In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, 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.

As she was without papers and refused to identify herself, she was admitted as Fräulein Unbekannt ("Miss Unknown") to a mental hospital in Dalldorf (now Wittenau, in Reinickendorf), where she remained for the next two years.

[12] In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unknown woman was Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II.

"[18] A nurse at Dalldorf, Thea Malinovsky, claimed years after the patient's release from the asylum that the woman had told her she was another daughter of the Tsar, Anastasia, in the autumn of 1921.

The Berlin policeman who handled the case, Detective Inspector Franz Grünberg, thought that Kleist "may have had ulterior motives, as was hinted at in émigré circles: if the old conditions should ever be restored in Russia, he hoped for great advancement from having looked after the young woman.

[27] Tschaikovsky stayed in the houses of acquaintances, including Kleist, Peuthert, a poor working-class family called Bachmann, and at Inspector Grünberg's estate at Funkenmühle, near Zossen.

She has not only forgotten languages, but has in general lost the power of accurate narration ... even the simplest stories she tells incoherently and incorrectly; they are really only words strung together in impossibly ungrammatical German ...

"[40] Melnik declared that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, and supposed that any inability on her part to remember events and her refusal to speak Russian was caused by her impaired physical and psychological state.

[41] Either inadvertently through a sincere desire to "aid the patient's weak memory",[42] or as part of a deliberate charade,[43] Melnik coached Tschaikovsky with details of life in the imperial family.

[45] The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia.

[54] According to one account, initially Felix declared that Tschaikovsky was his sister Franziska,[55] but the affidavit he signed spoke only of a "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said she did not recognize him.

[60] Botkin's publicity caught the attention of a distant cousin of Anastasia's, Xenia Leeds, a former Russian princess who had married a wealthy American industrialist.

[62] On the journey from Seeon to the States, Tschaikovsky stopped at Paris, where she met Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia, the Tsar's cousin, who believed her to be Anastasia.

[65] Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation (an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia), which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate.

"[73] Gleb Botkin answered with a public letter to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, which referred to the family as "greedy and unscrupulous" and claimed they were only denouncing Anderson for money.

[74] 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.

[81] Jennings paid for the voyage, the stay at the Westchester sanatorium, and an additional six months' care in the psychiatric wing of a nursing home at Ilten near Hanover.

[95] Prince Frederick settled Anderson in a former army barracks in the small village of Unterlengenhardt, on the edge of the Black Forest, where she became a sort of tourist attraction.

[96] Lili Dehn, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia,[97] but when Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the imperial children, met Anderson, he denounced her as a fraud.

[103] Botkin was living in the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, and a local friend of his, history professor and genealogist John Eacott "Jack" Manahan, paid for Anderson's journey to the United States.

[104] She entered the country on a six-month visitor's visa, and shortly before it was due to expire, Anderson married Manahan, who was 20 years her junior, in a civil ceremony on 23 December 1968.

This was countered by works such as La Fausse Anastasie (The False Anastasia) by Pierre Gilliard and Constantin Savitch, published by Payot of Paris in 1929.

[128] Conflicting testimonies and physical evidence, such as comparisons of facial characteristics, which alternately supported and contradicted Anderson's claim, were used either to bolster or counter the belief that she was Anastasia.

Even Anderson's supporters admitted that the details of the supposed escape "might seem bold inventions even for a dramatist",[136] while her detractors considered "this barely credible story as a piece of far-fetched romance".

[136] Other works based on the premise that Anderson was Anastasia, written before the DNA tests, include biographies by Peter Kurth and James Blair Lovell.

More recent biographies by John Klier, Robert Massie, and Greg King that describe her as an impostor were written after the DNA tests proved she was not Anastasia.

[142] In 1953, Marcelle Maurette wrote a play based on Rathlef's and Gilliard's books called Anastasia,[143] which toured Europe and America with Viveca Lindfors in the title role.

[149] In 1986, a two-part fictionalized made for television mini-series titled Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna appeared (NBC in the U.S.) which starred Amy Irving and won her a Golden Globe nomination.

[152] Indeed, the historical fact of Romanov impostors and a long artistic tradition of fictionalizing the story of Grand Duchess Anastasia suggest that the directors likely never intended to reference Anna Anderson specifically.