The Resurrection of the Romanovs (24 page)

Stillachhaus in the Bavarian Alps, where Anderson spent the winter of 1926–1927.

The new patient at Stillachhaus was a living enigma. Those who had treated her in Berlin, tubercular specialist Dr. Serge Rudnev and Professors Lothar Nobel and Karl Bonhoeffer, and the two doctors who tended to her at Stillachhaus, Chief Physician Professor Saathof and his deputy, a young intern specializing in internal medicine named Theodor Eitel, all left intriguing and occasionally contradictory assessments of her complex personality in these years. According to Rudnev, the claimant was “convinced that everything was useless, and she was only waiting to die.” Tchaikovsky was often depressed, and always suspicious of unknown faces and surroundings. In drawing out her feelings, Rudnev found that she “regarded everyone around her as hostile.” When he finally convinced her to speak about her alleged childhood at the Russian court, though, Rudnev believed that the details “could only have been known to the closest relatives of Nicholas II’s family.”
24

Dr. Lothar Nobel of the Mommsen Clinic offered a more comprehensive analysis. He noted that while she could be “friendly and polite,” Frau Tchaikovsky possessed a “unique timidity and troubled reserve,” particularly when questions of the past were raised, to which she most often responded with silence. He called her character “variable; at times she seems to be in good humor, at others, she is melancholic in nature.” He observed her frequent feelings of “apathy and impotence,” bouts of depression during which she kept to her bed, “declaring that she wished to die,” a situation undoubtedly exacerbated by her illness. She spoke in vague terms of her past, describing her existence as so “terrible” that she had tried to kill herself in an effort to “forget the horrible things” she had experienced.” She also often expressed a “fear of being discovered”; this, her supporters suggested, stemmed from worry that Soviet agents would track her down and kill her, while opponents thought she merely feared exposure of what they believed to be her real identity.
25

Nobel concluded that the claimant exhibited no “signs of mental deficiency, nor any evidence of suggestion or influence.” He deemed her to be sane, though highly strung. Then, like Rudnev, he abandoned his professional analysis and ventured into the realm of speculation. “It seems to me impossible,” he wrote, “that the numerous and apparently trivial details she recalls cannot be attributed to anything other than her own experiences. Also, from a psychological point of view, it seems unlikely that anyone engaged for whatever purpose in acting the part of another would behave as the patient does in displaying so little initiative in achieving her aims.”
26

Professor Karl Bonhoeffer, too, noted Frau Tchaikovsky’s depression and morbid preoccupation with death. At times she was “a kind and courteous person, who expressed her gratitude for small favors,” although he also noted that “she could also appear somewhat overbearing.” It was, Bonhoeffer declared, “extremely difficult to obtain a definitive portrait of her personality” owing to her reticence and to conflicting impressions. She gave the appearance of “having come from good circles,” of being “an aristocratic lady,” though at the same time there were clear indications that “she suffers from mental impairment.” Like Nobel, Bonhoeffer was adamant in declaring that the claimant “is not suffering from mental disease in the usual sense,” though he described her as “possessed of a psychopathic condition” that manifested itself in depressed, emotional instability and frequent changes of mood. He also denounced the idea of any hypnotic influence or “deliberate fraud.”
27

Professor Saathof supervised the facility at Stillachhaus and left most of Frau Tchaikovsky’s care to his staff. In evaluating her case, Saathof—as he freely admitted—relied on impressions gathered from his infrequent talks with the claimant as well as a review of her records, and the idea that she was Anastasia certainly seems to have influenced his views. He wrote of her “distinctive character” that occasionally manifested itself in displays of “ingratitude.” Saathof asserted, “To view Frau Tchaikovsky as an intentional fraud is, to my mind, quite out of the question,” citing her lack of cooperation with those who sought to advance her case. He believed that it was “impossible that this woman originated from the lower ranks of society. Her entire character is so distinctive, so completely cultivated, that even if nothing be known with certainty about her origins, she must be viewed as the descendant of an old, cultured, and I feel extremely decadent family.”
28

For his part, Eitel described Frau Tchaikovsky as “reticent, nervous, pleasant, and very restrained.” At first he accepted Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis of a psychopathic condition shaped by the patient’s apparently intentional will to forget her past, largely because Eitel had only a passing familiarity with psychiatric matters. He noted the apparent gaps in her memory, as well as the fact that when comfortable in her surroundings, she would often speak spontaneously and at great length of her alleged childhood at the Russian court. This Eitel took as evidence that “the patient actually experienced the events she described.” In time, and despite his own lack of psychiatric training, Eitel criticized the opinions offered by Nobel and Bonhoeffer, insisting that he observed no “symptoms of mental derangement, and no conclusive indications of a psychopathic state.” Rather, as he came to believe that the claimant was Anastasia, he wrote of her “noble nature” and his belief that she had been “exposed since birth to the highest circles.” Citing as evidence the personal opinions of several convinced supporters, Eitel thus reported, “It is possible to conclude that Mrs. Tchaikovsky is, in fact, Grand Duchess Anastasia.”
29

This psychological portrait, like so much in Frau Tchaikovsky’s case, was subject to interpretation. Everyone agreed that she could be polite and cooperative; at other times she was depressed, and would erupt in sudden displays of temper. The doctors all believed her to be sane, though highly strung and often emotional. She could be charming and callous at the same time, friendly and yet imperious. No one—not in these years or throughout the decades that followed—could ever really say that they knew her, for she erected a protective wall and carefully guarded her innermost thoughts. There was undoubtedly an aura of tragic vulnerability about her, something so seemingly helpless and desperate that led many to excuse her worst excesses, a childlike quality as if she needed to be cared for and cosseted against the uncertainties of the world.

Anderson, 1926.

The chief interest in these accounts, though, is in some surprising revelations about Frau Tchaikovsky’s mental acumen and memory. She and her supporters always contended that the injuries to her head made recall a difficult and painful process, and that it was a constant struggle for her to remember details of her life. This explanation excused much—her refusal or inability to converse in Russian, in English, or in French, her apparent reluctance to answer queries about her past, her battle to recall names and faces and dates when pressed. She declared that she had forgotten how to tell time or count; that although she often played solitaire, she could not differentiate between the numbers; that she had to constantly remind herself how to dress; and even that the ability to write evaded her. Everything—languages, words, memories, and daily tasks—required extraordinary efforts and “constant practice, or else she forgets.”
30
It was all further evidence, ran the story, that she must actually be Anastasia, for how could an impostor, a woman so physically and psychologically damaged, ever successfully commit to memory the multitude of trivial details about the life of the imperial family that Frau Tchaikovsky revealed?

But was this true? The reports of Nobel and Bonhoeffer challenged this widely believed interpretation. Nobel noted that Frau Tchaikovsky asserted, quite falsely, that she had never read any books or magazines with stories about the Romanovs, something contradicted by the historical record. When she spoke of her alleged past as Anastasia, Nobel recorded, she did so “slowly, and with hesitation”; much of the time, however, she attributed her inability to answer questions to headaches or to her poor health. Nobel thought that she suffered from a diminished memory, saying, “Only concerning recent events is her recall normal.” Yet he contradicted this, recording how she often spoke spontaneously and in great detail about life at Tsarskoye Selo, cruises aboard the imperial yacht
Standart
, holidays in the Crimea, and about her time in Berlin. She possessed extraordinary recall of her stay at Dalldorf; according to Nobel, she recounted her experiences “correctly and without hesitation,” replete with such complex details as the names of the nurses and doctors who had cared for her; the names and illnesses of specific fellow patients; and even the dates on which certain events had occurred at the asylum. And there was something else: Nobel could find no organic cause for her apparent loss of memory or impaired abilities; rather than the result of physical trauma, he believed that such apparent difficulties were simply “a question of will.”
31

Bonhoeffer, too, noted that Frau Tchaikovsky could accurately recall “the names of her hospital wards, the names of her nurses, and even the names of some individuals” from her stays at the Elisabeth Hospital and at Dalldorf, along with numerous childhood memories. When pressed, though, she “often evades detailed questions by saying that it is too painful to discuss her memories, or that she is too ill to express herself.” She insisted, again quite falsely, that she could not read German, certainly an odd claim given all of the evidence to the contrary. He could find “no organic basis” for the apparent lapses in memory or in her recall of languages, writing that “none of the other expected symptoms that would accompany an injury to the cranial centers of communication are present.” He speculated that this reticence was mental rather than physical in nature, a deliberate, though he believed perhaps unconscious, ploy on her part, reflecting a desire to “suppress unpleasant experiences.”
32

What did this mean? If Nobel and Bonhoeffer were correct, the injuries to Frau Tchaikovsky’s head—injuries never as severe as portrayed by her supporters—played no role in her apparent inability to convincingly speak Russian, English, or French, or to recall certain memories. With this contention, at least, Eitel also agreed, for he, too, could find no physical impairment to her mental faculties and nothing in the injuries to her head that would affect her memory.
33
If it was merely a question of “will,” as Nobel thought, was Frau Tchaikovsky consciously feigning difficulty with her memory, or was she genuinely plagued with some unknown mental condition that hampered her abilities? Supporters and opponents alike saw in this exactly what they expected to find—a damaged Anastasia or a deliberate fraud.

These perceptions constantly hovered over Frau Tchaikovsky in these uncertain months, for no one around her really knew what to believe of her claim. The claimant herself was lonely, unhappy at Stillachhaus, believing that she had been abandoned by everyone, but she might have remained here, secluded and cared for, had not Gilliard again intervened. In the spring of 1927, he persuaded Count Kuno von Hardenberg to seek Frau Tchaikovsky’s expulsion from Bavaria, asserting that she was a criminal impostor.
34
When Zahle learned of this, he appealed to Duke Georg of Leuchtenberg, a Russian émigré related to the Romanovs who lived in Bavaria, to intercede and protect her interests. The duke agreed, inviting the claimant to stay at Schloss Seeon, his country estate; his goal, he explained, was “to give her a refuge with a friendly Russian family” until her case could be resolved.
35

It took some negotiation before Frau Tchaikovsky agreed to this plan.
36
“The Leuchtenbergs! What are the Leuchtenbergs?” she exclaimed on first hearing the suggestion, although Rathlef-Keilmann later insisted that she had immediately recognized the name and launched into a detailed genealogical recitation, something unsupported by the evidence.
37
Although she was unhappy at Stillachhaus, she had endured a rootless existence, shuffled from one émigré to the next, from one hospital to another; she was tired, alone, and not at all certain what to expect of life at Seeon. Would she be left alone, cared for, and allowed to do as she wished? Or, as had happened during her time with the von Kleists, would she be put on show, questioned and queried by a constant stream of inquisitive, skeptical émigrés? But with threats of possible legal action, and nowhere else to go, she had little choice. Just after nightfall on the evening of March 1, 1927, she stepped from a train at the little village of Prien on the Chiemsee, where the duke of Leuchtenberg waited in the shadows. Sitting silently in the rear of a somewhat battered open touring car, she bounced and bumped as they sped over the frozen countryside, up low hills and down narrow country lanes before Schloss Seeon, its walls ghostly white in the moonlight, loomed out of the darkness, an uncertain sanctuary in the tumultuous uncertainty that was her life.