University of Rizal System
Morong,Rizal
Research Paper
In Biotechnology
Submitted by: Philip Mar Sistona
IV-A Bs.Bilogy
Submitted to: Prof. Tessie Estrabo
ANASTASIA
INTRODUCTION
The name Anastasia become synonymous with enigma. The youngest daughter of the last Russian Tzar has become one of the most favorite romantic fascination saddest and most haunting riddle of the 20th century. Many people around t5he world asked if she escaped the massacre of the Russian Royal Family. Many researcher search for the truth about Anastasia’s gone. But there are medical and scientific study, handwriting analysis, letters, paintings that use to as a documents to know were is the true Anastasi. Some believe that she survived and later took the alias of Anna Anderson and other believed that it wasn’t her, but rather her sister Marie that survived. Though many people believed different things about the gossip surrounding Anastasia’s survival but still thre are proof that Anna was an impostor.
Who is Anastasia? Her Life and Legend
Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova was the youngest Grand Duchess of Tsar Nicholas II; she was a witty girl and had a strong sense of humor. Anastasia's personality was lively and infectious, for which she gained the name "Sunshine" from her family. Anastasia was born on June 5, 1901 at the Farm Palace at Peterhof. She was the fourth of five children. Anastasia had fine light brown hair and blue eyes. The Russian Revolution hit the country when she was still a young girl, and fate decreed that her full talents and personality would never be revealed to the world.
When Anastasia was twelve years old, World War I broke out with Germany. During one of the two revolutions Russia would have to face during that war, Her father Nicholas was forced to give up his throne, ending the three hundred year reign of the Romanovs in Russia. The second revolution called "The Ten Days That Shook the World" put the Bolsheviks (Communists) in charge of Russia.
Ipatiev House - Where the family of the Romanovs were executed.
In 1918, the Romanov family was taken to Yekaterinburg, to the house of a man who had been arrested by the Bolsheviks and forced to leave his belongings behind. On the night of July 16, 1918, the Bolsheviks told the Romanovs to go down into the basement and line up. They told them that they would be taking a family portrait before the family was transported to another house. With the royal family all together, the guards opened fire upon them. It is said that some of the girls had diamonds sewn inside their clothing, to smuggle away, and that because of this the girls were not all killed in the first attempt. The bullets ricocheted off, so the executioners then bayoneted them after shooting them. None of the Romanovs at Yekaterinburg were ever seen again. Or were they?
Anna Anderson
Anna Anderson(1953) Anastasia Romanov (1916)
In the years following the murders several supposed Anastasias emerged, the most famous of these was Anna Anderson. In February of 1920, a woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin, she was rescued and taken to a mental asylum. The woman refused to tell the authorities her identity until eighteen months later when she declared herself the Grand Duchess Anastasia. She explained that she had been bayoneted but survived because the weapons were blunt. A soldier saw she was still moving, rescued her, and took her to Romania. The woman claimed that she had walked to Berlin in search of her aunt, Princess Irene. Princess Irene met with the woman several times and eventually denied that she was Anastasia. It is said that later Irene admitted that the woman was similar to Anastasia. Irene's son Prince Sigismund was a childhood friend of Anastasia and sent a list of questions to the woman. Her answers convinced him that she was the real Anastasia. The woman began calling herself Anna Anderson in the 1920s and after her release from the hospital in 1922 Anderson lived off the charity of various supporters. There were also many deniers that Anderson was the grand duchess of Nicholas II. One of Anastasia's aunts, Grand Duchess Olga and Anastasia's tutor Pierre Gilliard both denied that Anderson was Anastasia.
The mysterious woman seemed to have information about the royal family and Anastasia’s life that only Anastasia or somebody closely associated with them would have. There seemed to be a lot physical evidence to support her claim that she had managed escaped the firing squad alive.
And how did Anna say that she escaped? She claimed that she was bayoneted, but that the weapons were not sharp, and she survived multiple wounds. One soldier realized that she was alive, and took mercy on her, using the jewels in the hems of her skirts to help her escape toward Germany, where her mother’s family lived.
But was her story true? She did have the necessary old bullet and bayonet wounds, and it is undeniable that Anna Anderson, as she came to call herself to escape the media, looked like the Grand Duchess. Anna Anderson also had the same deformity on her foot that Anastasia’s doctor had looked at just before her family was captured.
Anna Anderson would not (could not?) speak Russian, but could understand it. When she was spoken to in Russian, she would answer in German, or English. It was said that the trauma of seeing her family die had made her lose her Russian, but was this the reason she would not speak it?
Supporters of Anastasia included Anastasia's cousin Princess Xenia, Gleb and Tatiana Botkin, whose father was killed with the imperial family. Some believe that Gleb Botkin and others who had intimate knowledge of the imperial family's life fed Anderson information for their own advantages.
Anastasia's uncle, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse was determined to prove that Anderson was an imposter. He backed an investigation that suggested that Anderson was actually a Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska, who disappeared right before Anderson surfaced. Some people discredited the investigation because the woman who testified that Anderson as Schanzkowska was paid. Anderson was dependent on the support of those who believed her story, but was often haughty and demanding of her hosts. Her regularly occurring tantrums and breakdowns made her impossible, even for her most devoted supporters, to live with. There were times that she attacked people and even ran around naked. But supporters pointed out that Anastasia would have mental problems after witnessing the execution of her family and nearly being killed herself. Anderson's detractors claimed that her psychiatric problems might have been caused by the serious head injuries suffered from a hand grenade explosion while working in a munitions factory.
In 1938 Anderson brought a suit to the German court to prove her identity and claim her inheritance. The case dragged on until 1970, when the court finally ruled that Anderson had not proved that she was Anastasia. Anderson died of pneumonia in 1984 and was cremated at her own request. DNA testing in 1994 seemed to prove that Anderson was not the daughter of Nicholas II. Comparisons with DNA samples provide by Schanzkowska's great nephew proved that it was more likely that Anderson was really Franziska Schanzkowska. The positive outcome of the Anna Anderson story has been the fact that it kept the memory of Nicholas and his family alive, which otherwise may not have been the case. Anna Anderson eventually went to the surviving relatives of the royal family to see if they recognized her, but they turned her away saying that she was not Anastasia. She later moved to the United States and married an American. She went to her death still claiming that she was the Princess Anastasia.
Eventually, years after Anna Anderson’s death, the relatives may have finally been proven correct. Recent DNA tests have identified the murdered family of Tsar Nicholas II. But although the Russian government has indentified the bodies, the bones are so damaged and mixed together that it has made it pretty much impossible to completely identify the individual children. The number of children's bodies found were short two of the children (most probably Alexei and Maria), but the DNA of those bodies found all matched the royal family.
DEATH OF THE NICHOLAS FRAMILY
On July 17, 1918, Nicholas Ii and his wife and the five children
were tricked to go into the cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg.
Then the Bolsheviks fired continually and brutally at them
until they were found dead. However, that’s not the end, the
killers tried to burn two of the bodies - but it took too long.
They doused the rest of the bodies with sulphuric acid and
buried them in a shallow grave in a forest outside the city.
What a terrible and bloody murder!!
Indeed, it was a family of endless misfortunes
Evidence showing that Anna Anderson was not the real princess
· all the women who claimed to be Anastasia were proven false.
· The most famous one was Anna Anderson.
· professor Riabov finds the remainders of the bones of the Romanovs .
· skeletons together with Anna Anderson’s were tested by DNA .
· genetic proof that Anna Anderson was really Franziska Schwanzkowska, a Polish worker.
· Anderson and Anastasia had physical similarities.
· a foot deformity like Anastasia's .
· Anthropologists found their faces to be very similar.
THE ANIMATED FILM ANASTASIA
Fairytales are popular in the whole world and have been for centuries. Hollywood has a special interest in fairytales, since they are probably one of the more profitable stories to make films from. The films are not only popular with children but also adults, even adults without children. Today the world recognizes countless animated stories from many production companies: from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Mulan and Pixar’s Toy Story and Finding Nemo One of animated fairytale is 20th Century Fox’s story of Anastasia Fairytales are mystical, magical stories and it’s quite unusual for them to be based on real life events. Anastasia, however, is based on the life and death of a young, charming and playful woman. The real story is somewhat a fairytale with an unhappy ending.
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