The German team conducted their testing using a blood specimen — a different biological sample than the intestinal tissue — and reached the same conclusion: the DNA did not match the Romanov line.
The two-team structure of the testing, and the convergence of results from different sample types in different laboratories, made the exclusion essentially unassailable on scientific grounds.
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## The Second Result: The Match to Schanzkowska
The exclusion of the Anastasia claim was one result of the 1994 testing. The second result was in some ways the more remarkable one: Anderson’s mitochondrial DNA was compared against that of Karl Maucher, a living relative on the maternal line of Franziska Schanzkowska.
Maucher’s relationship to Schanzkowska was through the maternal line — specifically, through Schanzkowska’s sister Gertrude, making Maucher her grandnephew. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed from mothers to children with high fidelity, sharing an identical or nearly identical mtDNA profile with a known maternal relative of a named individual is strong evidence of maternal-line relationship.
The comparison produced an exact match. Anderson’s mitochondrial DNA was identical to Karl Maucher’s. The same profile that failed to match the Romanov maternal line matched the Schanzkowska maternal line.
The study published in Nature Genetics in 1995 — by Stoneking and colleagues — reported these findings: Anderson’s mtDNA did not match the Romanov line (excluding her as Anastasia), and her mtDNA matched Maucher (supporting her identification as Schanzkowska). The probability calculation that Anderson’s mtDNA could match Maucher’s without a maternal relationship — essentially the probability that this was coincidence — was approximately 1 in 300.