Anastasia- Russia " Lost Princess"

In the 1930s a woman calling herself Anna Anderson threw herself into the Seine in Paris. She was rescued and brought to hosptial where she showed the nurses pictures of the Romanovs in a magazines and pionted out how like Anastasia she was. The she went further claiming she was infact the Russian Princess and that she had been rescued by a White soldier from the Cellar in the Ipatiev house the morning after the shooting. She said she had come to Paris to find relatives and in a fit of despair attempted suicide. Although DNA tests later suggested she probably wasn't Anastasia she still stunned people with her intimate knowladge of the Romanovs private lives. There were others like her but they were all dismissed as nonsense.

However when the bodies of the Imperial family were dug up in the early 1990s it was discovered that two sets of remains were missing. Scientific tests showed that the ages heights etc of the remaining bodies prooved that they were those of the Tsar, his wife and their three eldest daughters meaning the missing bodies had to have been those of Anastasia and her younger brother Alexei the Tsarevich. Now people looked back at the stories of Anna Anderson and others and wondered whether there might be any truth in them. Interestingly no young man ever came forward claiming to be Alexei.

Could Anastasia and/or Alexei have survived the shooting in the Cellar Room? If so how? And if not then where are their bodies now and why weren't they with the others?

 i read somewhere the Tsars family had jewels sewn about their clothing and that not all of them died right away because the diamonds etc sewn in their clothes had deflected the bullets fired at them.[quote]

Thats true! What happened was the Tsarina wrote a letter from the Ipatiev House to her daughters(they weren't all taken together because 3 of the girls had to remain in St.Petersburg to care for Alexei) and told them to " Dispose of the medicines as agreed" . What she really meant was to hide the royal jewels. So as you say the girls sowed them on to their corsets where the Bolsheviks ( they hoped) would never find them. They formned a sort of bullet proof vest for the girls and so the Bolsheviks resorted to bludgeoning the girls to death with thier Bayonets. Sadly they then discovered the jewels and stole them off the bodies. Lucklily some of them were later recovered.

But Alexeis may have become a character similar to Alexandre Dumas 'Man in the Iron Mask'. Kept locked away someplace as a political prisoner to be used if things turned sour or never to be seen again if things panned out right.)[quote]

Interesting theory! Never thought of that!

Anna Anderson was a poor fake, she couldn't even speak Russian, a pretty good give-a-way.

A while back they did a DNA test on her body and proved conclusively she was not a Romanov.

The again she was a polish peasant who conned an awful lot of rich people out of their money, so you've gotta give her, her due.

Anastasia was the name of my first love.

As Paul said,Anna as the missing princess of the latest Tsar was  fake..

I actually met Mrs Anna Anderson in January 1957 when I interviewed her for Picture Post magazine where she was living in the Black Forest, courtesy of the Saxe-Altenburgs. Her Russian was at least as good as mine. At that time mine was still pretty fluent - I had only a year or two earlier qualified as an Army interpreter - but not good enough I admit to judge the social quality of it.

Even at that time she still had a minor member of the Tsarist aristocracy (I forget the name) with her as an attendant, who seemed quite happy to accept ther story.

There was criticism of the fact that her French was not as good as might be expected for a member of the Royal family, but it was overlooked by many that the social language preferred in the Tsar's family (as opposed to the Russian aristocracy at large) was English, not French.

I was unable to come to any firm conclusion about her except that I believed she believed her own story (that she was deluded is certainly possible). But to dismiss her as a 'poor fake' is not justified at all. Excellent fake she may have been.

I missed that. Do you have a reference?

Where do you get the 'Polish' bit from?

I don't know where you got that from, but it's way wrong. It was the Landwehr canal in Berlin and it was in 1920.

Moreover it was others in the hospital who recognised her resemblance to Anastasia[1], not her that first claimed it. The hospital had her listed as 'Fraulein Unbekannt' (Miss Unknown) for two years.

[1] Actually she was first thought to be Tatiana.

The wikipedia article is pretty good and objective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anderson

Pretty amazing story.

I think the Wiki article you included in the later post answers your questions, but it also makes me doubt she really was Polish. How many Polish factory workers speak Russian, French and English. A Russian princess of that era should have pretty good English, Anna could have learnt hers in the US in later life. When you spoke did she have good English/ an American accent.

Originally posted by gcle2003 Originally posted by Spartakus 1957? Man,how old are you? 72

     having recently joined AE i was beginning to despair i was the oldest member at 42.  

Paul the philosopher.

I must admit that i feel kinda old.