Thirty years later, looking back, Grand Duchess Olga was more decisively negative: “My beloved Anastasia was fifteen when I saw her for the last time in 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.… 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.” Long before Grand Duchess Olga made this statement, however, the claimant had spoken the last word on their relationship. “It is now I who will not receive her,” said Mrs. Tschaikovsky.
Rejection, even tentative, by Grand Duchess Olga, the Romanov survivor who had known Anastasia best and the only one until then who had troubled to come to see her, was a blow to the claimant’s cause. The aunt’s opinion was taken as decisively negative by most of the family and by virtually all Russian emigres. Pierre Gilliard added ammunition to the opposition cause. He gave lectures and wrote articles and eventually a book, The False Anastasia. He declared that he had known at first glance that the claimant was not his former pupil: “The patient had a long nose, strongly turned up at the end, a very large mouth, thick and fleshy lips; the grand duchess, on the other hand, had a short, sharp nose, a much smaller mouth and fine lips.… Apart from the color of the eyes, we could find nothing to make us believe that this was the grand duchess.” Everything the claimant knew about the intimate life of the Imperial family, Gilliard said, she had read in published memoirs or seen in photographs. He denounced Mrs. Tschaikovsky as “a vulgar adventuress” and “a first rate actress.”
In the years following Grand Duchess Olga’s rejection, only two Romanovs declared in the claimant’s favor. One was Grand Duke Andrew, Nicholas II’s first cousin, who had seen the young Anastasia occasionally at family lunches. Troubled by Mrs. Tschaikovsky’s claim, he received Empress Marie’s permission to take charge of the investigation. In January 1928, he spent two days with the claimant. After the first meeting, he cried happily, “I have seen Nicky’s daughter! I have seen Nicky’s daughter!” Later, he wrote to Grand Duchess Olga, “I have observed her carefully at close quarters, and to the best of my conscience I must acknowledge that Anastasia Tschaikovsky is none other than my niece the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna. I recognized her at once, and further observation only confirmed my first impression. For me there is definitely no doubt: it is Anastasia.” On this same occasion, Grand Duke Andrew’s wife, the former prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, also met the claimant. In 1967, after Andrew’s death, his ninety-five-year-old widow, who three quarters of a century before had been the youthful Nicholas II’s mistress, was asked about the claimant. “I am still certain it was she,” Madame Kschessinska replied. “When she looked at me, you understand, with those eyes, that was it. It was the emperor … it was the emperor’s look. Anyone who saw the emperor’s eyes will never forget them.”
The other Romanov who endorsed the claimant was Anastasia’s cousin Princess Xenia of Russia, who at eighteen had married an American tin mining heir, William B. Leeds, and moved to his Long Island estate in Oyster Bay. Xenia was two years younger than Anastasia and had last seen her in the Crimea in 1913, when she was ten and Anastasia twelve. Fourteen years had passed, but Xenia, having invited Mrs. Tschaikovsky to stay with her and having closely observed the claimant over a period of six months, declared, “I am firmly convinced.” Princess Xenia’s older sister, Princess Nina, also met the claimant and was more cautious. “Whoever she is,” said Princess Nina, “she is a lady of good society.”
The ultimate arbiter in the Romanov family was the Dowager Empress Marie, and, despite the old woman’s oft-reiterated hostility, Mrs. Tschaikovsky continued to hope that Marie would change her mind. “My grandmamma, she will know me,” the claimant believed. It fell to Tatiana Botkin to break the news that the empress would never receive her, that her grandmother wanted nothing to do with her, and that Mrs. Tschaikovsky should give up waiting for an invitation to Copenhagen. “Why do they reject me? What have I done?” the claimant cried out. She was told it was, in part, because of her illegitimate child. “I have not seen my child since he was three months old,” Mrs. Tschaikovsky protested. “Do you think I would allow any little bastard to proclaim himself the grandson of the tsar and the emperor of Russia?” But the dowager did not relent, and, to the claimant’s distress, Empress Marie died in October 1928, still forbidding and silent.
Worse immediately followed. Within twenty-four hours of the funeral, a document that came to be called the Romanov Declaration was published. Signed by twelve members of the Russian Imperial family, along with Empress Alexandra’s brother and two of her sisters, it announced their “unanimous conviction that the woman now living in the U.S.A. [Mrs. Tschaikovsky was with Princess Xenia on Long Island] is not the daughter of the tsar.” The document, which cited the opinions of Grand Duchess Olga, Pierre Gilliard, and Baroness Buxhoevden, largely convinced the public that the entire family had considered the evidence and rejected the claimant. But this was not what had happened. Of forty-four living Romanovs, only twelve had signed. The two Romanovs who had accepted Mrs. Tschaikovsky’s claim, Grand Duke Andrew and Princess Xenia, were not invited to sign. Of the fifteen signatories (Empress Alexandra’s two sisters Princess Victoria of Battenberg and Princess Irene of Prussia and her brother, Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse, had also signed the document), only two, Grand Duchess Olga and Princess Irene, had ever seen the claimant.
The Romanov Declaration was first published not in Copenhagen, where the dowager empress had died, but in Hesse-Darmstadt, the home of Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse. Of all the claimant’s purported relatives, Ernest was the most implacably hostile. Her supporters believed that this hostility was founded on Ernest’s determination to preserve his own reputation, a determination so strong, as they saw it, that he was willing to override and suppress the identity and appeals of his sister’s only surviving child.
What happened was this: In 1925, the claimant told a friend that she hoped for a visit from her “Uncle Ernie,” whom she had not seen since his trip to Russia in 1916. In fact, in 1916, war was raging between Germany and Russia, and Ernest, a German general, was commanding troops on the western front. A trip to Russia, made without the knowledge of the German government or general staff, to visit his sister and his brother-in-law, the tsar, could have been construed as treason. Although the mission supposedly had been undertaken with the kaiser’s blessing to attempt to arrange a separate peace, the story was deeply embarrassing to the grand duke. Having been deposed from his small throne after the war, he still hoped to get it back, and an allegation of consorting with the enemy in wartime made that unlikely possibility still less likely.
The truth about this secret mission will never be known. History has revealed no record of it. Grand Duke Ernest’s diaries for this period deal with the western front, and his letters to his wife were posted from the same area. Undeniably, there was talk during this period, in both Russia and Germany, of holding discussions to terminate the carnage. According to an adviser to Grand Duke Ernest, there was a plan to go; the grand duke submitted his plan to the kaiser and was overruled. The witness did not know whether Ernest had gone ahead on his own initiative. Another witness, the British ambassador Sir George Buchanan, wrote after the war that Grand Duke Ernest had sent an emissary in the person of a Russian woman to tell the tsar that the kaiser was prepared to grant Russia generous peace terms. Nicholas locked her up. In 1966, the kaiser’s stepson testified in court under oath that while in exile the kaiser had told him that Grand Duke Ernest had indeed been in Russia in 1916 to discuss the possibility of a separate peace. Also under oath, Crown Princess Cecilie declared of the Hessian visit to Russia, “I can assert from personal knowledge—the source is my father-in-law [i.e., the kaiser]—that our circles knew about it even at the time.”
The truth was unprovable, but, true or false, Mrs. Tschaikovsky’s statement was provocative.
Had her description of “Uncle Ernie’s” trip proved accurate, her claim to be Grand Duchess Anastasia would have been powerfully reinforced: who but a daughter of the tsar could have known this secret? And even if her statement was false, one may wonder how a bedridden young woman in Berlin came up with such an intricate dynastic and diplomatic tale.
Grand Duke Ernest vehemently denied Mrs. Tschaikovsky’s story, denounced its author, and set out to attack her credibility with all the considerable resources at his command. She was an “impostor,” “a lunatic,” “a shameless creature.” Libel suits were threatened. Grand Duke Andrew was warned that continuation of his investigation into her identity could be “dangerous.” Ernest made an ally of Pierre Gilliard, who soon was spending as much time in Darmstadt as he was in Lausanne. And he joined in—some said he was behind and financed—an effort to prove not only that Mrs. Tschaikovsky was not Grand Duchess Anastasia but that she was somebody else.
In March 1927, a Berlin newspaper announced that Frau Tschaikovsky, the Anastasia claimant, actually was Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker of peasant origin. The source for this scoop was a woman named Doris Wingender, who said that Franziska had been a lodger in her mother’s home until her disappearance in March 1920. Over two years later, during the summer of 1922, Doris reported, Franziska had suddenly returned and said that she had been living with a number of Russian monarchist families “who apparently mistook her for someone else.” Franziska had stayed for three days, Doris continued, and while she was there, the two women had exchanged clothing: Franziska took from Doris a dark blue suit trimmed with black lace and red braid with buffalo-horn buttons and a small cornflower-blue hat sewn with six yellow flowers; she handed over a mauve dress, some monogrammed underwear, and a camel’s-hair coat. Then, once again, Franziska vanished.
To verify the story, the newspaper hired a detective, Martin Knopf, who took the clothing Franziska had left behind at the Wingenders’ to one of the Russian emigre households where Fräulein Unbekannt had stayed in 1922. Baron and Baroness von Kleist recognized it. “I bought the camel’s hair myself,” said the baron. “That’s the underwear. I monogrammed it myself,” cried the baroness. For the benefit of newspaper readers, “The Riddle of Anastasia” was solved. Doris Wingender helped out by supplying eyewitness descriptions of Franziska Schanzkowska: “stocky,” “big-boned,” “filthy and grubby,” with “work-worn hands” and “black stumps” of teeth. Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse was pleased; he told the author of the newspaper series that “the outcome of this case has rolled a great stone off my heart.”
But the tale was not complete. It turned out that Wingender had initiated the affair by telephoning the newspaper and asking how much her story might be worth. She was promised fifteen hundred marks for telling her tale and for confronting and making a personal identification of the claimant. The Grand Duke of Hesse’s role in the episode became more visible. Information collected by Detective Knopf was making its way to Darmstadt before it reached the newspaper. “It is now known that the detective was hired by Darmstadt and not by the Nachtausgabe,” said Grand Duke Andrew. The Duke of Leuchtenberg, where Mrs. Tschaikovsky was staying at that time, heard from the writer of the newspaper series that the Grand Duke of Hesse had paid the paper twenty-five thousand marks for its “research” into the Anastasia affair. This allegation, printed in a different Berlin paper, led to libel suits. Meanwhile, Doris Wingender’s confrontation with her mother’s “lodger” took place. Mrs. Tschaikovsky, faced with charges of assuming a false identity, had no choice. According to the writer for the Berlin Nachtausgabe, who was present with Martin Knopf, this was what happened:
The witness, Fräulein Doris Wingender, enters the room. Franziska Schanzkowska lies on the divan, her face half-covered with a blanket. The witness has barely said “Good Day” before Franziska Schanzkowska jerks up and cries in a heavily accented voice, “That [thing] must get out!” The sudden agitation, the wild rage in her voice, the horror in her eyes, leave no doubt: she has recognized the witness Wingender.
Fräulein Wingender stands as if turned to stone. She has immediately recognized the lady on the divan as Franziska Schanzkowska. That is the same face she saw day after day for years. That is the same voice, that is the same nervous trick with the handkerchief, that is the same Franziska Schanzkowska!
To add corroboration, Franziska Schanzkowska’s brother Felix came a few weeks later to identify the claimant. They met in a Bavarian beer garden. As soon as he saw her, Felix declared, “That is my sister Franziska.” Mrs. Tschaikovsky walked over and began to talk to him. That night, Felix was handed an affidavit identifying the claimant “beyond any doubt” as his sister. He refused to sign. “No, I won’t do it,” he said. “She isn’t my sister.” Eleven years later, in 1938, the claimant had a final confrontation with the Schanzkowski family. A decree from the Nazi regime in Berlin summoned her to a room where four Schanzkowskis, two brothers and two sisters, were waiting. She walked back and forth while the Schanzkowskis stared at her and spoke in low voices. Finally, one brother announced, “No, this lady looks too different.” The meeting seemed at an end when suddenly Gertrude Schanzkowska hammered her fists on the table and shouted, “You are my sister! You are my sister! I know it! You must recognize me!” The policemen present stared at Mrs. Tschaikovsky, and, calmly, she stared back. “What am I supposed to say?” she asked. The two brothers and the other sister were embarrassed and tried to quiet Gertrude, who shouted louder, “Admit it! Admit it!” A few minutes later, everyone went home.
As the 1920s came to a close, the personal confrontations were mostly over. Both sides were exhausted. Prince Waldemar of Denmark, the brother of the Dowager Empress Marie, who, despite his sister’s disapproval, had been paying Mrs. Tschaikovsky’s hospital and sanatorium bills, was obliged by family pressure to stop. The Danish ambassador to Germany, Herlauf Zahle, the claimant’s staunchest official supporter in Berlin, was commanded by his government to terminate his activity on her behalf. “I have done my utmost so that my [Danish] royal family may be blameless in the eyes of history,” Zahle said bitterly. “If the Russian Imperial family wishes one of its members to die in the gutter, there is nothing I can do.”
With Zahle’s support withdrawn, the claimant was offered refuge by Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a distant member of the Romanov family and the owner of Castle Seeon in Upper Bavaria. The duke adopted a middle ground: “I can’t tell if she is a daughter of the tsar or not. But so long as I have the feeling that a person who belongs to my tight circle of society needs my help, I have a duty to give it.” The duke’s wife, Duchess Olga, had no such sentiments. For eleven months, she quarreled with their guest over the food, the servants, the linen, the tea service, and the flower arrangements. “Who does she think she is?” the duchess demanded. “I am the daughter of your emperor” came the imperious reply. The Leuchtenberg family divided: the eldest daughter, Natalie, passionately championed the claimant’s authenticity; the son Dimitri and his wife, Catherine, were adamantly hostile. Floating up and down the halls, an English governess, Faith Lavington, saw “the Sick Lady” every day and admired her “purest and best English accent.” Miss Lavington had an opinion: “I feel certain it is she.”
When Princess Xenia offered Mrs. Tschaikovsky rest and quiet at her Long Island estate, she accepted. Six months later, this new hostess and her guest were quarreling and the pianist Sergei Rachmaninov arranged for the claimant to live in a comfortable hotel suite in Garden City, Long Island. Here, to avoid the press, she registered as Mrs. Anderson; later, she added the first name Anna, and no more was heard of Mrs. Tschaikovsky. Early in 1929, she moved in with Annie B. Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue spinster eager to have a daughter of the tsar under her roof. For eighteen months, the onetime Fräulein Unbekannt was the toast of New York society, a fixture at dinner parties, luncheons, tea dances, and the opera. Then the pattern of destructive behavior reasserted itself. She complained about her room and the f
ood. She developed tantrums. She attacked the servants with sticks and ran back and forth naked on the roof. She threw things out the window. She stood in the aisle of a department store and told a crowd how badly Miss Jennings was treating her. Finally, Judge Peter Schmuck of the New York Supreme Court signed an order, and two men broke down her locked door and carried her off to a mental hospital. She remained in the Four Winds Sanatorium in Katonah, New York, for over a year.
While Anna Anderson was in America, the possibility arose of a hidden tsarist fortune in the Bank of England.
The claimant’s trip to America had been, primarily, the idea of Gleb Botkin, a younger son of the doctor murdered with the Imperial family. Working on Long Island as a writer and illustrator, Gleb had been asked to write articles for newspapers about the tsar’s youngest daughter, whom he had known as a child. Princess Xenia read these articles and invited the woman who might be her cousin to stay with her at Oyster Bay. While the claimant was with Xenia, Gleb became her primary adviser and visited frequently. By then, Gleb and his older sister Tatiana, who had met the claimant in Europe, were convinced that she was the grand duchess. Already a skillful artist as a boy, Gleb had drawn caricatures of animals, mostly pigs, wearing elaborately detailed Russian court dress that had delighted the young grand duchesses, especially Anastasia. When he first visited the claimant at Castle Seeon, her question before receiving him was “Ask him if he has brought his funny animals.” He had, and when she looked at them, apparently remembering, she laughed nostalgically. Thereafter, believing absolutely in her identity, Gleb had urged the claimant to turn her back on the hostile family in Europe and cross the Atlantic.