POLISH GIRL’S HOAX.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5204, 16 November 1927, Page 2

POLISH GIRL’S HOAX.

CLAIM TO BE RUSSIAN PRINCESS.

END OF THE IMPERSONATION.

Probably the greatest hoax of the century has just been exposed by the Berlin police respecting the claims of a Polisth girl to be the late Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the ill-fated Tsar.

For six years this obscure peasant woman deceived thousands? of pobl® Russian emigres, including the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna. Princes, admirals, and diplomats have rivalled one another in loading her with favours and presents), and have addressed her as “Imperial Highness.” Although almost uneducated, the girl, whose name is Franziska Schanzkowski, was naturally extraordinarily clever, and -irew all the information she wished from membersi of the Russian nobility who surrounded her. She alleged that she had been rescued from the awful which befell her father and the rest of the family by a soldier, whom she married, named Tchiakovsky. A famous Russian surgeon examined the girl at Berlin-and announced that he found traces of skull fractures, bayonet wounds, and bullet hole*. This was further "proof” that, she really had been in the Ekaterinburg massacre. *

So impressed was the Dowager Empress, who lives at Copenhagen, by the woman’s story that she applied to Professor Pierre Gilliard, of Lousanne, who had been the Tsarevitch’s tutor, to go to Berlin to see if he could recognise her. Professor Gilliard saw the woman and came to the conclusion that she certainly was not Anastasia.

Even then it was difficult to prove the imposture. Finally photograph comparisons led to the tripping-up of the bogus Princess. She had made one little mistake. During 1922, when she was living at the home of Baron Kleist, she had disappeared for three days and returned with different clothes'. Then a woman named Wingender, who keeps a boardinghouse, produced some clothes left by a person named Franziska Schanzkowski, who had been at her place for three days in 1922. '*l

Baron Kleist identified the clothesas belonging to the imposter, and the boardinghouse-keeper identified the imposter.

The Berlin police commenced to investigate, and have now found the bulletin that Franziska Schanzkowski had filled in when she arrived in Ber--lin in 1919.

The handwriting was identical with that of the mysterious Madame Tchaikovsky. ■.