June 22, 2021 • 25 mins
Anna Anderson claimed she was Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of the Romanov dynasty, after rumors swirled that one of Tsar Nicholas II's daughters had survived the execution of the family. Her real name? Neither Anna nor Anastasia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
third season of Criminalia. This season, we're exploring the lives
and motivations of some of the most notorious impostors throughout history.
Gate I'm Maria Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry And before
(00:26):
we can actually dig into this episode's impostor, we have
to talk first about Russian history. To lay a bit
of groundwork here, the Romanov family ruled Russia for more
than three hundred years, beginning in sixteen with Mikhail Romanov.
The dynasty gave us Peter the Great, Alexander the Great,
and the very famous Catherine the Great and Nicholas the Second,
(00:48):
who took the throne in four was ultimately not destined
to be Nicholas the Great. It was widely said that
he was really a lot more interested in his very
tight knit family than in matters of state. Is quite
shy and gentlemanly, and he was known to be chronically indecisive,
never a good quality for a leader, not at all.
(01:09):
And he was also married to an unpopular German born
empress named Alexandra the Romanovs have five children. Their fourth child, Anastasia,
was born on June eighth. She was the youngest daughter
of zar Nicholas the second and Zarina Alexandra. But Nicholas
wasn't bombarded with congratulations when she was born. He was
(01:31):
bombarded with headlines though about the couple not yet having
a male air. This is one example from the New
York Times, which read star has another daughter. Russian people
again disappointed in their hope that an heir to the
throne would be born. So that's not the most auspicious
start to life, isn't no. And it's very telling that
(01:52):
that's something that was being reported worldwide, not just in
the Russian press, but New York Times over here in
the States. Of the sisters in the family, Olga was
the bookish one, Tatiana was a poised beauty, Maria was
sweet and kind hearted, and Anastasia was well, my most account,
she was reportedly a little bit of a hell raiser,
(02:15):
just kind of that kid that's a free spirit. Yeah,
But considering that she was a royal, there's really not
a whole lot of information about Anastasia's life, and historians
believe that that's because there wasn't really anything remarkable about it.
It probably wasn't much different, for example, than that of
her sisters. And remember as well, she had been a
(02:37):
disappointment in terms of the country's desires, so meticulously documenting
her early life was probably not really a priority. Anastasia,
along with her older sisters, as well as her younger
brother Alexei, were known for their family name, of course,
but they weren't really known for their health. Alexei lived
with hemophilia. Anastasia suffered from a weak muscle in her
(03:01):
back as well as painful bunyans on her feet, which
both sometimes affected her mobility. Their mother often called upon
Gregory Resputin, who was believed to have healing powers. Over time,
though rescuted and became a close confidant to Alexandra, and
it's said he had quite a bit of influence in
her life. So this story is not about Rescpute and
(03:22):
though so we're not going to get into the scandal
of his relationship over the Romanoff children, and if we did,
we could be here for days, so we'll move on.
There's so much information in the world about Respute, and
if you're just eager for a trip down the rabbit hole, yes,
but in terms of the romanofs the children were formally educated,
but they were educated at home, and we know Anastasia
(03:44):
loved singing and dancing, and that she frequently painted with watercolors.
Some reports about her hint that although she was quite smart,
she also was not really what you would categorize as
an attentive student. A lady in waiting to her mother
called Anastasia quote a sharp and clever child who liked
to play practical jokes on her siblings, not surprising for
(04:05):
the hell raiser at all. While we don't really have
an immense amount of information about her early life, and
fortunately we do know about Anastasia's death. So her father,
Nicholas the Second, abdicated the throne on March fifteenth, nine seventeen.
That was in an attempt to prevent a civil war
(04:27):
from breaking out. That attempt did not work. The civil
war happened just the same, and he and his family
were taken captive and placed under house arrest. It was
early in the morning of July seventeenth, nineteen eighteen, that
the entire royal family, including a teenaged Anastasia, were taken
to the basement assured that they were being protected from
(04:47):
their rebellious violence, but instead the family along with four
members of their staff, which included Dr. Eugene Bodkin, the
family physician, Alexei trump valet To, Nicholas Anna Demidova, may
To Alexandra and Ivan Karatonov, the family cook, as well
as the family's dog, whose name we do not know,
but they were all executed in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The Romanov's
(05:11):
extended family were either killed as well or they were exiled,
and according to an initial statement from the firing squad,
they had killed only Nicholas the second, but they later
reported they had killed the entire family, but the anaesthesia
was one of the last to be executed. The accounts
of the men from that firing squad, however, were mostly
(05:32):
confusing and mostly unhelpful, and they proved themselves only good
for spreading rumors and gossip. The assassination was carried out
by Communist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin.
A quick and very high level history note on this
time in Russia. So there was more than one more
going on, including World War One. When Lenin and his
(05:54):
party launched a coup against the Russian government that was
Nicholas's government, and within two day July sixteen, outside of
those executions of the royal family, there was no bloodshed
and Lenin rose to power as the country's new ruler.
The Bolshevik Party renamed themselves the Russian Communist Party, and
Lennon served as the founding head of the government of
(06:16):
Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union until with Nicholas
off the throne, the assassination was a permanent end to
the royal family. The line of succession was over, and
so was the Romanov reign. So right now we're going
to take a break for a word from our sponsor,
and when we're back, we're going to talk about royal impostors.
(06:44):
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's get back to the story
and talk about someone who was called Miss Unknown. Although
Anaesthetia died in nine eighteen, for years following the assassination
of her family, gossip and specy relations seemed to actually
keep her alive in the mind of Russians. Conspiracy theories
(07:05):
as well as impostors of the members of the royal
family began to emerge, and there are impostors claiming to
be pretty much everyone, including Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Alexei.
But in total there were more than thirty women who
impersonated Anastasia and one guy who claimed that he was
her son. Those who have made the claim include a
(07:26):
Leonora Krueger between nineteen o one and nineteen fifty four,
who posed as the Grand Duchess in a Bulgarian village
just kind of lived out her life telling everyone that
was the scoop. It seems like they believed it. In
the mid twentieth century, there is a tragic story about
a mentally ill woman who spent years in hospitals and
prisons in the USSR. She actually died in a psychiatric
(07:48):
hospital in nine and the list really continues. There are
a lot of people we could talk about, but here
is an interesting one that is a little less tragic.
One impostor actually wrote Anastasia's memoirs as though she were Anastasia,
in which she described exactly how she escaped. That was
all false, And I have a new book from my
(08:09):
book class right. Perhaps the best known impostor of Anastasia
was a woman who called herself Anna Anderson. So we're
going to pause for just a minute, because this is
an important thing to tell you. The next part of
our conversation will include brief talk about a failed suicide attempt,
which may be triggering for some of our listeners. So
(08:31):
stay safe, mutis for just a minute, and we'll be
right back with that. Okay, So here we go. In Berlin,
in a woman was rescued from a canal after a
failed attempted suicide, and after she was rescued, she spent
several months in a psychiatric hospital which at the time
was called Daldorf Asylum. And upon her arrival and intake
(08:52):
at the asylum, though she was a total unknown. She
had no sort of identification on her at all, right,
which makes it really difficult when you're trying to do intake.
So she became known at the hospital as Freuleine und Vicans,
which translates into English as miss Unknown. So it said
that Miss Unknown would lie in her bed with a
(09:13):
blanket pulled over her face all day long, which to
me sounds like a woman who was really scared, right
and needs a little help. It took her nearly six
months before she felt comfortable enough to get out of
her bed and even to talk to other patients. Her
name was actually not Miss Unknown, to surprise no one,
it was Anna Anderson, and around this time at the
(09:35):
psychiatric hospital she was at, a magazine article about Anastasia
crossed Anna's path. A woman named Anna Kemnets, who worked
at the asylum, gave an account of what happened. After
Anna saw this article and we quote, she asked me
if I didn't notice something about it, and I answered
that I didn't. She then said, can't you see the
(09:57):
similarity between us two. Anna's accent and her quote Romanov
Blue Eyes had some patients wondering if the former Miss
Unknown was actually Grand Duchess Anastasia, who of course had
been executed in nineteen eighteen. And Anna didn't deny that
she was, although at this point she didn't confirm it either,
(10:17):
and because she was a bit coy about it, others
in the hospital speculated that she was really royalty, and
as a consequence, Anna became quite a curiosity, and she
was a curiosity not just to the other patients in
the hospital. Journalists and Russian aristocrats learned about this unusual
woman and they kind of got hooked and a little
invested in her story as well. Some thought she could
(10:40):
be the genuine Anastasia, but others dismissed her as yet
another royal fraud because remember, there had been a lot
already by this time, yes, very many, And it didn't
help that there were also very many rumors swirling around
about this. For example, and this is one of my
favorite rumors that popped up, it was suggested that the
Romano daughters survived because there were jewels sewn into their
(11:04):
corsets and those jewels protected them from bullets. It's a fancy,
fancy bulletproof vest. I wish jewels could help them out
in the bullets situation, but sadly, probably not right. Some
versions of that story that I have seen suggests like
they were not intended to be clear to stop bullets.
That was a way to hide the family wealth while
(11:25):
they were imprisoned, exactly. And it was noted in Anna's
file that she exhibited some antisocial behavior and that she
had some unusual scars on her body, and she also
spoke with a strange accent. While she had initially been
noncommittal on the matter, or you know, perhaps she was
waiting for the right time, Anna eventually claimed that she
(11:48):
was actually Anastasia and the only surviving member of the
Romanov family. Her story went like this. She had been wounded,
but she survived the attack, and a guard who was
sympathetic to the royal family smuggled her out of Russia.
She did know some little known facts about the royal family,
but that alone wasn't really enough to convince anyone that
(12:10):
she was the real thing. The immediate relatives of the
Romanov family did not believe Anna's story at all, said
Prince Nicholas Romanov, a cousin of Nicholas the second quote.
The murder of the Czar and his family was such
a horrible thing. There was that wish among the people
that it couldn't be so horribly true. After her stay
(12:32):
in the hospital, Anna was actually still a hot topic.
Books were written about her before and against whether or
not she was a fraud. Lawsuits were filed, although nothing
ever came from them, and she continued to make her
claim from all the way until and after many tries,
she actually was never able to get her claimed royal
(12:53):
name and lineage recognized by the European courts, which repeatedly
found that Anna couldn't provide concrete evidence that she was Anastasia.
But what did happen was that this woman who called
herself Anna Anderson but pretended to be Anastasia Romanoff unintentionally
kind of became an important and interesting part of Russian history.
(13:16):
So let's take another break for a word from our sponsor,
and when we come back, we'll figure out if Anna
really was who she claimed she was. Welcome back to Criminalia. Okay,
let's talk about one of my favorite subjects, skeletons. Yes, okay.
(13:39):
So around the time the USSR fell in a mass
grave of what was believed to be the royal family
was discovered. The remains were sent to a forensics lab
and all were eventually confirmed to be the Romanoff family,
but two victims were unaccounted for, anastasia sister Maria and
her brother Alexei. The remains that both children were eventually
(14:01):
discovered as well, but that didn't happen until two thousand
and seven. And there's an interesting thing here because his
earliest ninety seven, a Berlin newspaper ran an investigative report
on Anna and they actually got it all right, even
without DNA testing in today's forensic techniques. I totally want
to meet this journalist, I did right, like somebody was
(14:24):
super on the ball. So this report revealed that her
name was Franzisca Shingoska and that she was a Polish
factory worker and she had been reported missing after she
had been injured in a factory explosion, and this Berlin
paper noted that the timeline of her disappearance coincided with
(14:44):
when Anna relocated and appeared in Berlin. Annado continued to
refuse all claims suggesting that she was not missing Royal
She said that she was, and she would quietly remind
everyone that she was Grand Duchess Alexandra Romanov. Also problematic
for Anna right at this time was that she had
an actual brother, Felix, and Felix identified her as his sister.
(15:09):
In ninety one, after Anna's death, a DNA sample confirmed
what that newspaper had reported decades earlier, right she was
definitely not related to the Romanov family. Skeletal remains were
found in a forest near a Katerinburg and with DNA
testing it had been confirmed that they matched Nicholas the
second and his family, and then the bodies of the
(15:31):
two youngest children were still at this time, As Maria mentioned,
a moment ago missing. In two thousand and seven, there
were two sets of remains found nearby the original burial sites,
again because of DNA testing and confirmed by multiple identification laboratories. Today,
it is believed that these skeletons that were found in
(15:52):
two thousand and seven are the remains of the two
missing Romanov children, Maria and Alexei. In the Russian government
confirmed that Anastasia's bones were among the remains of the
royal family that had been identified conclusively in After two
years of research, scientists concluded that Anastasia's body was definitely
(16:13):
accounted for. This is kind of a bit of a
modern day side note rabbit hole to go on, but
it'll be fast. So Queenlizabeth the Second, her husband Prince Philip,
and all of their descendants are actually related to the Romanos.
It's all through Queen Victoria, who was Alexandra's grandmother. So
Queen Victoria and her husband Albert had nine children, and
(16:36):
they had dozens of grandchildren who married throughout the royal
houses of Europe, and for that reason, Victoria is sometimes
called the Grandmother of Europe. And done done, Yeah, Almost
every royal family has some quick connection back to Victoria
and Albert. More than one hundred years, give or take
a year, had passed when the Russian Orthodox Church actually
(16:58):
reopened the case of the Romano family. Today, all members
of the immediate family have been identified through DNA evidence,
But despite the findings, which were based on thirty seven
different evaluations by forensic, molecular, genetic, and handwriting experts, the
Church claimed that the scientific investigation had been mishandled and
they continue to believe that the remains that were found
(17:21):
are not those of the Romanov family, so then, of
course we have Anna. With genetic testing, it was determined
that Anastasia was assassinated along with her family. Annas fraud
was confirmed solidly when her DNA did not match that
of the Romanov remains, nor did it match any living
(17:41):
descendants of the Romanov family. Scientists also compared Anna's DNA
with that the man named Carl Malcher. She did match
with Carl, who happened to be a great nephew of
Francisca Shanoska. It was confirmed that Anna was, in fact
that missing Polish factory worker named you got It Franzisco. Today,
historians and scientists agree that Anna and princessca were the
(18:05):
same person, Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia, and I'm going
to quote him here. I am certain at the end
of her life she believed in her own story, and
in a confused way, she forgot her own life, and
there are those who wished to share her story. People
look for exceptional events to change the past, but history
is brutally effective in its solutions and brutally simple. I
(18:28):
have to say, based on the two quotes we have
of him here, I think he's an insightful person who
gets right to the point. He definitely gets right to
the point. Yes, of course, everyone wants to believe the
better and more hopeful story, and I understand that, but
you gotta live in reality, people. He has a point.
He's like, everybody wants to believe in something that's a
fairy tale. Yeah, that's less horrific in reality. Yeah, understandable.
(18:51):
In nineteen sixty eight, Anna emigrated to the United States,
and she continued her story about being the Grand Duchess
her niece while Trashing reportedly said, we quote my Auntie
was the cleverest of the four children. She wanted to
come out into the world, wanted to become an actress.
Something special. Well, Anna was something special, but just not
(19:12):
something that I would have imagined for. When she was
in the United States, she married history professor Jack Manahan,
and Jack was also a firm believer that his wife
was Grand Duchess Anastasia. He would later describe her as,
and I'm going to quote him here, probably Charlottesville's best love.
Eccentric in Anna dite of complications of pneumonia in Charlottesville, Virginia,
(19:36):
where she was known as Annie Apple, a mad local.
Anna story continues to be very popular. She has been
the plot of Broadway shows, Hollywood movies, The Royal Ballet,
Fox Animation Studios made a film about her, and there
have been books ranging in nature from very scholarly to
quite romantic. I like that she ended up with someone
(19:59):
who loved her so much that he thought that she
was on stage. Yeah, she she kind of got to
live out her her belief the way she wished. I
also love that her community when she was there in
the eighties referred to her as Annie Apple, a mad local.
It's sort of sweet. It's as if they knew her history,
but it really didn't bother them, you know, So before
(20:27):
we get into the drink. I was reading that in
nineteen there were mocktail bars popping up in New York
City and probably other cities around the country only mock tails,
and and just two years later they're like more than
a dozen in one city, and they're really just popping up.
So your recipes could be more and more popular. So
(20:47):
what do you have for us today? Yeah, I mean
it's interesting for a few reasons, right one, I mean,
there is a bigger interest in the idea of having
like yummy librations that are are not alcohol laden. For
a variety reasons, there are some people who were just
less interested in drinking. I also wonder how much of
that is in terms of its growth as an industry,
(21:08):
is tied at least in some small part to the
fact that you don't need as many licenses to open
a mock tail bar. We don't need a liquor license
to sell juice. So my mock tail this time is
called the Other Romanov and this comes with its own
kookie story, so get ready. So, first of all, because
(21:30):
of the name similarities, I immediately thought of strawberries Romanov
when I began brainstorming about a drink that might suit
and a story. Yes, do you know the story of
Strawberries Romanoff? Though you have told this to me before.
There's a reason this particular dessert is so deeply appropriate
to link to this tale because it is normally credited
(21:51):
in its invention to a restaurateur who went by the
name Michael Romanov. His real name was Harry F. Gergison.
That was an anglicized version of his birth name, Herschel
giggs In, and he claimed to be a member of
the House of Romanov. But he ran a restaurant in
California that was very popular for a while, and that's
(22:11):
where he created, allegedly, strawberries Romanoff. Would you normally see
with two f's on the end instead of the V,
but they're sometimes interchangeable. So I thought it would be
fun if we came up with a drinkable version of
strawberries Romanoff. If you haven't ever had it, it's basically
like fresh cut strawberries in a beautiful crystal dish, often
with like a cream sauce that's sweet and has kind
(22:33):
of some nice layering of flavors to it. So this
is a little bit of a build your own adventure
drink because you want to alter some things to suit. Probably,
so it starts with two pints of strawberries, though, and
you want to, of course, you know, cut off the stems.
If you have a good blender, you don't really have
to do much more than that. You don't need to
chop them up or anything, just toss him in. And
(22:55):
then you need something to create that creamy element. I
have seen many different a piece for just literally making
strawberries roman off when you're not blending it into a drink.
But so you can use something like vanilla ice cream
or heavy cream here. But here's the thing, I actually
prefer sour cream for this. Like a half cup of
sour cream is perfect because it gives this this richness
(23:17):
and like it's a little cheesecakey when you sip it,
which is very nice. And then you're going to use
two to three table spoons of the sweetener of your choice.
Some people like confection or sugar, some people like regular
granulated sugar. I like brown sugar because again it adds
a nice layer of flavor. I also add a teaspoon
of fresh orange zest. Just zest the skin of your
(23:38):
orange with your your fine greater over that blender. Throw
this all in a blender, blended, blended, blended, and then
take a peek at it, see what its consistency is like.
And add a milk I like oat milk for this one,
until it's liquid e and smooth enough that you're pretty
confident you can sip it through a straw without it
being an effort that is uncomfortable. It is so stink
(24:01):
and delicious, and it is quite filling and heavy. It's
basically like a really rich smoothie and it's little Now
is the strawberries rumman off of I'm remembering correctly. About
the alcohol that usually is involved in it, is that
a brandy that goes into the sauce sometimes? Yeah, some
people also use Grand Marnier, which is why I put
(24:21):
that orange zest in because that has an orange flavor
to it. Yeah, totally, But yeah, I love this with
a little bit of brandy in it. It seems like
it would be a good summer drink because it is
sort of sweet and cold. However, I think it is
too heavy for that. Like, I would not go outside
and sip this casually because you'll just feel like I
felt very much like I would just like to sit
quietly in a corner and burt for a while, like
(24:43):
it's a heavy, heavy beverage, but so yummy. It's a
dessert for sure. Sitting on the porch, just sip and
so straw. It's not a summer drink, no, but oh delicious.
I bet that is delicious. It's like the yummiest way
to make a smoothie ever. And I just I love
(25:06):
taking advantage of fresh fruit anyway, and it makes it
fun for mocas. So you would like a very dessert
e mocktail, this is the one for you. UH want
to once again thank you for spending this time with
us while we talk about the many romanofs, both impostors
real and the ones that just wanted to make up
recipes and kind of claim they were near the Romanov family.
(25:28):
We'll be right back here again next week with another
impostor and another beverage. Criminalia is a production of Shonda
land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(25:50):
favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
third season of Criminalia. This season, we're exploring the lives
and motivations of some of the most notorious impostors throughout history.
Gate I'm Maria Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry And before
(00:26):
we can actually dig into this episode's impostor, we have
to talk first about Russian history. To lay a bit
of groundwork here, the Romanov family ruled Russia for more
than three hundred years, beginning in sixteen with Mikhail Romanov.
The dynasty gave us Peter the Great, Alexander the Great,
and the very famous Catherine the Great and Nicholas the Second,
(00:48):
who took the throne in four was ultimately not destined
to be Nicholas the Great. It was widely said that
he was really a lot more interested in his very
tight knit family than in matters of state. Is quite
shy and gentlemanly, and he was known to be chronically indecisive,
never a good quality for a leader, not at all.
(01:09):
And he was also married to an unpopular German born
empress named Alexandra the Romanovs have five children. Their fourth child, Anastasia,
was born on June eighth. She was the youngest daughter
of zar Nicholas the second and Zarina Alexandra. But Nicholas
wasn't bombarded with congratulations when she was born. He was
(01:31):
bombarded with headlines though about the couple not yet having
a male air. This is one example from the New
York Times, which read star has another daughter. Russian people
again disappointed in their hope that an heir to the
throne would be born. So that's not the most auspicious
start to life, isn't no. And it's very telling that
(01:52):
that's something that was being reported worldwide, not just in
the Russian press, but New York Times over here in
the States. Of the sisters in the family, Olga was
the bookish one, Tatiana was a poised beauty, Maria was
sweet and kind hearted, and Anastasia was well, my most account,
she was reportedly a little bit of a hell raiser,
(02:15):
just kind of that kid that's a free spirit. Yeah,
But considering that she was a royal, there's really not
a whole lot of information about Anastasia's life, and historians
believe that that's because there wasn't really anything remarkable about it.
It probably wasn't much different, for example, than that of
her sisters. And remember as well, she had been a
(02:37):
disappointment in terms of the country's desires, so meticulously documenting
her early life was probably not really a priority. Anastasia,
along with her older sisters, as well as her younger
brother Alexei, were known for their family name, of course,
but they weren't really known for their health. Alexei lived
with hemophilia. Anastasia suffered from a weak muscle in her
(03:01):
back as well as painful bunyans on her feet, which
both sometimes affected her mobility. Their mother often called upon
Gregory Resputin, who was believed to have healing powers. Over time,
though rescuted and became a close confidant to Alexandra, and
it's said he had quite a bit of influence in
her life. So this story is not about Rescpute and
(03:22):
though so we're not going to get into the scandal
of his relationship over the Romanoff children, and if we did,
we could be here for days, so we'll move on.
There's so much information in the world about Respute, and
if you're just eager for a trip down the rabbit hole, yes,
but in terms of the romanofs the children were formally educated,
but they were educated at home, and we know Anastasia
(03:44):
loved singing and dancing, and that she frequently painted with watercolors.
Some reports about her hint that although she was quite smart,
she also was not really what you would categorize as
an attentive student. A lady in waiting to her mother
called Anastasia quote a sharp and clever child who liked
to play practical jokes on her siblings, not surprising for
(04:05):
the hell raiser at all. While we don't really have
an immense amount of information about her early life, and
fortunately we do know about Anastasia's death. So her father,
Nicholas the Second, abdicated the throne on March fifteenth, nine seventeen.
That was in an attempt to prevent a civil war
(04:27):
from breaking out. That attempt did not work. The civil
war happened just the same, and he and his family
were taken captive and placed under house arrest. It was
early in the morning of July seventeenth, nineteen eighteen, that
the entire royal family, including a teenaged Anastasia, were taken
to the basement assured that they were being protected from
(04:47):
their rebellious violence, but instead the family along with four
members of their staff, which included Dr. Eugene Bodkin, the
family physician, Alexei trump valet To, Nicholas Anna Demidova, may
To Alexandra and Ivan Karatonov, the family cook, as well
as the family's dog, whose name we do not know,
but they were all executed in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The Romanov's
(05:11):
extended family were either killed as well or they were exiled,
and according to an initial statement from the firing squad,
they had killed only Nicholas the second, but they later
reported they had killed the entire family, but the anaesthesia
was one of the last to be executed. The accounts
of the men from that firing squad, however, were mostly
(05:32):
confusing and mostly unhelpful, and they proved themselves only good
for spreading rumors and gossip. The assassination was carried out
by Communist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin.
A quick and very high level history note on this
time in Russia. So there was more than one more
going on, including World War One. When Lenin and his
(05:54):
party launched a coup against the Russian government that was
Nicholas's government, and within two day July sixteen, outside of
those executions of the royal family, there was no bloodshed
and Lenin rose to power as the country's new ruler.
The Bolshevik Party renamed themselves the Russian Communist Party, and
Lennon served as the founding head of the government of
(06:16):
Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union until with Nicholas
off the throne, the assassination was a permanent end to
the royal family. The line of succession was over, and
so was the Romanov reign. So right now we're going
to take a break for a word from our sponsor,
and when we're back, we're going to talk about royal impostors.
(06:44):
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's get back to the story
and talk about someone who was called Miss Unknown. Although
Anaesthetia died in nine eighteen, for years following the assassination
of her family, gossip and specy relations seemed to actually
keep her alive in the mind of Russians. Conspiracy theories
(07:05):
as well as impostors of the members of the royal
family began to emerge, and there are impostors claiming to
be pretty much everyone, including Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Alexei.
But in total there were more than thirty women who
impersonated Anastasia and one guy who claimed that he was
her son. Those who have made the claim include a
(07:26):
Leonora Krueger between nineteen o one and nineteen fifty four,
who posed as the Grand Duchess in a Bulgarian village
just kind of lived out her life telling everyone that
was the scoop. It seems like they believed it. In
the mid twentieth century, there is a tragic story about
a mentally ill woman who spent years in hospitals and
prisons in the USSR. She actually died in a psychiatric
(07:48):
hospital in nine and the list really continues. There are
a lot of people we could talk about, but here
is an interesting one that is a little less tragic.
One impostor actually wrote Anastasia's memoirs as though she were Anastasia,
in which she described exactly how she escaped. That was
all false, And I have a new book from my
(08:09):
book class right. Perhaps the best known impostor of Anastasia
was a woman who called herself Anna Anderson. So we're
going to pause for just a minute, because this is
an important thing to tell you. The next part of
our conversation will include brief talk about a failed suicide attempt,
which may be triggering for some of our listeners. So
(08:31):
stay safe, mutis for just a minute, and we'll be
right back with that. Okay, So here we go. In Berlin,
in a woman was rescued from a canal after a
failed attempted suicide, and after she was rescued, she spent
several months in a psychiatric hospital which at the time
was called Daldorf Asylum. And upon her arrival and intake
(08:52):
at the asylum, though she was a total unknown. She
had no sort of identification on her at all, right,
which makes it really difficult when you're trying to do intake.
So she became known at the hospital as Freuleine und Vicans,
which translates into English as miss Unknown. So it said
that Miss Unknown would lie in her bed with a
(09:13):
blanket pulled over her face all day long, which to
me sounds like a woman who was really scared, right
and needs a little help. It took her nearly six
months before she felt comfortable enough to get out of
her bed and even to talk to other patients. Her
name was actually not Miss Unknown, to surprise no one,
it was Anna Anderson, and around this time at the
(09:35):
psychiatric hospital she was at, a magazine article about Anastasia
crossed Anna's path. A woman named Anna Kemnets, who worked
at the asylum, gave an account of what happened. After
Anna saw this article and we quote, she asked me
if I didn't notice something about it, and I answered
that I didn't. She then said, can't you see the
(09:57):
similarity between us two. Anna's accent and her quote Romanov
Blue Eyes had some patients wondering if the former Miss
Unknown was actually Grand Duchess Anastasia, who of course had
been executed in nineteen eighteen. And Anna didn't deny that
she was, although at this point she didn't confirm it either,
(10:17):
and because she was a bit coy about it, others
in the hospital speculated that she was really royalty, and
as a consequence, Anna became quite a curiosity, and she
was a curiosity not just to the other patients in
the hospital. Journalists and Russian aristocrats learned about this unusual
woman and they kind of got hooked and a little
invested in her story as well. Some thought she could
(10:40):
be the genuine Anastasia, but others dismissed her as yet
another royal fraud because remember, there had been a lot
already by this time, yes, very many, And it didn't
help that there were also very many rumors swirling around
about this. For example, and this is one of my
favorite rumors that popped up, it was suggested that the
Romano daughters survived because there were jewels sewn into their
(11:04):
corsets and those jewels protected them from bullets. It's a fancy,
fancy bulletproof vest. I wish jewels could help them out
in the bullets situation, but sadly, probably not right. Some
versions of that story that I have seen suggests like
they were not intended to be clear to stop bullets.
That was a way to hide the family wealth while
(11:25):
they were imprisoned, exactly. And it was noted in Anna's
file that she exhibited some antisocial behavior and that she
had some unusual scars on her body, and she also
spoke with a strange accent. While she had initially been
noncommittal on the matter, or you know, perhaps she was
waiting for the right time, Anna eventually claimed that she
(11:48):
was actually Anastasia and the only surviving member of the
Romanov family. Her story went like this. She had been wounded,
but she survived the attack, and a guard who was
sympathetic to the royal family smuggled her out of Russia.
She did know some little known facts about the royal family,
but that alone wasn't really enough to convince anyone that
(12:10):
she was the real thing. The immediate relatives of the
Romanov family did not believe Anna's story at all, said
Prince Nicholas Romanov, a cousin of Nicholas the second quote.
The murder of the Czar and his family was such
a horrible thing. There was that wish among the people
that it couldn't be so horribly true. After her stay
(12:32):
in the hospital, Anna was actually still a hot topic.
Books were written about her before and against whether or
not she was a fraud. Lawsuits were filed, although nothing
ever came from them, and she continued to make her
claim from all the way until and after many tries,
she actually was never able to get her claimed royal
(12:53):
name and lineage recognized by the European courts, which repeatedly
found that Anna couldn't provide concrete evidence that she was Anastasia.
But what did happen was that this woman who called
herself Anna Anderson but pretended to be Anastasia Romanoff unintentionally
kind of became an important and interesting part of Russian history.
(13:16):
So let's take another break for a word from our sponsor,
and when we come back, we'll figure out if Anna
really was who she claimed she was. Welcome back to Criminalia. Okay,
let's talk about one of my favorite subjects, skeletons. Yes, okay.
(13:39):
So around the time the USSR fell in a mass
grave of what was believed to be the royal family
was discovered. The remains were sent to a forensics lab
and all were eventually confirmed to be the Romanoff family,
but two victims were unaccounted for, anastasia sister Maria and
her brother Alexei. The remains that both children were eventually
(14:01):
discovered as well, but that didn't happen until two thousand
and seven. And there's an interesting thing here because his
earliest ninety seven, a Berlin newspaper ran an investigative report
on Anna and they actually got it all right, even
without DNA testing in today's forensic techniques. I totally want
to meet this journalist, I did right, like somebody was
(14:24):
super on the ball. So this report revealed that her
name was Franzisca Shingoska and that she was a Polish
factory worker and she had been reported missing after she
had been injured in a factory explosion, and this Berlin
paper noted that the timeline of her disappearance coincided with
(14:44):
when Anna relocated and appeared in Berlin. Annado continued to
refuse all claims suggesting that she was not missing Royal
She said that she was, and she would quietly remind
everyone that she was Grand Duchess Alexandra Romanov. Also problematic
for Anna right at this time was that she had
an actual brother, Felix, and Felix identified her as his sister.
(15:09):
In ninety one, after Anna's death, a DNA sample confirmed
what that newspaper had reported decades earlier, right she was
definitely not related to the Romanov family. Skeletal remains were
found in a forest near a Katerinburg and with DNA
testing it had been confirmed that they matched Nicholas the
second and his family, and then the bodies of the
(15:31):
two youngest children were still at this time, As Maria mentioned,
a moment ago missing. In two thousand and seven, there
were two sets of remains found nearby the original burial sites,
again because of DNA testing and confirmed by multiple identification laboratories. Today,
it is believed that these skeletons that were found in
(15:52):
two thousand and seven are the remains of the two
missing Romanov children, Maria and Alexei. In the Russian government
confirmed that Anastasia's bones were among the remains of the
royal family that had been identified conclusively in After two
years of research, scientists concluded that Anastasia's body was definitely
(16:13):
accounted for. This is kind of a bit of a
modern day side note rabbit hole to go on, but
it'll be fast. So Queenlizabeth the Second, her husband Prince Philip,
and all of their descendants are actually related to the Romanos.
It's all through Queen Victoria, who was Alexandra's grandmother. So
Queen Victoria and her husband Albert had nine children, and
(16:36):
they had dozens of grandchildren who married throughout the royal
houses of Europe, and for that reason, Victoria is sometimes
called the Grandmother of Europe. And done done, Yeah, Almost
every royal family has some quick connection back to Victoria
and Albert. More than one hundred years, give or take
a year, had passed when the Russian Orthodox Church actually
(16:58):
reopened the case of the Romano family. Today, all members
of the immediate family have been identified through DNA evidence,
But despite the findings, which were based on thirty seven
different evaluations by forensic, molecular, genetic, and handwriting experts, the
Church claimed that the scientific investigation had been mishandled and
they continue to believe that the remains that were found
(17:21):
are not those of the Romanov family, so then, of
course we have Anna. With genetic testing, it was determined
that Anastasia was assassinated along with her family. Annas fraud
was confirmed solidly when her DNA did not match that
of the Romanov remains, nor did it match any living
(17:41):
descendants of the Romanov family. Scientists also compared Anna's DNA
with that the man named Carl Malcher. She did match
with Carl, who happened to be a great nephew of
Francisca Shanoska. It was confirmed that Anna was, in fact
that missing Polish factory worker named you got It Franzisco. Today,
historians and scientists agree that Anna and princessca were the
(18:05):
same person, Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia, and I'm going
to quote him here. I am certain at the end
of her life she believed in her own story, and
in a confused way, she forgot her own life, and
there are those who wished to share her story. People
look for exceptional events to change the past, but history
is brutally effective in its solutions and brutally simple. I
(18:28):
have to say, based on the two quotes we have
of him here, I think he's an insightful person who
gets right to the point. He definitely gets right to
the point. Yes, of course, everyone wants to believe the
better and more hopeful story, and I understand that, but
you gotta live in reality, people. He has a point.
He's like, everybody wants to believe in something that's a
fairy tale. Yeah, that's less horrific in reality. Yeah, understandable.
(18:51):
In nineteen sixty eight, Anna emigrated to the United States,
and she continued her story about being the Grand Duchess
her niece while Trashing reportedly said, we quote my Auntie
was the cleverest of the four children. She wanted to
come out into the world, wanted to become an actress.
Something special. Well, Anna was something special, but just not
(19:12):
something that I would have imagined for. When she was
in the United States, she married history professor Jack Manahan,
and Jack was also a firm believer that his wife
was Grand Duchess Anastasia. He would later describe her as,
and I'm going to quote him here, probably Charlottesville's best love.
Eccentric in Anna dite of complications of pneumonia in Charlottesville, Virginia,
(19:36):
where she was known as Annie Apple, a mad local.
Anna story continues to be very popular. She has been
the plot of Broadway shows, Hollywood movies, The Royal Ballet,
Fox Animation Studios made a film about her, and there
have been books ranging in nature from very scholarly to
quite romantic. I like that she ended up with someone
(19:59):
who loved her so much that he thought that she
was on stage. Yeah, she she kind of got to
live out her her belief the way she wished. I
also love that her community when she was there in
the eighties referred to her as Annie Apple, a mad local.
It's sort of sweet. It's as if they knew her history,
but it really didn't bother them, you know, So before
(20:27):
we get into the drink. I was reading that in
nineteen there were mocktail bars popping up in New York
City and probably other cities around the country only mock tails,
and and just two years later they're like more than
a dozen in one city, and they're really just popping up.
So your recipes could be more and more popular. So
(20:47):
what do you have for us today? Yeah, I mean
it's interesting for a few reasons, right one, I mean,
there is a bigger interest in the idea of having
like yummy librations that are are not alcohol laden. For
a variety reasons, there are some people who were just
less interested in drinking. I also wonder how much of
that is in terms of its growth as an industry,
(21:08):
is tied at least in some small part to the
fact that you don't need as many licenses to open
a mock tail bar. We don't need a liquor license
to sell juice. So my mock tail this time is
called the Other Romanov and this comes with its own
kookie story, so get ready. So, first of all, because
(21:30):
of the name similarities, I immediately thought of strawberries Romanov
when I began brainstorming about a drink that might suit
and a story. Yes, do you know the story of
Strawberries Romanoff? Though you have told this to me before.
There's a reason this particular dessert is so deeply appropriate
to link to this tale because it is normally credited
(21:51):
in its invention to a restaurateur who went by the
name Michael Romanov. His real name was Harry F. Gergison.
That was an anglicized version of his birth name, Herschel
giggs In, and he claimed to be a member of
the House of Romanov. But he ran a restaurant in
California that was very popular for a while, and that's
(22:11):
where he created, allegedly, strawberries Romanoff. Would you normally see
with two f's on the end instead of the V,
but they're sometimes interchangeable. So I thought it would be
fun if we came up with a drinkable version of
strawberries Romanoff. If you haven't ever had it, it's basically
like fresh cut strawberries in a beautiful crystal dish, often
with like a cream sauce that's sweet and has kind
(22:33):
of some nice layering of flavors to it. So this
is a little bit of a build your own adventure
drink because you want to alter some things to suit. Probably,
so it starts with two pints of strawberries, though, and
you want to, of course, you know, cut off the stems.
If you have a good blender, you don't really have
to do much more than that. You don't need to
chop them up or anything, just toss him in. And
(22:55):
then you need something to create that creamy element. I
have seen many different a piece for just literally making
strawberries roman off when you're not blending it into a drink.
But so you can use something like vanilla ice cream
or heavy cream here. But here's the thing, I actually
prefer sour cream for this. Like a half cup of
sour cream is perfect because it gives this this richness
(23:17):
and like it's a little cheesecakey when you sip it,
which is very nice. And then you're going to use
two to three table spoons of the sweetener of your choice.
Some people like confection or sugar, some people like regular
granulated sugar. I like brown sugar because again it adds
a nice layer of flavor. I also add a teaspoon
of fresh orange zest. Just zest the skin of your
(23:38):
orange with your your fine greater over that blender. Throw
this all in a blender, blended, blended, blended, and then
take a peek at it, see what its consistency is like.
And add a milk I like oat milk for this one,
until it's liquid e and smooth enough that you're pretty
confident you can sip it through a straw without it
being an effort that is uncomfortable. It is so stink
(24:01):
and delicious, and it is quite filling and heavy. It's
basically like a really rich smoothie and it's little Now
is the strawberries rumman off of I'm remembering correctly. About
the alcohol that usually is involved in it, is that
a brandy that goes into the sauce sometimes? Yeah, some
people also use Grand Marnier, which is why I put
(24:21):
that orange zest in because that has an orange flavor
to it. Yeah, totally, But yeah, I love this with
a little bit of brandy in it. It seems like
it would be a good summer drink because it is
sort of sweet and cold. However, I think it is
too heavy for that. Like, I would not go outside
and sip this casually because you'll just feel like I
felt very much like I would just like to sit
quietly in a corner and burt for a while, like
(24:43):
it's a heavy, heavy beverage, but so yummy. It's a
dessert for sure. Sitting on the porch, just sip and
so straw. It's not a summer drink, no, but oh delicious.
I bet that is delicious. It's like the yummiest way
to make a smoothie ever. And I just I love
(25:06):
taking advantage of fresh fruit anyway, and it makes it
fun for mocas. So you would like a very dessert
e mocktail, this is the one for you. UH want
to once again thank you for spending this time with
us while we talk about the many romanofs, both impostors
real and the ones that just wanted to make up
recipes and kind of claim they were near the Romanov family.
(25:28):
We'll be right back here again next week with another
impostor and another beverage. Criminalia is a production of Shonda
land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(25:50):
favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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