Anna Anderson Exposed

On Feb. 17, 1920, a desperate young woman attempted suicide by jumping into the  Landwehr Canal in Berlin, Germany. She was taken to the hospital. The woman carried no identification, and refused to speak of her past or give any clues to her identity. In time she was moved to the Dalldorf mental hospital. Since she refused to identify herself, she was given the name "Fraulein Unbekkant"(Miss Unknown) by the staff.[1]




This is the mugshot taken of her at that time (right) The picture on the left is Franziska Schanzkowska.

This began what was to become one of the biggest and most interesting historical mysteries of all time. For many years, many people  claimed that this woman was Grand Duchess Anastasia. Now we know for a fact this was not true. But who was she? DNA testing prove her genetic material to be a match for the family of Franziska Schanzkowska,[2] a Kashoub Polish factory worker who vanished about the same time Anderson appeared. While Anderson's supporters still vehemently she was a Polish peasant, there is, and always was, a lot of evidence saying she was, though it's been avoided, denied and glossed over with inaccuracies by the Anderson camp for decades. To get an accurate picture, we need to examine the woman, Franziska Anna Schanzkowska, her life, her times, the places she lived.

Franziska was living in Berlin, Germany, in 1920. Usually, when one thinks of the Berlin of the Weimar Republic, it's only the 'golden age' which comes to mind, the beer halls, cabarets and high times. However, this did not begin until 1924, when the free fall of hyperinflation was finally stopped with help of foreign money and gold, until the stock markets fell in 1929. But from the end of World War I in 1918 through 1923, Berlin was a hard place to live, ravaged by a lost war, so many people dead or missing, so many buildings and lives destroyed. Because of the war debt layed at Germany's door by the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation made their money practically worthless, and times were so bad it was cheaper to burn a stack of money than to buy a load of wood. The ecomomy hit disastrous lows, people were poor, unemployed, or working for money that would lose its value by the end of the day.[3] It was a a very hard world and a rough place, especially for a physically and mentally shattered girl far from home named Franziska Schanzkowska.

Who was Franziska, where did she come from, what was she like? In his book "The Romanovs: The Final Chapter", Robert K. Massie compiled this personality sketch and life history from reading an unpublished manuscript by Dr. Gunter Berenberg-Gossler, [4]who for many years was the opposing attorney in the German court cases involving Anna Anderson's claim. Berenberg-Gossler's information came from evidence, testimony and information he and others had found while working on the case. Unfortunately, he passed away before his book could be finished and published, so all we have of it at least for now is Massie's synopsis:

"Who was Franziska Schanzkowska, the woman who for over sixty years had claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia? She was born in 1896 in the Prussian province of Posen, adjacent to the border with Poland, which was then a part of the Russian Empire. Two hundreds years before, her family had belonged to lesser Polish nobility, but by the end of the nineteenth century, the family were farmworkers. Franziska's father, an impoverished alcoholic, died when his children were young. In the village where she grew up, Franziska always was different and solitary. She did not make friends, and she tried especially to distance herself from her sisters by assuming what they considered an affected, upper-class manner. At harvest time, when the entire village was out in the fields bringing in hay, Franziska would be found lying in a cart reading books on history.
 
" 'My Auntie Franziska was the cleverest of the children,' " said Waltraud Schanzkowska, a resident of Hamburg. " 'She didn't want to be be buried in a little one-horse town. She wanted to come out into the world, to become an actress -- something special.' " In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Franziska, at age eighteen, left the Polish provinces for Berlin. She worked as a waitress, met a young man, and became engaged. Before she could marry, her fiance was called up for military service. Franziska began working in a munitions factory. In 1916, the young man was killed on the western front. Soon afterward, Franziska let a grenade slip from her hands on the assembly line. It exploded nearby, inflicting splinter wounds on her head and other parts of her body and eviscerating a foreman, who died before her eyes. She was sent to a sanitarium, where her physical injuries healed but the shock remained. Franziska was declared "not cured, but not dangerous," and discharged. She was taken in, almost as a charity case, by Frau Doris Wingender, who gave her a room of her own. Incapable of working long periods, Franziska was in and out of sanatoria; in between, she remained bedridden at the Wingender's apartment, complaining of headaches, swallowing pills, and reading history books from the local library. In February 1920, her favorite brother, Felix, received a last message from her. On February 17, 1920, she disappeared."[5]

It's interesting that Franziska tried to kill herself on Feb. 17- according to family records, her brother Felix, said to be her favorite sibling, was born on Feb. 17, 1903. Could she possibly have been upset with him and chose his birthday to commit suicide and leave him guilt stricken? Was the mailed birthday card meant to be part of the 'guilt trip?' The date being the birthday of Franziska's brother does seem to be more than coincidental, though it is a part of the story we may never know.


On March 9, 1920, Franziska Schanskowska was reported to the Berlin Police as missing by her boarding house.[6] While some supporters of Anderson use the time lapse as a reason to doubt they were the same person, there is no evidence of all of Franziska being accounted for at the time Anderson was in the hospital following the suicide attempt. Even today, there are reports on the news of peope reported missing after several weeks without contact, because depending on the circumstances, it sometimes takes awhile for people to realize the person is really 'gone' and not just 'off somewhere'. It's really not unusual at all when you consider the time and place and circumstances they were living in. Post World War I. Europe, especially Berlin, was a difficult place. So much had been lost or destroyed, so many people misplaced. They didn't have the convenience of daily contact, email, and cell phones like we do. Most people didn't even have a home telephone, and long distance service was a luxury most didn't have access to or couldn't afford. The mail was slower and less reliable than it is today. It was not unusual for families and friends not to have contact for days or even weeks at a time. When you consider her family was miles away in Poland, and that Franziska was to those she'd been staying with just a girl with mental issues who came and went as she pleased, it's not strange at all to think it took quite awhile before it was suspected anything may be wrong.

At the time Franziska was officially reported missing on March 9, 1920, Miss Unknown, who would later be known to the world as Anna Anderson, was sitting in the hospital in the same city. So why was this connection not immediately made by the police investigators? Supporters often use this against her being Franziska, and have boasted that the Berlin Police department was the most efficient unit at that time- but this is not true! As often is the case when we search hard enough, there was a very good reason the case was not so important to the Berlin Police at that time. It's not surprising they had other more important issues to deal with other than one missing girl. Due to problems arising from the postwar situation in Berlin, and the Treaty of Versailles, the city and the government were in turmoil. On March 13, the Weimar government fell! [7]

The Kapp Putch took place on March 13, involving a group of Free Corps (Freikorps) troops who gained control of Berlin, and installed Wolfgang Kapp, a right-wing journalist, as Chancellor.[8] The city and thee country were in the midst of unrest and upheaval. The Berlin Police were not on duty, looking for Franziska, in fact, they joined the rebellion! [9] The Weimar officials fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike by their supporters, which crippled Germany's ravaged ecomony, causing the Kapp Government to fall on March 17.[10] Though the brief takeover of the government was ended, the problems certainly had not. Also in March 1920, a communist uprising began in the wealthy industrial Ruhr region of Germany, when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended this uprising, but others were to rise and have to be put down for an entire year.[11]

When I discovered this historical information, I knew it was not surprising that the missing persons case of Franziska Schanzkowska fell through the cracks in the early days of the investigation.  While her mugshot was said to have been widely circulated,  no one came forward to identify her as anyone special. Later that year, the police informed Franziska's family that she was likely a victim of the serial killer Georg Karl Grossmann, [12]who had murdered, eaten and sold the meat of many victims, mostly impoverished young women, in Berlin in that time frame. Even so, there was no evidence connecting her to Grossmann, and the conclusion was probably a way to wrap up several missing persons cases by writing them off to Grossmann.  At the time, the Berlin Police did not have the time, resource or special interest to devote much individual attention to this one case.

However, someone else did have the time, resources and the individual interest do a thorough investigation, resulting in a discovery that would haunt Anderson for years, and eventually be prove prophetic in the future. A few years later, after Anderson's claim was gaining popularity, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse-Darmstadt (brother of Tsarina Alexandra) hired his own private detectives to investigate Anderson's identity, and they, using records from Berlin, determined her to be the missing Polish factory worker Franziska Schanzkowska. [13]

 The Berlin police department eventually admitted they had decided to go along with Darmstadt's identification, and Heinz Drescher of Berlin Police Headquarters said that he had signed certain documents saying that identity has been established. "According to the material we have from the Haus-und-Vermoegensverwalten of the former Grand Duke of Hesse, and from various notices in the press, the alleged Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, is, in reality, Franziska Schanzkowska, born on 16.12.96 in Borowihlas, and this is supposedly proved definitively." [14]

Thus they accepted the results of "Uncle Ernie's" investigation, and admitted by this action that assuming Franziska murdered by Grossmann had been erroneous. Unfortunately, this was not enough to stop Anderson's  supporters from continuing her claim.

Miss Unknown's refusal to speak led her to be sent from the hospital to Dalldorf, a mental institution in Berlin. She was there for two years, not speaking, before she became "Anastasia". In fact, she was "Tatiana" first!

If she were going to pretend to be one of the Grand Duchesses, Her face was closest in resemblance to Tatiana. At the time, Tatiana escape stories were already becoming popular.

Tatiana of course was already quite popular in 1922 when there were four other claimants. Even before the shootings, the Imperial children's English tutor, Sydney Gibbes, recalled the Grand Duchess Tatiana reading the Daily Graphic inTobolsk and being fascinated by an account of her 'escape' to New York. Tatiana was also reported in 1920 as having escaped to America and settled down with a waiter in Birmingham, Alabama, and so on.[1]

One day in 1922, (don't know if the actual date has ever been given) Clara Peuthert, a fellow mental patient, was looking through a magazine, an October 23, 1921 issue of  the Berlin Illustrater,  headlined "The Truth About the Murder of the Tsar" featuring a caption under a picture, "Is one of the Tsar's daughters alive?" She approached "Miss Unknown" (Anderson), showed her the picture, and asked her if it was her. The picture was of the Russian Imperial family, and the girl she pointed out was Grand Duchess Tatiana. Clara suggested that her fellow patient may be missing and presumed dead princess, and while she didn't say yes, "Miss Unknown" did nothing to deny it.[2] Word spread and Russian exiles desperate for hope of a restoration of the monarchy came to see "Tatiana." Zina Tolstoy, who had known the family, was taken in by her eyes, and said they reminded her of Nicholas. "She has the eyes of the Tsar!" she cried.[3] (This in itself, while used as an endorsement of 'Anastasia's' claim by Anderson supporters, was actually only identifying Miss Unknown as Tatiana, not Anastasia. The oddest thing about the acceptance based on eyes only is that Tatiana did not even have her father's eyes!)[4]

Tolstoy then sent for Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, who had been very close to all of the Grand Duchesses. Though she was at first reluctant, Buxhoevedon, a lady in waiting and close friend of Tsarina Alexandra, came to see if she could identify the young woman. As she had done with Tolstoy, "Miss Unknown" hid under the sheets and refused to come out, despite kindly coaxing by Sophie, who held up a piece of jewelry that had belonged to Alexandra. Finally, Buxhoevedon became suspicious, and frustrated. She walked straight over to the bed, pulled down the sheets and declared "she's too short to be Tatiana!"[5] (it is interesting to note she didn't mention a likeness to Anastasia or any other Romanov daughter at the sight of her)

Sophie gave this published declaration of her experience:

"She was in bed close to the wall, she was turned facing against the window, in full sunlight.  When she heard us enter the room, she hid herself under the cover to hide herself from our stares, and we were not able to get her to show us her face....The unknown one spoke German with Miss Peuthert.  Although she was permitted to get up, she prefered to stay in bed as long as possible.  This is how I found her.  After asking my companions to move away from the bed a little, I tried to attract the young woman's attention as I caressed her hair and speaking to her in English while using the types of phrases I would have used while speaking with the Grand Duchesses, but I did not refer to her by any name other than 'Darling'.  She did not reply and I saw that she did not understand a word of what I had said, for when she raised the cover after a certain period of time, and I saw her face, there was nothing in her eyes which showed she had recognized me.  The eyes and forehead showed some resemblance to the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicolaievna, resemblance that disappeared, nevertheless, as soon as her face was not covered.  I had to remove the cover by force, and I saw that neither the nose, the mouth, nor the chin were formed like that of the Grand Duchess.  The hair was lighter in color, some of her teeth were missing-and the remaining ones were not like those of the Grand Duchess...Her hands were also completely different, the fingers were longer and the nails narrower.  I wanted to measure her height, but she refused, and I found it impossible to get an exact measurement without force.  We judged roughly that in any case, she was smaller than me, while the Grand Duchess Tatiana was more than ten centimeters taller than me.  I have been able to verify this, thanks to the patient's official measurement at the time of her arrival at the hospital and that corresponded exactly with the one which was taken in my presence.

I tried to awaken the memory of the young woman by all the possible means; I showed to her an 'icon', with the date of the Romanov jubilee, that the emperor had given to some persons of the suite, after that a ring that had belonged to the empress; the latter had been given given to her in the presence of the Grand Duchess Tatiana.  But none of these things seemed not to evoke in her the slightest recognition.  She remained completely indifferent, she whispered some incomprehensible words into Ms. Peuthert's ear.  Although I noted a certain similarity in the upper part of the face with the unknown -currently Mrs. Tschaikovski- with the Grand Duchess Tatiana, I am sure that she is not her.  I later learned that the she supposes that she is the Grand Duchess Anastasia, but she does not physically resemble her in the least.  She has none of the special characteristics that would allow any one who knew the Grand Duchess Anastasia well to identify her.[6]
Having been refuted, Miss Unknown declared that she 'never said she was Tatiana'. Someone handed her a paper with the names of the Grand Duchesses on it, and allegedly asked her to cross out all the names but hers. She left the name "Anastasia"- conveniently, the only one of the four who shared her height of 5'2".

Von Kleist told this version:  "I asked the Unknown one if she would consent to say her name to me.  I wanted to write on a slip of paper two names, whereby she would cross out the one that would be false, after which I would destroy the paper.  The unknown one accepted my suggestion.  I wrote on the paper the names of Anastasia and of Tatiana in Russian and then I passed her the paper.  Having read it, she crossed out the name of Tatiana, and returned me the paper that was immediately destroyed, as planned."[7]

Some Anderson supporters will claim that this isn't true, that she had told a nurse the year before she was Anastasia. Because the story came to be known in 1922, and the other Tatiana claimants were known in 1922,  Anderson and/or her supporters felt it important to prove she had first claimed to be Anastasia in 1921, before the "Tatiana" incident, when Clara Peuthert  identified "Miss Unknown" as "Tatiana", sparking what would become the entire lengthy, worldwide, costly AA affair. However, it is doubtful this this can be confirmed as accurate enough to use as factual evidence. 

The nurse, whose testimony they use to back up the 1921 story,  wrote:

Dear Mr. Pastenaci,

I am prepared at any time to depose on oath in Court that Mrs. Chaikovski said to me, in 1921, when I was on night duty, a few months after I entered the service of the institution, that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia....

As the manuscript sent to the Nachtausgabe was not restored to me, for the credit of that journal I can only surmise, either that, by an oversight, I wrote 1922 instead of 1921, or that the mistake was due to a printer's error in the Nachtausgabe.

(Signed) Mrs. Dr. Chemnitz, nee Malinovski. "[8]

She wrote 1922 BY MISTAKE? It seems likely the nurse was either unsure of the exact date in retrospect, or that someone had perhaps suggested she backdate her statement to predate the "Tatiana" claim in order to strengthen the "Anastasia" claim and make it look as if it wasn't the afterthought it actually was. Even though this can't be completely proven, neither can we be completely certain of when Anderson actually said this to the nurse, and the nurse doesn't look all that sure herself. Her lone commentary is the only source.

So really, this piece of evidence does not hold up, and cannot be used as proof Anderson claimed to be Anastasia first, so we may safely assume that the claim never existed until Clara showed her the magazine that day. One of the magazines in the asylum was the October 23, 1921 copy of the “Berliner Illustrierte" with a title story named "Lebt eine Zarentochter?" ("Is One of the Tsar's Daughters Alive?") It contained a story and pictures.[9] This was probably what gave her the idea for the whole claim. One person's shaky testimony with questionable dates is not 'proof' it didn't. There was no mystery confession to being "Anastasia"  in 1921, it all came about in 1922, beginning with "Tatiana", when her story first gained public attention.

 This has been yet another example of how the Anderson myth survives on little bits of misinformation, offhand remarks quoted or misquoted, and unproven statements or rumors that try to force their way into realty. This is why we need to examine these pieces of the puzzle more closely.

 

'I arrived in Berlin in the middle of the month of February 1920, I do not remember the exact date.  I arrived here alone, coming from Russia and having gone through Romania.  Immediately in Berlin, I changed clothing, in order not to be recognized. for it seemed to me that I was followed.  I no longer know what with that which I changed clothing.  I was free for less than a week, for I was first placed in the Elizabeth Hospital, where I spent six weeks, then I was transferred to the Dalldorf asylum.' [16]

While Paris is not mentioned in the Von Kliest version, the anonymous enemies who were following her around are still present. This dramatic aspect of the storyline was completely left out of the final version, which was edited perfected  by Harriet Rathlef-Keillman, a professional writer. In Rathlef's version, she left Romania after the death of her husband and the abandonment of her baby and came directly to Berlin in search of Aunt Irene, but became despondent the night she jumped into the canal. While Rathlef's version, which ended up being handed down to Aucleres and finally Kurth, seems to be th final 'official' story and the one most people know and accept as the original, the many differing early ones few people even know about only cast more doubt on the entire saga. We do have to wonder, why so many contradictions and changes? The more you know about this story, the more fictional and less believable it becomes.

In still another version, Anderson claims she attempted suicide because she wanted to die:

"I never thought about it being cold when I jumped in, I thought that instead it would just envelop me with its white mist, and that all would be over, the pain in my head, my despair, and loneliness...and that in death I would meet my parents, sisters and little brother.."[17]

So, which was it? Pushed, drugged, dumped or jumped?  In some tellings, she'd say she sold her jewels to pay for her trip to Berlin, while still other versions had Alexander shot in a robbery while out to sell the jewels. They must have kept changing it as other ideas became more interesting or exciting to them. All these different variations prove that those who invented them couldn't even keep their story straight, which casts yet more doubt on their already fragile (make that nonexistent) validity.
 
 Some of the details were quite outrageous. In one of Von Kleist's signed statements, he declared that in Romania, she had, due to the advice of her companion, tried all means to alter her facial features!  She received, from an intermediary, this person who died in Romania, a device (apparatus), that she used on her face and succeeded a little in changing the form of her nose and mouth! [18]

Does this mean she knew she didn't look like Anastasia and was making excuses for it?

What of Alexei? Before the recent discovery of the last two missing children, Anderson supporters used to hold onto belief because two bodies were missing- one was a Grand Duchess, either Anastasia or Marie, but the other was Alexei! IF the escape story had been true, why was there never any mention of Alexei, and why he wasn't with the rest of the family in the mass grave? Again, another detail that doesn't fit their false story.
 
So many parts of the story are ridiculous, or don't make any sense realistically or logicistically, or even contradict other parts of the whole story. Who made up this ficticious saga? Most likely a combination of people, Anderson herself,  perhaps Rathlef and Peuthart, but Von Kleist seems to have been a large contributor. Regardless of its source, it's just as false.

Olga Alexandrovna thought of something else everyone seems to have overlooked:

"But the whole story is palpably false. I was convinced then, as I am now, that it is so from beginning to end. Just think of the supposed rescuers - vanishing into thin air, as it were! Had Nicky's daughter been really saved, her rescuers would have known just what it meant to them. Every royal house in Europe would have rewarded them. Why, I am sure that my mother would not have hesitated to empty her jewel-box in gratitude. There is not one tittle of genuine evidence in the story."[19]

Good point! If anyone had saved a real Grand Duchess from the massacre, they'd have gone immediately to the family for a reward. Or at least an  embassy or even the police, the last thing you'd do is hide in poverty and anonymity in Romania! But of course the rescuers, being ficticious, didn't think of that. Apparently, neither did the person/persons who invented this incredibly ridiculous 'escape' story.

Even until the end, Anderson never stopped changing her story. In 1974, she declared 'there was no massacre...I cannot tell the rest.'[20] Once she declared the entire family had escaped together and had been replaced by doubles. [21] Anderson changed her story again when relaying what she called 'these truths' to her chosen biographer James Blair Lovell. This time, she abandoned her whole original story and told one which tied in with the Perm stories, that the women were taken away separately from the men, whom they never saw again. She claimed to have escaped, been recaptured, raped, and beaten, before meeting up with Tchiakovsky and his cart in a different place under totally different circumstances.[22]

*an online trip calculator estimated the distance between Ekaterinburg and Bucharest to be 1,719 AIR miles, as the crow flies...but considering it would have been, according her her own story, on back roads, unimproved, and at some places no roads at all, it would have been a much longer distance and taken much more time than their claimed Dec. 5, 1918 arrival date. Online map sites tell me they cannot calculate a driving distance between the two cities, meaning that even today, there aren't enough improved roads to make a direct connection. Adding it up via the legend on a world atlas, the trip would have been at least 2,300 miles, perhaps as many as 2,800 if they had to go around certain impassible terrain. So you see the logisitics of such a trip under the circumstances is completely impossible.

Anderson supporters often relay a romantic fantasy of Anastasia being saved by a sympathetic soldier who cannot let her die, much like the Woodsman who decided to let Snow White live and take a pig's heart back to the Evil Queen instead. But the Russian Revolution was no fairy tale, and there would be no Prince Charming to save the Grand Duchesses. Closer examination shows there are even more holes in the story of her 'escape.'

The area was heavily guarded that night, and no 'escapees' could have slipped away unnoticed. No one could have snuck a wounded Grand Duchess  into a neighboring  house, as one story claims. There is absolutely no chance this occured, and even if it had, the participants, even the residents of the house, would have been shot. These were not the bumbling burglars from "Home Alone" they were dealing with. It simply could not have happened!

An affidavit from Sir Thomas Preston, who was British Consul-General in Ekaterinburg at the time of the Romanov murders, reveals:

"On the night of the murder a curfew had been imposed, forbidding anybody to appear in the streets after 8 p.m. on pain of death, a regulation which nobody who valued his life would have dared to disobey. In these circumstances we are asked to believe that Svboda 'and his friend' were able to produce a hourse and cart, to (enter) the House Epatiev, identify and bring out the wounded Anastasia (whom they had never seen before), and take her to a house nearby when every house in the vicinity was under the strictest surveillance of the ubiquitous agents of the Tcheka"[1]

No one escaped

For many years it's been known that the Bolsheviks reported disposing of the bodies of the Imperial family. For some reason, people will accept the grave with the nine bodies, but still deny the stories of the other two 'missing' bodies being burned. However, there were always reports of this, like this one, by the Bolsheviks:

"..we built a funeral pyre of cut logs big enough to  hold the bodies, two layers deep. We poured five buckets of gasoline over the corpses, and two buckets of sulphuric acid, and set the logs afire."[2]

"We decided to burn two corpses on the fire and did so. For our sacrificial altar we got the last heir. The second body was the youngest daughter Anastasia.  After the corpses were burned, we scattered the ashes, dug a pit in the centre, shoveled in all the unburnt remainders,  made a fire again on the same spot and finished the work."[3]

Here's another account specifically mentioning Anastasia by name as being killed that night:

 "At that moment Ermakov exclaimed: The tsarina´s maid Anna Demidova and the youngest daughter Anastasia are still breathing. Two of the Letts from the Cheka ran forward to finish off Anna Demidova and the youngest daughter Anastasia. One of the Letts drove a bayonet through Anastasia´s face."[4]


People chose not to believe these reports, and the details did vary from each eyewitness, but the basic message was the same- EVERYONE died and was disposed of that night, even Anastasia. Now that the burned burial site described by the Bolsheviks has been found, along with remains of the last two 'missing' children, there should be no more doubt. Though details may vary by each man's memory and individual account, the end result is always the same- the entire family died that night, no one got away.

Even so, supporters of Anderson, and Alexei claimant Heino Tammet, still refuse to accept  reality and continue with their conspiracy theories.


Why there was no chance of any 'sympathetic rescuer' among the Bolsheviks

The men who were first in charge of the family at the Ipatiev house were originally harsh, but gradually these guards were humanized by contact with their prisoners. They were astonished at their simplicity, attracted by their gentleness, subdued by their serene dignity, and soon found themselves dominated by those whom they thought they held in their power. The drunken Avdiev (original commandant) found himself disarmed by such greatness of soul; he grew conscious of his own infamy. The early ferocity of these men was succeeded by profound pity. The Soviet leaders were not long in realizing the change which had come about in the feelings of the guards towards their prisoners, and resolved to adopt drastic measures. [5]

On July 4, 1918, a telegram came demanding that Avdiev and his Russian Guard, which had beenf formed exclusively of Russian workmen, was transferred to a neighboring house, that of Popov.[6] The commissaries no longer had confidence In these workmen. They were replaced by Yurovsky and his men, hand chosen executioners. They knew that none but paid assassins, convicts, or foreigners would consent to carry through the infamous task they were proposing. These assassins were Yurovsky, Medvedev, Nikulin, Yermakov, Vaganov, Russian convicts and foreign prisoners of war who had gone over to the revolution.[7]

Alexandra wrote of this changing of the guard in her diary, but assumed it was only because Avdiev and his men had ransacked their valuables on their persons and belongings stored in the loft.[8]  There have also been other reports that anyone objecting to killing the women and children were locked up until after the deed was done.[9] So no, there was no loving, heroic rescuer for a Grand Duchess among the killers that night.[10] There were no 'sympathetic' men among the firing squad that night, only cold blooded killers. "Stanislav Mishkevich" may have been present, but he was not Tchiakovsky, and he did not rescue anyone. Alexander Tchiakovsky did not exist.

Most supporters will claim this was not in the same time frame, and that the appearance of Franziska and the disappearance of Anna were two separate incidents and different times and do not mean they were the same person. But, to put it plainly, gimme a break!  In the summer of 1922, at the same time Anderson disappeared from the home of her benefactors, the von Kleists,  Franziska reappeared at the home of the Wingenders, her old landlady.