We prove existence results for distributional solutions of anisotropic nonlinear elliptic systems with a measure valued right-hand side. The functional setting involves anisotropic Sobolev spaces as well as weak Lebesgue (Marcinkiewicz) spaces. In a special case we also prove maximal regularity and uniqueness results. Some of the obtained results are applied, along with an anisotropic variant of the div-curl lemma in the Hardy one space, to prove that the space of anisotropic harmonic maps into spheres is compact in the weak topology of the relevant anisotropic Sobolev space.