RARE 1937 1ST EDITION GLEB BOTKIN RUSSIA PAGAN ON ANASTASIA ANNA ANDERSON 1ST
Description:
Gleb Evgenievich Botkin (1900 – December 1969) was the son of Dr. Eugene Botkin, the court physician who was murdered at Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks with Tsar Nicholas II and his family on July 17, 1918. In later years, Botkin became a lifelong advocate of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. DNA results later proved that she was most likely an impostor called Franziska Schanzkowska. In 1938 Botkin founded his own neopagan church, The Church of Aphrodite, which was one of the earliest churches in the neopagan movement in the United States.
ON AUCTION HERE is an exceptionally scarce 1937 first edition, The Woman Who Rose Again, by Gleb Botkin, as published by Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. Bound in yellow cloth with titles in black. Note the maps on the endpapers and pastedowns. Botkin claims that Duchess Anastasia escaped Russia. Illustrated with full page prints of Anna Anderson and others. Great condition. A rare item, we have not seen it before. From a collection of book on the Czar's family, Anastasia and Russia. Please check our other listings. Gleb Botkin was the youngest son of Eugene Botkin and his wife, Olga. His parents divorced in 1910, when Botkin
was a child of 10, due to his father's demanding position at court and his mother's affair with his German tutor, Friedrich Lichinger, whom she later married. Eugene Botkin retained custody of the children following the divorce. His two older brothers, Yuri and Dmitri, were both killed in action during World War I. As a child, he and his sister Tatiana played with the children of Nicholas II during holidays. He used to amuse the grand duchesses on holidays and when they were all in exile at Tobolsk with caricatures of pigs dressed in human clothing acting like stuffy dignitaries at court. Botkin was described by one historian as "articulate, sensitive, with pallid skin and soulful green eyes" and as "a talented artist, a wicked satirist, and a born crusader."
Exile Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the murder of his father, Botkin fled Tobolsk. He later spent a summer at a Russian Orthodox monastery and briefly considered becoming a priest, but decided against the religious life. He married Nadine Mandraji, widow of Ensign of the Dragoons regiment, nobleman Michael Nikolaevich Mandraji, who was the chevalier of the Order of St. George and was killed in battle in June 1915 at Grodno in Belarus. Two months later Nadine gave birth to their daughter Kira Mihailovna Mandraji (1915-2009). Nadine's father, nobleman Alexei Vladimirovich Konshin (1858-?), was the President of the Russian Bank of State from 1910-1914 and the President of the Russian Industry and Commerce Bank from 1914-1917. The Botkins emigrated first to Japan, then to France and after that to the United States. Botkin worked as a photo engraver and attended art classes at the Pratt Institute in New York City. Later, he earned his living as a novelist and illustrator.
Association with Anna Anderson Botkin first visited Anna Anderson in May 1927 at Seeon Abbey, where Anderson was a guest. Anderson had asked Botkin to bring along "his funny animals." Botkin wrote later that he immediately recognized Anderson as Anastasia because she shared memories of their childhood play. Historian Peter Kurth wrote that Botkin tended to overlook some of the more unattractive aspects of Anderson's personality, such as her stubbornness and rapid changes in mood, or to view them as manifestations of her royal heritage. "She was, to Gleb's way of thinking, an almost magically noble tragic princess, and he saw it as his mission to restore her to her rightful position by any means necessary," wrote Kurth in Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. Botkin penned letters in support of Anderson to various Romanov family members, wrote books about her and the Romanovs, including The Woman Who Rose Again, The Real Romanovs, and Lost Tal...
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