Image: Anastasia Tschaikovsky in 1922. (Public Domain)
On this day in history, February 6, 1928, a lady named Anastasia Tschaikovsky, declaring to be the youngest child of the slain Russian Czar Nicholas II, arrives in New York City. This woman held a press conference aboard the liner Berengaria, explaining that she was there to have her damaged jaw reset. She claimed that a Bolshevik soldier broke the jaw during her harrowing escape during the execution of her whole family – the Romanovs – at Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1918. Tschaikovsky was greeted in New York by Gleb Botkin, who was the son of the Romanov family doctor who was killed along with his patients in 1918. Botkin called her “Your Highness” and stated that, without a doubt, she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia with whom he played as a child.
Between 1918 and 1928, several women came forward, claiming to be the lost Romanov daughter. So many had come forward that people were naturally suspicious of Tschaikovsky’s assertions. Despite this, she was treated as a celebrity during her stay in New York, and she was often invited to society parties and fashionable hotels worthy of a Romanov heir. While registering at one hotel, she used the name Anna Anderson, which later became her permanent alias.
After the Romanovs were executed, the Bolsheviks’ stated that Nicholas II had been killed and that Alexandra and their five children were taken to a safe location. Later it was revealed that the whole family had perished, but a persistent rumor spread throughout Europe that Anastasia, the youngest child, had survived. Several pretenders came forward trying to cash in the Romanov fortune tucked away in European banks, but they were very quickly exposed as the frauds that they were. But then there was Anna Anderson.
On February 17, 1920, it began. A young lady attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in Berlin, Germany. She was rescued from the Landwehr Canal by police and taken to a medical clinic for treatment. She refused to tell anyone her identity and was committed to the Dalldorf Asylum, where she lived anonymously until 1922. Then she announced that she was Anastasia, to the surprise of many.
In Europe at the time, there were a great many Russian exiles who had fled Russia when the revolution occurred. Several of them rallied around the young Anna Anderson, who, at first glance, very well could have been the lost Anastasia. She had stated that a Bolshevik soldier, noticing that she was still alive after the execution of her family, helped her to reach Europe. A few months after claiming to be Anastasia, she was released from the asylum and moved in with the first of a long line of supporters.
During the following years, her entourage of Russian emigres grew exponentially. Also, during this time, several Romanov relatives and acquaintances interviewed Anna, and many were impressed by both her resemblance to Anastasia and her knowledge of many of the small details of the Romanov family life. Others, however, had serious reservations about her when she continuously failed to remember important events regarding young Anastasia’s life. Anna’s skills in speaking English, French, and Russian were severely lacking, while the young Anastasia was fluent in all those languages. However, many blamed this deficiency on the fact that she had spent several stays in an asylum.
At the same time, her supporters were waging a campaign to have her legally declared the true Anastasia. This recognition would give her access to whatever wealth the Romanovs had outside of Russia and make her a strong political pawn of czarist exiles who still hoped to overthrow the communist regime in Russia.
The Grand Duke of Hesse, Alexandra’s brother, and Anastasia’s uncle were huge skeptics of this campaign. The Grand Duke hired a private investigator to learn the true history of Anastasia Tschaikovsky’s life. The investigator found out that she was, in fact, Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish-German factory worker from Pomerania who had disappeared in 1920. Schanzkowska had a long history of mental instability and was injured in an ammunition factory explosion in World War 1, which accounted for the multiple scars on her body.
Over the following years, until she died in 1984, she lost every lawsuit she brought to prove she was Anastasia. Anna Anderson would spend her final years in the United States married to an eccentric history professor named J.E. Manahan.
In 1991 Russian investigators found what they thought were the remains of the Romanov family. With the help of British DNA experts, they could prove that the remains were, in fact, the Romanovs using blood from Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth II, who was the grand-nephew of Alexandra. To prove that it was Nicholas II, he exhumed his brother’s body, Grand Duke George, and extracted a DNA sample which proved that it was the czar.
Everyone was accounted for except for one of the Romanov daughters. Was it possible that Anastasia had escaped and resurfaced as Anna Anderson? In 1994 British and American scientists obtained a tissue sample of Anderson’s from a Virginia hospital and compared it to the DNA of the Romanov females and sons. As well, American scientists tested a strand of Anna Anderson’s hair. The British and the American scientific teams came to the same conclusion: Anna Anderson was not a Romanov.
After that, the scientists compared Anna Anderson’s DNA with that of Karl Maucher, the grand nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska, and it was a match, which proved the theory put forth by the German investigator in the 1920s. One of the significant mysteries of the 20th century was partially solved.
Subscribe to “History Daily with Francis Chappell Black’s” Blog to receive regular updates regarding new content:
Help us with our endeavors to keep History alive. With our daily Blog posts and our publishing program we hope to inform people in a comfortable and easy-going manner. This is my full-time job so any support you can give would be greatly appreciated.
History Daily With Francis Chappell Black 
Leave a comment