe she wanted to make sure no tests were ever done on her body.

In 1991, the bodies of the royal family were exhumed, and it was discovered that the bodies of Alexei, and one of his sisters, identified as Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia by Russian scientists and as Grand Duchess Anastasia by American scientists, were not in the grave. The mitochondrial DNA of the bones unearthed from a forest grave, presumed to be those of Alexandra and three of her daughters, were compared to that of the Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine was a sister of Alexandra. This proved to be a match.



Anderson's tissue sample was later discovered stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital. Anderson’s DNA was compared with those of the Romanovs, at the suggestion of Marina Botkin Schweitzer, the daughter of Gleb Botkin. Anderson’s DNA sample did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, meaning that the tissue sample tested belonging to Anderson could not have belonged to Anastasia. At the press conference, Dr. Peter Gill stated, “If one accepts that this sample is from Anna Anderson, then it is almost impossible that she could have been Anastasia.” Subsequent comparisons with DNA samples provided by Franziska Schanzkowska's great nephew Karl Maucher were a match, meaning he shared the same mitochondrial DNA profile as Anderson.

There were also several strands of hair tested which produced the same mtDNA sequence as the tissue. The hair came from a woman who claimed she found the hair at a used bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia. Inside a book which belonged to Jack Manahan, there was an envelope which read "Anastasia's hair". Inside were several strands of hair which she gave to Anderson biographer Peter Kurth. He in turn gave them to a BBC reporter who in turn transferred them to Aldermaston for DNA testing. The hair did not match that of the Romanov remains.

The DNA tests came as an unexpected shock to those involved with Anastasia Manahan. Few who had known her were willing to accept that this woman was a Kaschub girl who had been working in the factories. They argue that she could not have known so much about the Imperial family’s life, and have so much inside knowledge of the imperial family, and could not reconcile their impressions of Anna Anderson with having been a Kaschub peasant born in the late 19th century, when, they say, class distinctions were so great. In spite of the DNA evidence , Anderson's supporters have attempted to point out what they say are differences between Franziska Schanzkowska and Anna Anderson, such as the languages they spoke and physical differences.

Peter Kurth, a long time supporter of Anna Anderson, never wavered in his personal belief that she was Anastasia. "The DNA tests have won the hour, and will probably stand as the final word on the case that has left everyone who came near it, for or against, with a sense of tragedy and persisting, nagging doubts." He added, "No one doubted that whoever she was, she had been traumatized."

The only surviving photograph of Schanzkowska was taken when she was sixteen. Some have described the teenager depicted there as an "attractive, bright eyed, intelligent young woman." Her childhood friends remembered her as pretentious, putting on airs and graces. One historian speculated that Schanzkowska must have taught herself etiquette and deportment, like socially ambitious girls of her class and generation. Peter Kurth asserted in his Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson that the photo of Schanzkowska has been frequently retouched.

On August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time of the assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years, one month old and her brother Alexei was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were twenty-two and twenty-one years old at the time of the assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes. Tests are still being conducted on the remains to determine whether they are the remains of the two missing Romanov children.

In 1928, a film was made based very loosely on the woman who would one day be called "Anna Anderson" in 1928. It was a silent film called "Clothes Make the Woman".

In 1956 there was a film made about a figure based on Anna Anderson, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman as Anna/Anastasia, and Yul Brynner; however, this film is highly fictionalized.

NBC ran a two-part fictionalized mini-series titled "Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna" which starred Amy Irving and won her a Golden Globe nomination. It was based on a biography written by long time Anna Anderson supporter Peter Kurth.

Kevin Hearn of the band Barenaked Ladies wrote a song called "Anna, Anastasia" for his solo album H-Wing.

In 2006, Diana Norman, writing under the pseudonym Ariana Franklin, published a novel "City of Shadows," a fictionalised account of Anderson's time in Berlin from 1920 to 1933. In it she seems to accept that Anderson was in fact a fraud, but invents a colourful post-Revolution history for the Grand Duchess herself.

*Romanov claimants

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* Article by Peter Kurth — Anna Anderson’s biographer tells why he doesn't believe Anna Anderson was Franziska Schanzkowska. * Anna Anderson Exposed: Fact Fiction and Fantasy - a site challenging the identity of Anna Anderson * Russian Forensics - A site demonstrating the Russian agenda to prove Anastasia's remains were in the grave. * Article by Rey Barry — Journalist Rey Barry — friend of Anna Anderson and Jack Manahan, and a supporter of her claims. * "Jack & Anna: remembering the czar of Charlottesville eccentrics" article in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_Hook_weekly%3C%2Fa%3E" title="the%20Hook%20weekly%3C%2Fa%3E">the Hook weekly</a> * Anastasia: Duchess in Disguise — another website arguing that photographs of Anna Anderson look like Anastasia. * Anastasia and Anna Anderson — A narrative of Anastasia’s death. * Anna Anderson/ Anastasia Manahan — A paper written by a supporter with a list of reasons why they believe that Anna Anderson was Anastasia. * Anastasia: The Truth - A website by an Anna Anderson supporter correcting supposed misstatements recently made about Anastasia and Anna Anderson. * Could Anna Anderson be Anastasia? - A web site discussing the DNA tests done on Anna Anderson. * Anastasia: The Unmasking Of Anna Anderson - An online article on Anna Anderson and her claim. * Jack & Anna: Remembering the czar of Charlottesville eccentrics - an article on Jack and Anna Manahan and their life in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA after their marriage.