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## February 1920: A Woman in a Berlin Canal
On February 17, 1920, a young woman jumped into the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. A police officer pulled her out. She had no identification. She would not say who she was. She was taken to a hospital, stabilized, and transferred to Dalldorf Asylum — a psychiatric institution on the outskirts of Berlin — where she was registered under the name “Fräulein Unbekannt”: Miss Unknown.
She spent approximately two years at Dalldorf without identifying herself. The record of that period is fragmentary but consistent on several points: she was observed by other patients and staff, she showed distress when approached directly about her identity, and she had physical characteristics that some observers found remarkable — scars, unusual physical markers, apparent knowledge of languages other than German.
In late 1921 or early 1922, a fellow patient named Clara Peuthert became convinced that the unidentified woman was Grand Duchess Tatiana — the Tsar’s second daughter, a tall and striking young woman. Peuthert relayed her belief to Russian émigré contacts. They came to visit. The identification of the patient as Tatiana was quickly rejected: she was clearly too short to be Tatiana, who had been notably tall. But Anastasia, the youngest, had been smaller.
By 1922, the woman was being identified — by those who believed her — as Anastasia. She adopted the name Anna Tschaikovsky, explaining later that “Tschaikovsky” had been the name of one of the Bolshevik soldiers who helped her escape. She did not say much more about the escape, and what she said varied across tellings.