Kaspar Hauser - Life, Documentation, Legacy, Fiction

German foundling, a ‘wild boy’, found in the market place of Nuremberg in May 1828. Though apparently 16 years old, his mind was a blank, and his behaviour that of a little child. He later gave some account of himself, as having lived in a hole, looked after by a man who had brought him to the place where he was found. In 1833 he was discovered with a wound in his side, from which he died. Many have regarded him as an imposter who committed suicide: others, as a person of noble birth who was the victim of a crime. His mysterious life was celebrated in much imaginative literature.

Kaspar Hauser or Casparus Hauser (April 30?, 1812–December 17, 1833) was a mysterious foundling in 19th century Germany with suspected and theorised ties to the royal house of Baden.

Life

On May 26, 1828 a teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany.

Shoemaker Weissman took the boy to the house of captain Wessenig where he could only repeat, "I want to be a knight, as my father was," and "Horse! Further demands resulted only in tears, or the obstinate proclamation of "Weiß nicht." ("Don't know.") He was taken to a police station where he would only write a name: Kaspar Hauser.

Hauser said that he had spent most of his life (presumably his first 10 to 12 years) in a darkened 2×1×1.5 metre cell with only a straw bed to sleep on and a horse carved out of wood for a toy. The first human being he ever had contact with was a mysterious man who visited him on occasion, always taking great care not to reveal his face to Kaspar, and from whom the boy acquired his limited spoken vocabulary and learned to write his name.

The details of Hauser's early life aroused great curiosity and made him an object of international attention.

Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, president of the Bavarian court of appeals, began to investigate the case. Hauser was given to the care of a schoolteacher, Friedrich Daumer who taught him to speak, read and write.

On October 17, 1829, a hooded man tried to kill Hauser with an axe but managed only to wound his forehead.

A British nobleman, Lord Stanhope, took an interest in Hauser and apparently tried to win his trust by gifts. He transferred Hauser to Ansbach to the care of Johan Georg Meyer. He also hurriedly declared that Hauser was a Hungarian and not of noble blood.

On December 14, 1833, Hauser was lured to Ansbacher Hofgarten with the promise that he would learn something about his ancestry. When the police searched the park where the incident took place, they found a small black purse with a note in it which read: "Hauser will be able to tell you how I look, where I came from and who I am. Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time.

Documentation

Kaspar was found with two identifying slips of paper: the first was not dated, and read as thus:

The second letter, presumably from the boy's mother mentioned in the first letter, is dated simply "October 1812" and reads as follows:

Legacy

Legend and analyses of the Kaspar Hauser case continue to this day. In addition to theories of royal blood and outright imposture, medical analyses include amnesia caused by hypnosis or that Kaspar Hauser had been suffering from a kind of epilepsy, autism or psychogenic dwarfism (see Feral children).

In November 1996 the German magazine Der Spiegel reported an attempt to genetically match a blood sample from pants assumed to have been Kaspar Hauser's. It later became clear that the examined pants were not Kaspar's but probably by the exhibition of the trousers claimed to be Kaspar Hauser's in Berlin police headquarters in 1905.

It has been claimed that Kaspar Hauser spent at least part of his imprisonment in a cell at Pilsach Castle near Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Germany, about 34 km (21 miles) from Nuremberg. A tiny room was discovered in the castle in 1924 which contained, in addition to some half-decayed rags, a carved wooden horse of the sort Hauser had said he had possessed.

In 2002, the Institute for Forensic Medicine of the University of Münster analyzed hair and body cells from locks of hair and items of clothing that were also alleged to belong to Kaspar Hauser, and came to a more conclusive result. The analysts took from the items used in the test six different DNA samples, all of which were determined to belong to the same person, and which were 95% identical to the DNA of Astrid von Medinger, a descendant of Stéphanie de Beauharnais, who would have been Kaspar Hauser's mother if indeed he had been the hereditary prince of Baden. The DNA evidence would seem to argue that Kaspar Hauser was indeed related to the House of Baden. The House of Baden continues to be silent on the matter of Kaspar Hauser, but amongst the people of Baden-Württemberg the connection with the royal family is widely believed to be true.

In 1974 the German filmmaker Werner Herzog made Hauser's story into a film, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man for Himself and God Against All).

The case of Kaspar Hauser has also inspired other artists like playwrights Paul Verlaine and Peter Handke and musicians like Suzanne Vega.

Anthroposophists have written several books on Kaspar Hauser. One in particular, a detailed work by Peter Tradowsky, addresses the mysteries surrounding Kaspar Hauser's life from the anthroposophical point of view. His analysis delves into the occult significance of the individuality he sees as incarnated in Kaspar Hauser.

The Kaspar Hauser Schule in Uberlingen, Germany (near Lake Constance) takes its name and inspiration from Kaspar Hauser.

Fiction

Jakob Wassermann – Caspar Hauser or the Inertia of the Heart The movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle), by Werner Herzog, tells the story. Marianne Hauser's novel Prince Ishmael is a fictional account of the life of Kaspar Hauser. Katharine Neville's novel The Magic Circle mentions the life of Kaspar Hauser. Suzanne Vega included a song called Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song) on her 1987 CD, Solitude Standing. As mentioned in the article, the French poet Verlaine wrote a poem about Kaspar under the French translation of his name "Gaspard," which was later made into a song with the same name by the French singer/songwriter Georges Moustaki. In the Japanese horror movie Marebito, Masuoka, the main character, believes the girl he found chained up underground is a feral child (from her lack of speech and social skills), and refers to her as his "little Kaspar Hauser".