The Resurrection of the Romanovs (15 page)

But a legend later arose, one that portrayed Fraulein Unbekannt as severely battered and her body intensely scarred by violence when she was pulled from the Landwehr Canal. One doctor, Josef Knapp, spoke of “two distinct deepenings in the parietal bones” of her head, “one right on top and affecting both parietals, another on the left side.” These he called “distinct artifacts,” and speculated that they had been “caused by some accident or act of violence.”
24
Author Harriet von Rathlef-Keilmann, who first marshaled and published evidence in Fraulein Unbekannt’s case, insisted that the patient bore “a scar behind her right ear that doctors stated was due to a glancing bullet wound.”
25
This, she said, was so deep that a finger could be inserted into the channel “when touching it.”
26
Then there was Professor Serge Rudnev, who declared that the X-rays showed “cicatrized bone” in Fraulein Unbekannt’s right frontal lobe or temple and in the right occipital or rear skull, damage he believed had been caused by heavy blows to the head and that had caused a hemorrhage.
27

In fact, none of this was true, but it was all repeated endlessly until it became accepted fact. No other physician ever described the depressions recalled by Knapp, who made his statement four years after the fact and from memory; no medical report or X-ray recorded the extensive cranial damage suggested by Rudnev; and no doctor supported Rathlef-Keilmann’s idea that a glancing bullet had left a deep channel behind the patient’s ear.
28
The physical damage Fraulein Unbekannt had suffered was quite real, but it was not as severe as history has been led to believe.

In all, ten physicians who examined Fraulein Unbekannt in the first decade following her suicide attempt left some written record or comment on her physical injuries. This number included five German general practitioners: Dr. Winicke of the Elisabeth Hospital; Dr. Friedrich Reiche of Berlin’s Dalldorf asylum; Dr. Karl Sonnenschein of Berlin’s St. Mary’s Hospital; Dr. Josef Knapp, who was in private practice; and a Dr. Graefe, who had some expertise in tuberculosis; a tubercular specialist and Russian émigré named Professor Serge Rudnev; two physicians, Lothar Nobel and Karl Bonhoeffer, of the Mommsen Clinic in Berlin; Dr. Theodor Eitel, a specialist in internal medicine at the Stillachhaus Sanatorium in Bavaria; and Dr. Hans Willige of the Ilten asylum near Hannover. Bonhoeffer, uniquely, had access to all of the early medical records that were later lost.
29
From these accounts, it is possible to finally establish the nature and extent of Fraulein Unbekannt’s past injuries.

Contrary to the reports of Knapp, Rathlef-Keilmann, and Rudnev, the damage to Fraulein Unbekannt’s skull was minimal. Friedrich Reiche reported no injuries to the top or rear of her skull; X-rays and further physical examination also revealed “no deformities and no gross external injuries or damage.” Bonhoeffer could find no “serious external lesions to the skull,” and pointed out that while personally inspecting her head he found “no deformation or any indication of scarring” along the top of the cranium. The only sign of previous injury to the skull, noted by Reiche and confirmed by Bonhoeffer, was a narrow scar of 2 to 3 centimeters (approximately 0.79 inch to 1.2 inches) behind her right ear, which left a “superficial furrow.” This was so shallow that it did not appear in any X-rays, contrary to what Knapp, Rathlef-Keilmann, and Rudnev claimed.
30
This limited damage also was confirmed by physicians Lothar Nobel, Theodor Eitel, and Hans Willige. “The top of the skull seems to display no distinct impressions,” Nobel reported.
31
Eitel noted “a superficial scar behind the right ear”; this, however, was the only wound he found on her skull.
32
And Willige recorded a scar “about 3 centimeters long” above and slightly behind the right ear, beneath which he thought he could “detect a slight depression in the bone.”
33

If there was no significant damage to the skull—no bullet channel, no deep impressions, no hemorrhage from fractures—Fraulein Unbekannt had suffered some heavy blow or blows to her face. The ethmoid bone, separating the nasal cavity from the brain, had been fractured, as had both her upper and lower jawbones.
34
Although the ethmoid bone is easily damaged, blows of considerable force would have been necessary to fracture both jaws. This blunt force trauma had likely done significant damage to her teeth. When she was pulled from the Landwehr Canal, Fraulein Unbekannt was missing eight teeth, five in her upper jaw and three in the lower jaw, and at least seven more were loose in the gums.
35

There were other scars, some so minor that few of the examining physicians even bothered to report them. There was apparently a very faint scar on her forehead; a “small white scar” on her right shoulder blade; and a scar of some 2 centimeters on her middle left finger, which left it slightly stiff.
36
On the upper chest, in the middle of the sternum, was a small scar; Rudnev thought that this might have been caused by a stab wound, but in this he was challenged by Drs. Reiche, Graefe, Bonhoeffer, and Eitel, all of whom deemed it “the probable result of a tubercular bone fistula.”
37
And just below this was an area of discoloration, “round bluish-brown marks” on Fraulein Unbekannt’s upper stomach.
38
Rudnev suggested that this might be the result of a powder burn from a possible gunshot wound; Reiche and Bonhoeffer, though, believed it was a “compressive injury resulting in edema,” as if the patient had been forcefully struck in the torso and hemorrhaged.
39

Fraulein Unbekannt bore two final physical peculiarities. On the right foot was a scar of just over half an inch in diameter, visible on both the top and the sole.
40
This was a transpiercing wound, the clear result of some object having been driven through the foot. Later there were assertions that this left either a triangular or star-shaped scar; in fact, no medical report seems to have documented its appearance or suggested that it had any recognizable shape.
41
And, like Anastasia, Fraulein Unbekannt suffered from
hallux valgus
. Doctors described this as “a pronounced abduction of the big toe” on her right foot; it was also present, though to a lesser degree, on her left foot.
42
Only Rudnev, who had no expertise in podiatric issues, suggested this was so severe that it must have been present since childhood.
43

Fraulein Unbekannt’s scars, at least the damaged jaws, indicated that she had suffered violence in her past. No one, though, could convince her to talk about her experiences, and no one at the Elisabeth Hospital knew what to do with her. There was nothing particularly bizarre in her behavior beyond her apparent desire for anonymity, but observation seemed to indicate that the patient might be suffering from some form of mental illness. She spent her time sitting in her bed or staring vacantly out of the windows; when approached by hospital staff, she apparently turned to the wall or attempted to cover her head with a blanket. She simply wanted to be left alone.
44
All anyone knew was that Fraulein Unbekannt had appeared mysteriously, just one of many dispossessed in a chaotic city where most people were completely consumed with the exigencies of daily life, and refused to reveal her identity.

Near the end of March 1920, after six frustrating weeks, authorities at the Elisabeth Hospital decided to transfer Fraulein Unbekannt to the State Institute for Welfare and Care in northwestern Berlin’s Wittenau district, commonly called Dalldorf.
45
This was a much larger hospital, with twelve hundred patients divided among separated brick buildings and wards according to their physical or mental needs. Doctors at Dalldorf described their new patient as “very haughty. Refuses to reveal her name, origins, age, or profession. Remained seated in a stubborn manner. Refuses to speak, indicating that she has reasons and already said everything at the Elisabeth Hospital. . . . The doctor could believe what he liked, but she would say nothing to him. When asked if she heard voices or saw things, she replied haughtily, ‘Oh, I am sure you are much smarter than I am, doctor.’ She acknowledged her suicide attempt, but refused to give her reason or offer any explanation.” Provisionally diagnosed with “a depressive mental illness,” she was given a bed in Ward B, where fourteen other patients deemed to be nonaggressive also were housed.
46

The appearance of one mysterious, unknown, and distinctly uncooperative young woman in this large, unstable city was cause for little attention, but authorities did attempt to investigate. On April 28, 1920, the Berlin Police Office of Missing Persons released three photographs of Fraulein Unbekannt along with particulars of her case; these were sent to various hospitals and asylums in the belief that she may previously have been treated in the city. The only response came from an asylum near Spandau, but further inquiries proved fruitless.
47
Based on a suggestion that the patient’s voice bore some trace of a Slavic accent, several Polish families with missing relatives met Fraulein Unbekannt, but with no results.
48

On June 17, police again questioned Fraulein Unbekannt and collected what little information authorities at Dalldorf had gathered. The patient was fingerprinted and made to pose for two more photographs, one full face and one in profile. This she tried to resist: Fraulein Unbekannt could only be photographed when warders held her in place, and even then she tried to distort her features before the camera lens.
49
It is likely that this represented an attempt to thwart any identification, particularly given what happened next. Already missing eight teeth when admitted to Dalldorf, Fraulein Unbekannt complained to Dr. Gorz, the asylum dentist, of constant pain. Gorz found that her lower incisors, which had been allowed to grow in at an acute angle, were loose, as were another five teeth: in all, seven teeth, deemed too damaged or rotted to be saved, were extracted.
50
Inexplicably, though, Gorz complied with her request that an upper incisor, which was apparently healthy, also be removed, in what one nurse believed was a deliberate attempt to alter the appearance of her mouth.
51
This left Fraulein Unbekannt with sixteen missing teeth, including nearly all of those in her upper front jaw, and slightly distorted the shape of her mouth, something that led her to habitually cover her lips with a handkerchief when speaking.
52

At some point, after several months of investigation and inquiry, the Berlin police seem to have washed their hands of an apparently unsolvable case. Fraulein Unbekannt was left alone, isolated at Dalldorf, her identity as much a mystery as when she had been pulled from the Landwehr Canal.

For almost nineteen months, Fraulein Unbekannt lay in her bed at Dalldorf, silent about her name or former life, largely unresponsive, and communicating only occasionally with members of the staff. She remained an enigma to all who encountered her, a physically and presumably psychologically damaged young woman whose situation confounded those tending to her welfare. It was not, those treating her thought, that she did not know who she was, but rather that for some unknown reason she simply refused to reveal her identity. Anna Malinovsky, a twenty-three-year-old native of Kulm in what is today Poland, began working at Dalldorf on July 21, 1921, a year after the arrival of Fraulein Unbekannt.
53
Malinovsky, who went by the name of Thea, later spoke of the patient’s “restraint. She kept mainly to her bed, usually covering her face with the blankets. She rarely spoke to anyone.” Malinovsky recalled that she, like the other nurses on duty, had been asked to “carefully listen to anything she said that might indicate her identity.” Attempting to describe the patient’s behavior, the former nurse declared that she had “acted always as an educated lady,” someone who was “very, very polite,” who “behaved decently to everyone” despite her reserve.
54
She was left, she explained, with the impression of “a lady of the highest class of society.”
55

These conversations took place in German. According to Malinovsky, Fraulein Unbekannt spoke “impeccable German.” Malinovsky also recalled, “I often spoke Polish to her, especially to tell jokes and chat. Of course, she did not answer me, but I could tell from her attitude and my impressions that she understood me.” She thought that the patient spoke with what she termed a “very light” Slavic accent.”
56

More intriguing were claims that while at Dalldorf Fraulein Unbekannt spoke Russian with numerous members of the nursing staff and doctors.
57
The evidence, however, does not support such a conclusion. Nurse Bertha Walz recalled, “I never heard that Fraulein Unbekannt spoke Russian”; nurse Emilie Barfknecht said, “To my knowledge Fraulein Unbekannt spoke no Russian,” though in her sleep the patient had mumbled in a language other than German; and Malinovsky stated that not only had she never spoken Russian with the patient but also that “I never heard from anyone else that Fraulein Unbekannt had spoken Russian.”
58
In fact, only one nurse, Erna Buchholz, claimed to have conversed with Fraulein Unbekannt in Russian during her stay at Dalldorf.
59
Buchholz was a Latvian from the town of Libau; Latvia, like the other Baltic provinces, had formed part of the Russian Empire. She spoke of an encounter with the patient that she placed from memory sometime in the summer of 1920: “I asked her if she also knew how to speak Russian. She replied, ‘yes,’ and thereafter we spoke Russian together. She did not speak broken Russian, but rather she spoke without restraint, in complete, commanding and coherent sentences.”
60
But Buchholz then added something confusing: according to her, the patient “scarcely spoke Russian like a native, nor yet like a foreigner who had learned Russian.”
61
This certainly suggests that Fraulein Unbekannt bore a peculiar accent, though it is telling that Buchholz thought that her Russian was not that of a native speaker at a time when so much speculation swirled over her possible Eastern origins.