Portal:Virginia/Selected biography/14
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Anna Anderson (16 December 1896 – 12 February 1984) was the best known of several impostors who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. The real Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was killed along with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by communist revolutionaries, but the location of her body was unknown until 2008.
In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard, said Anderson was an impostor but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety. She emigrated to the United States in 1968, and shortly before the expiry of her visa married Jack Manahan, a Virginia history professor who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric". DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that Anderson's DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of the Romanovs. Most scientists, historians and journalists who have discussed the case accept that Anderson and Schanzkowska were the same person.
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