Informative Essay On Anna Anderson

686 Words3 Pages
In February, 1920, two years after the execution of the Russian Czar and his family, a young woman attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in Berlin. When she arrived at a hospital she had no proof of identity on her and would not say her name when asked. The hospital sent her to an insane asylum where she was recognized as the Czar’s daughter, Grand Duchess Tatiana. The woman kept denying that she was Tatiana, but over time started to reveal that she was actually his other daughter, the Duchess Anastasia. The real Anastasia, the daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was killed along with her parents and siblings on July 17, 1918 by communist revolutionaries in Russia. The location of her body was unknown…show more content…
Anna Anderson is known as one of the best known of several imposters who have claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. In 1927, an investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illnesses. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia. Between 1922 and 1968, Anderson lived in Germany and the United States with various supporters and in nursing homes and even including at least one asylum. From early 1929 Anderson lived with Annie Burr Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue spinster happy to host someone she supposed to be a daughter of the Tsar. For 18 months Anderson was the prize of New York people. Then a pattern of self-destructive behavior began that accumulated in her throwing tantrums, killing her pet parakeet, and on one occasion running around naked on the roof. On July 24, 1930, Judge Peter Schmuck of the Supreme Court signed an order committing her to a mental hospital. She immigrated to the United States in 1968, and shortly before the expiry of her visa married Jack
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