The worlds most famous Romanov claimant, Anna Anderson, died in Charlottesville, Virginia on 4 February 1984 after enduring 56 often harrowing years of controversy. At the time of her death it seemed the mysteries engendered by her claims would never be conclusively resolved, until bowel tissue was discovered at the Martha Jefferson Hospital, biopsies from an operation she had undergone in 1979.

After a series of independent DNA tests in 1994 medical science ended the mystery, proving Anna Anderson wasn't a Romanov and established her identity as Franziska Schanzkowska, born in Borowihlas 16/12/1896 of Polish/German descent. Five years after cold science ended the hot controversy leading authorities give us their thoughts and reminiscences, in this the first of a special two part series, noted Anna Anderson biographer Peter Kurth and scientist Dr. Terry Melton give us their post DNA thoughts on a subject which continues to captivate people.

Peter Kurth.
Few authors have done more to popularize the image of Anna Anderson or perpetuate the memory of Russia's last Imperial Family then author Peter Kurth, whose brilliant scholarship has introduced a generation to the tragedy of the Russian Revolution. Born on 27 July 1953 in Burlington, Vermont, he first heard of Anna Anderson as a 13 year old boy. "I had a general interest in the Romanov's as a teenager," Peter Kurth recalls, "was fascinated by the Bergman "Anastasia" but didn't go deeply into the case until I'd met a few of the family and (especially) Tatiana Botkin. When I heard both sides early and realized that the story had never been adequately told".

Peter Kurth first met Anna Anderson on 7 July 1973 and it remains an unforgettable moment in his life, little did he realize it would be the start of a friendship he would forever cherish and the foundation of his career and fame as a writer.

After graduating from the University of Vermont he spent seven years researching and writing his magnum opus: Anastasia: the Riddle of Anna Anderson. Published in 1983 it became an international success, translated and released in seven countries it was turned into a TV mini-series and continues to sell well 16 years later.

"I don't really have an answer when I'm asked if I 'still believe'," Peter Kurth replied to an obvious question often asked these days.
"I sputtered and protested for quite a while after the DNA evidence came in, because the tests hadn't been conducted with any kind of reliable controls.
The Russian "investigation" of the identity of the Ekaterinburg bones was a complete comedy, nor were the bones protected from tampering and manhandling -- but after a while I gave up.

Gleb Botkin's daughter Marina Schweitzer of course still believes, and I would assume the same is true for Tatiana Botkin's children. I think most people are reluctant to say anything about it now, since only a handful actually knew her at all well and no one wants to look like a loon.

My conviction that Anna Anderson was genuine was always based on the preponderance of evidence and my own impressions, which are confirmed by anyone who actually knew her: none of us believe she was Franziska Schanzkowska, but whether she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia I'm in an odd position, because the DNA goes against everything we know about this woman -- none of it makes sense either way.

What we have here, as Brien Horan has said, is an apparent scientific certainty combined with a life (and record) that contradicts it at every turn. This is why I say it's a mystery.

I don't question or criticize the work of the scientists, especially as I provided one of the hair samples used for analysis. I only say that they are impossible to square with the preponderance of evidence in the case. No one will convince me that an uneducated farm girl could speak fluent English without lessons (as early as 1923, and just for instance), or that the Berlin police would have failed to identify her when she first turned up -- from 1916, FS [Franziska Schanzkowska] was a regular at Berlin hospitals and institutions. But I don't argue about it anymore, mainly because she's been dead for 15 years and none of it can help her now. I'll be writing more about it soon, but from a personal perspective.

Well, you see I can't help myself on this subject, but as I say, it's not my goal to continue the argument. I've always preferred it as a mystery and a human drama. I live easily with the knowledge she probably wasn't Anastasia, but the Schanzkowska business is too much for me. Unless the considered testimony of hundreds of witnesses is to be dismissed as a mass delusion, which I reject as a possibility".

When asked if he feels he will ever get Anna Anderson out of his system or be able to put it behind him, he replies: " I won't get Anderson out of my system in the same way you can't get a favorite relative or grandmother out of your system. It always belongs, it's part of you".

Peter Kurth lives in Colchester, Vermont, USA, where he is finishing an eagerly awaited biography on American dance legend Isadora Duncan. Although his energies have recently been rediverted due to a highly publicized scandal involving his sister Barbara Kurth, whose 57 year old ex-husband (Stephen Fagan) was arrested in Florida a few months ago for absconding with their infant daughters in 1979 and telling them for the next 20 years their mother was dead.

Although Fagan pleaded guilty to the charge of kidnap he was let off with probation, a $100.000 fine and community service which has outraged parents rights groups and the Kurth family. So Peter's energies are now focused on providing his sister with moral and practical support, as they endeavor to see justice done in this life ruining affair.

Dr. Terry Melton. Ph.D.
Dr. Terry Melton is one of the worlds most distinguished geneticists and President of Mitotyping Technologies, LLC at Pennsylvania State University. In 1994 as a graduate student under Dr. Mark Stoneking history was made when Dr. Melton undertook DNA analysis of several strands of Anna Anderson's hair, while on the otherside of the Atlantic Dr. Peter Gill and his team were analyzing DNA extracted from Anderson's tissue samples found in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"Dr. Stoneking and I had speculated about the potential to do the test on Anderson when the paper reporting the exhumation and testing of the Romanov remains had come out a couple of years before." Dr. Melton recalls.
"So when the opportunity presented itself through Sid Mandelbaum's contacting us, we were very excited. No less because we were able to obtain the hairs with relatively little trouble, while battles were raging in court in Virginia about who would have access to test the intestinal tissue.

My recollections of the testing itself are that I was full of anticipation on the day that I viewed the results for the first time. The results took the form of an xray or autorad which had to be developed in the darkroom for about 15 minutes.
While I waited for the developing to occur, I thought about how I might be the only person in the world who knew the truth about Anna Anderson after I saw the results (not knowing at the time that Dr. Gill's lab was a bit ahead of me here).

We released our hair testing results over Reuters News Service the week before Dr. Gill's press conference in October 1994, he immediately contacted Dr. Stoneking to find out what mtDNA sequence we had obtained from the hairs.
Of course, when there was a match between the hairs and the intestinal tissue, we were all quite excited, as was Dr. Gill, because he was then able to report in his press conference that another lab, testing another sample independently, had obtained the exact same result.

Since I grew up in Charlottesville where Anderson lived out her life and read as a young adult all the books on the Romanov's and the assassination of the family, being able to do the test meant a lot to me.

I "met" Anderson once, her habit was to eat dinner at a local cafeteria with her husband frequently, and they left their old station wagon outside usually full of dogs, always black labrador retrievers. On the occasion that I met her, one of the dogs had escaped through a partially open window while the Manahans were inside the restaurant. My husband and I grabbed the dog, and he went in to tell them about what had happened. She came out of the restaurant, put the dog back in the car, scolding it loudly in a language I was not familiar with.

She was quite a character locally, called "Apple Annie" because of her wrinkled face. She and Manahan lived in a house near the university notorious for its run-down condition, many dogs and cats, and almost constant violations of weed and trash ordinances. They were well recognized around town in their dogs, and dog-food filled car.

I have a very sympathetic view of Anderson, although I do not consider myself any more well-informed than anyone else who has read all the many books and articles about her life. My interpretation is that she herself was convinced that she was Anastasia, and did not intentionally defraud anyone.

Peter Kurth's sympathetic story of her life convinced me that she was amnesiac upon being pulled from the canal in Berlin, and that wishful thinking among associates of the Romanov's placed the idea early on in her mind that she was the missing daughter.

Because of the tragic explosion in the munitions factory that killed her supervisor, I suspect she was either quite depressed or suicidal, and maybe suggestible as a result of being in a very passive state of mind.

She led a tragic life by anyone's standards, with much illness, misery, loneliness, and poverty, and was dependent upon many people. If she believed that pretending to be Anastasia would make her life better, she was terribly wrong. Therefore, I don't believe that she purposefully maintained a charade, but as she became more eccentric believed all that others told her.

Like Kurth, I have had a difficult time with the DNA testing results, based on everything I ever learned about Anna Anderson from an early age!.

What might be informative is to see how really unusual the sequence from Anderson and Maucher is in the general population. Therefore, this morning (3 July 1999) I did a new search for this sequence in the recently updated database maintained by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab that is used by all of us doing Mitochondrial DNA forensic casework.

The sequence is still unique, although the database is substantially larger than it was four years ago. Therefore, we can have increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska after all".

Today Dr. Stoneking has taken a position with the new Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, Dr. Melton is presently preparing a learned paper on her involvement in the Anderson DNA case: Mitochondrial DNA: solving the mystery of Anna Anderson. In Case studies in forensic anthropology: a reader, D.W. Steadman (ed.).

In the next issue of the Journal the special two part series Remembering Anna Anderson concludes with a rare interview with Dr. Gunther Von Berenberg-Gossler, the German attorney who opposed Anderson during her epic legal fight for recognition as the Grand Duchess Anastasia. And the Romanoff perspective from Prince Michael Romanoff of Australia. - John Godl