It all started two decades ago (already?) where I innocently stumbled upon book "The Quest for Anastasia"(John Klier) that set me off like a racing formula car into curios passion towards anything about the subject. Than "Anastasia: The Life of Anna Anderson" (Peter Kurth), "The File on The Tsar: The Fate of Romanovs" (Summers & Mangold), "The Romanovs" (W.Bruce Lincoln), "Alexandra,The Last Tsarina" (Caroly Erickson), "Nicholas and Alexandra" (Robert K.Massie), "The Kitchen boy" (Robert Alexander), "Rasputin" (Edvard Radzinsky) and so on, the list continues with obvious weakness towards anything that has to do with disappearance and murder of Russian royal family. It is a truly fascinating subject that never ceased to intrigue me. It has everything: passion, drama, royal court, aristocracy, mad healers, intrigues, innocent bystanders and calculated manipulators, political turmoils, angry masses, foreign connections, bizarre disappearances than possible re-appearances, brutal murders and completely fake impostors, my God, life really creates stories far crazier than any fiction. I have also been lucky to visit the grave of last Romanovs, while in St.Petersburg and also have a little icon with their group portrait as martyrs. (Come to think of it, I am qualified enough to become impostor myself now)
You would think that DNA results from graves discovered in 1991 would finally be a last word on the whole story - we now know how Romanovs were murdered, exact names of the execution squad, where the bodies were initially hidden and than re-burried, how two bodies were missing and than eventually found, every grisly detail and much more. However, the question of Anna Anderson was never completely explained - after all, if she wasn't Anastasia than who was this woman, this obvious impostor? This book explains it all and it does a very good job at it.
At first it was maddening. It seems to me that book was basically repeating everything we already knew, just far more detailed than previous writers. This couple were fanatics, let me tell you - they knew every single detail of the story, who, where, why and how. And here are the documents to prove it. But for the life of me, I couldn't understand why are they so focused on Anastasia and Anderson while Franziska Schanzkowska got one sentence. I was reading this on a plane, on my electronic e-reader and getting all upset about it until finally it dawned on me: the story is divided in chapters - Anastasia, Anna Anderson and than (voila!) Franziska Schanzkowska. Ah, I got it now - what a stroke of genius! - believe me, my flights, I couldn't care less, I was so deep into last chapter that I could fly into space and wouldn't notice. At the end of the book I was genuinely thrilled and in fact, could re-read this last chapter again for the pure joy of it.
To those uninformed: Franziska Schanzkowska was the name of a Polish factory worker who disappeared in Berlin just about the same time Fräulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown) was found in a Berlin's Landwehr Canal. Miss Unknown spent some tome in mental institution when her first claims to have been Anastasia (coinciding with cover story in magazine) brought attention of Russian emigrants and the real story actually started here. Its really way too complicated to explain it in a nutshell here and I urge everybody to read book (or books) about the subject, because it is truly fascinating. What this particular book brings is a fresh look at the character if impostor: because now, DNA tests prove without any doubt that woman who claimed to have been Anastasia never had anything to do with Russian royal family but had very clear genetic connections to Polish family of Franziska Schanzkowska. This has been a newspaper scandal already in 1927 but somehow it seems that public wanted her to be Anastasia so twisting the facts and truth, it became a circus that truly embarrassed surviving Romanovs, since media depicted them as greedy, cold and heartless relatives who shunned poor, surviving victim of a tragedy - where in fact, this impostor was fed informations and details of Russian court life by hundreds of Russian emigrants, was giving very vague answers to most of the questions, did not look anything at all like Anastasia and did not speak Russian! While other books focused on Tsar, his wife, family, Rasputin and everybody else, this time I finally get a sense that Schanzkowska is unmasked for what she was - and along the way, authors explain how she did it, what were her motives, who were her possible helpers and how public reaction (very sentimental at the aftermath of Royal family murder) was inclined to help and believe her claim. Its truly fascinating story and I am very excited that I found this book.
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