Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson by Peter Kurth
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Book Reviews of Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson
Book Review: Fact and Fiction: Which Can Win?
Summary: 5 Stars
For the sake of pure honesty, I am revising this old review - and this will be my third revision in light of a new book about Anna Manahan and my chance to meditate on the issues. I want my views on the record for all time. Or at least for as long as Amazon has Kurth's book, which is still one of my favorites of all time.
Author Peter Kurth entered the life of Anna Anderson Manahan sometime in the 1970s. Befriending her as best he could, he ended up writing her 'biography' - that is what this book purports to be. Kurth, like myself for a long time, believed in her. She claimed to be the daughter of the Czar of all the Russias: Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Kurth believed her out of affection and due to evidence as it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Science compels me to state openly: I do NOT believe Anna Manahan was the Grand Duchess.
Recent verified scientific evidence shows Anastasia was murdered and her sad life ended in 1918. The evidence is all "putative", as they like to say. Once upon a time, I liked to say the evidence was a contrived, put-up job. This book is convincing on that score.
Kurth's book, painstakingly researched and verified in most points, is a long, long tale of arguments, fights, royals-versus-commoners, Anna's quest for recognition as a Romanov, and shows very good general journalism. It shows a devotion and respect for Anna.
At times, Kurth's book veers into the speculative, and he has a bad habit of injecting pure speculation amidst historic fact. This is nothing sinful - I only wish Kurth would follow protocol and isolate his mere opinion from his researched facts. He fails to do that quite a bit.
The fight has always been that Anna was in reality a Kashoubian Polish "peasant" named Franziska Schanskowska - an alleged madwoman who disappeared just before Anna appeared. Kurth makes excellent point after point about how Anna cannot have been "the Polish peasant woman". He examines the still-extant racist view of this Polish woman as a peasant, dirty, promiscuous and stupid. We feel with Kurth the sympathy for Franziska, a feeling never expressed by anyone else.
The new evidence tends toward the view that Franziska was a minor noble and her Kashoubian (let's just call it "Germanic") descent is unquestioned. What I always will wonder is, why did so many hate her from the beginning?
Kurth's outlines of all the personages involved with the case are exquisite; though he need not outline Lord Mountbatten, for example, he follows diligently Mountbatten's perhaps deserved persecution of Anna. In other instances, Kurth is an invaluable fount of Anastasia/Romanov urban legends and folklore.
In this he is far and away better than Robert Massie, biographer of the Czar and the Czarina. Massie devotes only two pages in his biography to Anastasia, and a fascinating story about sightings of the Imperial Family long after their deaths. It is Massie, not Kurth, who first divulges reports of sightings of the Czar after the revolution.
On the other hand, Kurth's entire book follows the history of hope: the hope that at least one Romanov survived the horrid massacre at Ekaterinburg.
One must above all remember that Kurth published this book in the mid-1980s. He still believes, of course, that Anna was not the ''Polish peasant'' - though he has bowed to science and keeps a low profile these days. Amazing how many other Anna supporters today are actually accused of being Kurth-in-disguise.
Being duped, blind or just plain wrong is one thing. Being vindictive and horrible to those who disagree with you is unpardonable.
This book is a must-read, if only for 'the first half of the story'. It is so enthralling, so faithful, and remains a fairly sturdy historical reference - even if it is the story of the greatest fraud attempt of the 20th century. Sadly, that is what it truly must be admitted to being.
However, I must add the following: I DO NOT believe in the genuineness of the DNA samples of Anna nor do I believe the DNA tests are proper in today's light, by today's standards. Kurth - and I, and many - got shoved into the mud with the constant shouting about the DNA.
A word of warning: the DNA and the skeletal remains (found in the middle of the 1st decade of the 21st century) are being hotly contested. The DNA was suspicious from the start, the skeletons also a prop of convenience, almost politprop if you will.
I must be honest and say, like Einstein, "I stand convicted but not convinced." What I wish to know once and for all time is simple: Who was Anna Manahan?
Book Review: Compelling proof
Summary: 5 Stars
Numerous other reviewers have already gone into massive detail about all of the evidence Mr. Kurth produces to establish that "Anna Anderson" was indeed Grand Duchess Anastasiya, so I'm not going to write yet another length missive repeating what so many other people have already reiterated. I had only been a Russophile for three years when I read this book, and absolutely loved it; the next year I was able to write a research paper on this very topic (though Mr. Kurth's book wasn't one of the resources I used for my research), proving that these two women were one and the same, with so much compelling proof that one must question what really happened when the DNA test was administered. My research turned up a story about a shady figure named Willy Korte who was hanging around the lab and who quite possibly saw sensitive information on the papers in a folder. Not only that, but when the researchers first went to get the DNA, it was lost, and they spent several hours searching for it. Seems pretty suspicious to me.
However, this book was written before the DNA test was done, so that issue is really neither here nor there and should be the topic of another book, or maybe even additional material in an updated reissue. If Mr. Kurth were really so "obsessed" with proving "Mrs. Anderson" were really Anastasiya, he would have been grasping at straws and painting circumstantial evidence as unquestionable proof. He does absolutely none of that here. There's enough proof here to convince even a hardened skeptic. If this woman really were such a fraud and had been nothing but some peasant bumpkin woman, why did the missing peasant woman's own relatives say they didn't recognise her and had never seen her before in their lives? Why did both Anastasiya and "Anna Anderson" have the foot disorder hallux valgus? Why did this mysterious woman have scars on her body corresponding exactly to the wounds inflicted by the regicidal murderers? Why did she recognise so many people from her family and close circle of friends (like Duchess Olga and Dr. Botkin's children) and know so many intimate details about their lives? Why did she have eyes that were the exact same deep shade of blue as the tsar's? Why did they have the same fingerprints? How was she able to know about a secret visit the tsarina's cousin Kaiser Wilhelm made to St. Petersburg during WWI, something which no one outside of the Royal Family would have even known about? How did she know so many details about a hospital for wounded soldiers she, her mother, and her sisters often helped out at? She even corrected some of the veterans who tried to mislead her and prove her identity false, such as one who falsely claimed that her little brother had been there as well when they visited. Why did both women have the same handwriting? And in a German court of law, the comparison pictures of her ears and Anastasiya's ears matched on far more than just the bare requisite amount of similarities to prove identity, as well as the similarity between their faces. As one of the experts said, "Such similarity between two human faces is not possible unless they are the same person or identical twins."
There was so much compelling undeniable proof that it seems utterly ridiculous to say, "Oh, I guess I was wrong" just because of the results of a highly suspect DNA test. It seems as though most people who dismiss "Anna Anderson" as a fraud have never even done any in-depth reading on this subject, don't know about all of this massive proof, have no idea about the monkey business that went on concerning the alleged DNA. Far from a delusional fraud or a peasant woman with amnesia, this woman was truly the real deal.
Book Review: The only thing proving she isn't Anastasia is the DNA
Summary: 5 Stars
Kurth starts out with Anna Anderson in Berlin, where she attempts suicide and then follows her all the way up through to her life in Charlottesville, my version of the book also has an afterwards about her death and the eventually DNA results. He then goes on to explain all of the information and mannerisms which many people believed distinguished her as the Grand Duchess Anastasia. I won't go into all the different details since so many reviewers before me already have, but all I have to say is that if she isn't Anastasia, I find it amazing that she was capable of fooling members of the royal families who knew her personally, and childhood friends.
Whether or not I believe Anna Andersons claim, well honestly, I'm not sure whether I do or not. If there was only the evidence of her knowledge to go by, then yes I would absolutely believe her, there's just to many things she has an intimate knowledge of to make it all a mere coincidence. I can't imagine how a poor Polish factory worker would be able to speak German and English, and understand Russian, or have such an air of royalty which all who met her agreed she was in possession of. Also, there would be no way for her to gain knowledge of all that she knew, personally conversations she had with childhood friends, events which would only be important to the Imperial family, and the secret visit of the Duke of Hesse in 1916, among many other facts. DNA evidence makes it impossible however to believe it truly is her, because DNA simply doesn't lie, so unless they were testing the wrong person (which many fanatics believe is true) there's no way she could be the Grand Duchess, so unfortunately I'm left unable to believe. Of course there's the third option that Anastasias spirit jumped into Anna Andersons body, which would explain her knowledge and mannerisms, this is however quite far fetched, and unbelievable.
Overall I found this book fascinating and feeling deeply for Anastasia, or whoever this woman is, Kurth clearly believes Anna Anderson is the Grand Duchess and presents his information in a biased way, but I don't believe this negatively impacts this book in any way. Hopefully one day this mystery will be solved, until then however we'll be left wondering who this woman is, and if she isn't Anastasia, how she got all of this intimate knowledge of the family.
Book Review: A sad and tragic story of a Grand Duchess who was persecuted by her own family.
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me also add that the opposition always used the same arguement, that Anna Anderson did not speak Russian, which is not true. We know that from the earliest days her existence was known, in 1920, the nurses at Dalldorf said she spoke Russian fluently like a native. She did not want to speak because it was the only language her family was allowed to speak in the Ipatiev House.
Never mind that Pierre Gilliard said in the 1920's that the real Grand Duchess Anastasia never learned German and therefore Anna Anderson could not be Anastasia. How shocking to learn that when Grand Duchess Anastasia's school books were recovered in the 1960's, it was discovered that Anastasia had learned German but didn't speak it fluently, JUST LIKE ANNA ANDERSON of course. And better yet, it was on Gilliard's own schedule!
Russian, English, and French, languages Anna Anderson spoke, were not spoken by any Polish peasents at the time. In fact, Franziska spoke only German, and it was her first language. The Polish peasent story didn't even come out until Anastasia claimed she had seen her Uncle Ernst in Russia in 1916. If it were true, which the evidence seems to prove was, then it would have been considered treason on his part. Anna Anderson couldn't be acknowledged as his niece, so he campaigned against her.
It has never and will never be demonstrated that what was tested was really from Anna Anderson. Dr. Peter Gill himself said, "If one accepts that these samples are from Anna Anderson..."
The body of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna has yet to be recovered accoring to every American and British scientist and in my opinion, it never will be.
And what's more, Dr. Peter Vanesis was hired to conduct his own expiriments at the same time the DNA testing was done in 1995 for a television documentary in the U.K., and he concluded based on photographs of the "two" women's faces and ears with "100% certainty" that Anna Anderson was Anastasia. Sorry to burst your bubble for the people who are obsessed with the martyrdom of Anastasia Nicholaevna, but this case isn't closed. Tell me, who do we believe, the experts working with real photographs of the woman in question, or DNA tests conducted on hair samples which are alleged to have come from the woman in question?
Book Review: She Knew Too Much
Summary: 5 Stars
Mr. Kurth's book has been out for some years now, so there is little that can be added at this point except that he did a marvelous job in presenting Anna Anderson's story to the world. This work is so thorough, in fact, that it convinced many non-believers that she was truly Grand Duchess Anastasia. In my opinion, the facts presented here far outweigh the dubious DNA tests that supposedly proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Anna was not Anastasia. Firstly, IMHO, the DNA studies were used to try and hide the fact that Anastasia survived. The reasons behind this lie in the political realm, and this is not the forum to address these issues. However, time after time, Kurth provides us with information from and about Anna that only someone who actually lived through the life and times of the royal family would know. Although she made some errors (memory fails us all at times), it's the small details, such as Anna being overheard humming one of Anastasia's favorite tunes, that really strike the reader as having a great deal of validity. The fact that her Aunt Olga retracted her view about Anna's authenticity hints at family pressure, rather then a change in the belief that this was her niece.
Kurth's writing style is always interesting, and for those who are truly intrigued by this woman and the possible survival of one of the Grand Duchesses (and there are incidents beyond the scope of Kurth's work that also point to this very real possibility), the book is a must read. I found it hard to put down. I read it twice--once before the DNA results were made known and then again after it was announced that she was not the Grand Duchess. The evidence provided by Kurth far outweighs the results of tests that could be easily manipulated.
To sum up--Anna Anderson simply "knew too much". Even if coached, the wealth of her knowledge would have been impossible for a simple working class girl to learn from even the greatest of teachers. I hope Mr. Kurth was not swayed from his previous beliefs, for he has presented in this work some of the best evidence for this woman who lived through the glory of Imperial Russia and the living hell that followed.