Anna Anderson
In the summer of 1918, a Bolshevik firing squad executed the deposed Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, along with his family and a handful of close servants. The bodies were then buried in an unmarked grave. Before long, however, rumors started circulating: could it be that one or more of the former ruler’s five children had escaped with their lives? Above all, it was alleged that the imperial family’s youngest member, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, had somehow been smuggled out. For decades, girls, and then grown women, came forward claiming to be Anastasia. But none were so adamant in their claims than Anna Anderson.
The story began in Berlin in 1920. A young woman was taken into hospital following a failed suicide attempt. She carried no ID and refused to speak to confirm her name. The nurses had no choice but to keep her locked up. After a few years, however, she started to talk. And she revealed that she was actually none other than the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her story was fantastic, and captivated the public in Berlin and then around the world. The pretender claimed that jewels she had sewn into her corset managed to stop her would-be assassins’ bullets. She then managed to flee Russia and head to Germany in the hope of finding sympathetic relatives. Soon, however, she realized the futility of her plan and decided to try and end her own life, eventually ending up in the mental hospital.
Soon, prominent individuals were expressing their belief in Anderson’s claims. The son of the Romanov family doctor and even a cousin who played with Anastasia as a child argued that the mysterious woman knew things only the Grand Duchess herself would know. But others weren’t so sure. Tsar Nicholas II’s sister, who survived the revolution, dismissed the tale as nonsense, for example. Nevertheless, despite all the skepticism, the royal pretender’s supporters helped her build a life outside of the mental hospital, and even helped her travel to the United States where, in 1968, she married a professor. The couple settled down in Virginia, though Anderson continued to maintain she was born into Russian royalty.
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the bodies of most of the Romanov family were located and exhumed from the mass grave the Bolsheviks had buried them in. Some 16 years later, the remains of the final royal victims were found. DNA tests were carried out and it was confirmed that Anderson was not Anastasia. Even this wasn’t enough for her most ardent supporters – indeed, even to this day, there are some who claim she really was the Grand Duchess. However, Anderson – or the mentally ill Polish factory worker Franziska Schanzkowska as she was identified as way back in 1927 – will forever be remembered as one of the greatest impostors of the 20th century