Kaspar Hauser

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

[edit] Life

On May 26 1828 a teenage boy appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. He was wearing peasant clothing and could barely talk. The only identifying material carried by the boy were a letter addressed to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment, in which the author asked the captain to take the boy in or hang him, and another piece of paper which purported to be from his mother to his prior caretaker, but was found to have been written by the same hand as the other one. The "letter from his mother" stated that he was born on April 30, 1812.

Shoemaker Weissman took the boy to the house of Captain von Wessenig where he could only repeat, "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was," and "Horse! 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.

He spent the following two months in Vestner Gate Tower in the care of a jailor, Andreas Hiltel. Various curious people visited him, to his apparent delight. He could only smile, walk in toddler's step and could barely use his fingers. He could only eat water and bread. He was approximately sixteen years old, but had the mental development of a 6-year-old. However, Mayor Binder claimed that he had an excellent memory, which, to him, suggested a noble birth.

He still suffered from periods of catalepsy and epilepsy. Eventually he was able to communicate enough so he could tell his story.

Hauser said that for as long as he could think back he had spent his life always totally alone in a darkened 2×1×1.5 metre cell (little more than the size of a one-person bed in area) with only a straw bed to sleep on and a horse carved out of wood for a toy. He claimed that he had been given nothing but bread and water. Periodically the water would taste bitter, and had been apparently drugged: drinking this would cause him to sleep more heavily than usual, and when he had awakened his straw had been changed, and his hair and nails had been cut. Hauser claimed that the first human being he ever had had contact with had been a mysterious man who had visited him not long before his release, always taking great care not to reveal his face to him. This man, Hauser told, had taught him to write his name by leading his hand. After having learned to stand and to walk, he had been brought next to Nuremberg. Furthermore the stranger allegedly had taught him to say the phrase "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was", but Hauser claimed that he had not understood the sense of these words. — Many contemporaries believed this tale, which was to become famous, and many doubted it. It is nowadays consensus among serious researchers that Hauser's account cannot possibly be true.^[1] Psychiatrist K. Leonhard explains: "If he had been living since childhood under the conditions he describes, he would not have developed beyond the condition of an idiot; indeed he would not have remained alive long. His tale is so full of absurdities that it is astonishing that it was ever believed and is even today still believed by many people."^[2]

The details of Hauser's early life aroused great curiosity and made him an object of international attention. Some claimed he was a con artist. Others suggested that he was related to the Grand Duke of Baden, to whom he bore a passing resemblance. In this case, his parents would have been Karl, Grand Duke of Baden and Stéphanie de Beauharnais, adopted daughter of Napoleon I of France. Because Karl Friedrich had no male progeny, his successor was his uncle Leopold I of Baden whose mother, the Countess von Hochberg, was the alleged culprit of the boy's captivity.

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. He also subjected him to homeopathic treatments and encouraged him to write a diary. He appeared to flourish in this environment.

On October 17 1829, Hauser was found to have received a wound in the forehead, which, according to his own statement, had been inflicted on him by a man with a blackened face. Alarmed officials called for a police escort and transferred him to the care of Johann Biberbach and six months later to Baron von Tucher. Tucher found him employment as a copier in the local law office. The apparent assassination attempt also fueled rumors about his connection to the house of Baden.

A British nobleman, Lord Stanhope, took an interest in Hauser and apparently tried to win his trust with gifts. He also tried to gain custody of him. 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. Various historians suspect him of ulterior motives and connections to the house of Baden.

On December 14, 1833, Hauser came home with a deep wound in his left breast which turned out to be fatal. He stated that he had been lured to the Ansbach Court Garden and that a stranger had stabbed him there while giving him a bag. When the police searched the Court Garden they found a small violet purse with a note in it which read (in German): "Hauser will be able to tell you how I look, where I came from and who I am. To spare him from this task I will tell you myself. I am from . . . on the Bavarian border . . . My initials are MLÖ." The note contained one spelling and one grammatical error both of which were typical for Hauser. For this and other reasons it was suspected that he had stabbed himself, and the forensic doctors agreed that the wound could indeed be self-inflicted.

Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious." A monument to him was later erected in Ansbach which reads, Hic occultus occulto occisus est: "Here an unknown was killed by an unknown."

[edit] Documentation

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

Honoured Captain,

I send you a lad who wishes to serve his king in the Army. He was brought to me on October 7th, 1812. I am but a poor laborer with children of my own to rear. His mother asked me to bring up the boy, and so I thought I would rear him as my own son. Since then, I have never let him go one step outside the house, so no one knows where he was reared. He, himself, does not know the name of the place or where it is.

You may question him, Honoured Captain, but he will not be able to tell you where I live. I brought him out at night. He cannot find his way back. He has not a penny, for I have nothing myself. If you do not keep him, you must strike him dead or hang him.

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

This child has been baptized. His name is Kaspar; you must give him his second name yourself. I ask you to take care of him. His father was a cavalry soldier. When he is seventeen, take him to Nuremberg, to the Sixth Cavalry Regiment: his father belonged to it. I beg you to keep him until he is seventeen. He was born on April 30th, 1812. I am a poor girl; I can't take care of him. His father is dead.

[edit] 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^{[citation needed]} (see Feral children). Conspiracy theories concentrate on the House of Baden and Lord Stanhope^{[citation needed]}.

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. This analysis was made in laboratories of Forensic Science Service in Birmingham and in the LMU Institute of Legal Medicine in University of Munich. Comparisons with the members of the royal family proved that the blood examined could not possibly stem from the hereditary prince of Baden.^[3]

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. The analysts took from the items used in the test six different DNA samples, all of which turned out to be identical. They highly differed, however, from the blood sample examined in 1996 whose authenticity is therefore questionable. The DNA samples now considered were compared to a DNA segment 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 sequences were not identical but the deviation observed is not large enough to exclude a relationship, as it could be caused by a mutation. On the other hand, the relatively high agreement does by no means prove the alleged relationship, as the observed pattern is a frequent one among the German population.^[4] The House of Baden continues to be silent on the matter of Kaspar Hauser and does not allow any medical examination of the remains of the allegedly stillborn son of Stéphanie de Beauharnais, who lies in the family vault at Pforzheim, but amongst the people of Baden-Württemberg the connection with the royal family is widely believed to be true.

It has been claimed (in The Great Pretenders, by Jan Bondeson) 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. It has not been determined whether the horse actually belonged to him.

[edit] Films, books and art

Jakob Wassermann's 1908 novel Caspar Hauser oder Die Trägheit des Herzens was perhaps the most influential fictional treatment of the legend, and was largely responsible for its popularization in Germany.

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). In English the film was either known by that translation, or by the title, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

The case of Kaspar Hauser has also inspired other artists like playwrights Paul Verlaine and Peter Handke, theatre composers like Elizabeth Swados, and musical artists like Suzanne Vega and Moth!Fight!. Robert A. Heinlein refers to 'Kaspar Hausers' as an analogue to persons popping in and out of metaphysical planes in his novel Glory Road. He is also cited in Billy Budd by Herman Melville, "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides and in City of Glass (among other similar cases) from the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. Fredric Brown offers a theory about "Casper Hauser" in his science-fiction story "Come and Go Mad". Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's book on Kaspar Hauser is Lost Prince : The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser.

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 [1] in Überlingen, Germany (near Lake Constance) takes its name and inspiration from Kaspar Hauser. It is a free Waldorf school, inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, and has an innovative program for dealing with children considered ineducable. In 2006 it was nominated in a national competition for the best school in Germany and is one of the finalists selected so far^{[citation needed]}.

Greg Tricker is an artist whose works often combine the innocence of children with the sacred and the mystical. His series of paintings and stonework on the life of Kasper Hauser was first exhibited in 2006 at PianoNobile [2].

In 2007, artist Diane Obomsawin published Kaspar, a graphic novel in which she tells the story of Kaspar Hauser. This book has been published by L'Oie de Cravan, in Montréal, Québec.

[edit] See also

• Feral child
• Victor of Aveyron

[edit] References

• Kaspar Hauser: Europe's Child, Martin Kitchen, Palgrave MacMillan, 2001 [ISBN 0-333-96214-1]
• The Great Pretenders, Jan Bondeson, WW Norton, 2004 [ISBN 0-393-01969-1]
• Kaspar Hauser: Where Did He Come From?, Terry Boardman, Wynstones Press, 2006 [ISBN 0-946206-60-0]

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ Walther Schreibmüller: Bilanz einer 150jährigen Kaspar Hauser-Forschung, in: Genealogisches Jahrbuch 31, 1991, pp. 43–84, here p. 52
2. ^ K. Leonhard: Kaspar Hauser und die moderne Kenntnis des Hospitalismus, in: Confinia Psychiatrica 13, 1970, pp. 213–229, here p. 229
3. ^ Der Spiegel 48 (25.11. 1996): pp. 254 - 273
4. ^ Bernd Brinkmann, Neuester Stand der Forschung der Gerichtsmedizin und Pathologie der Universität Münster. Preface to: Anselm von Feuerbach, Kaspar Hauser, Reprint-Verlag Leipzig 2006

[edit] Biography

• Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm, Ritter von: The Wild Child The unsolved mystery of Kaspar Hauser. Translated from the German with an Introduction by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson/ NY Free Press 1997 1st ppb ptg ISBN 0 684 83096 5
• Lang, Andrew: The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (in: Historical Mysteries, 1905)

[edit] 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.
• Another movie was made in 1993 : Kaspar Hauser was a German-Austrian production directed by Peter Sehr.
• 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.
• Paul Auster's novel City of Glass compares the life of Kaspar Hauser to the situation of one of its characters.
• There is a song called Kaspar Hauser , by the German band Dschinghis Khan.
• There is also a song called Kaspar by the singer Reinhard Mey
• 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".
• Harlan Ellison, in his story "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World," from the Dangerous Visions anthology, suggested that Hauser had been plucked out of time and later murdered by a female sadist named Juliette.
• Eric Frank Russell, in his story Sinister Barrier, mentioned Kaspar Hauser as a person who originated from a non-human laboratory.
• A short story by Steven Millhauser called "Kaspar Hauser Speaks" in the book The Knife Thrower and Other Stories.
• In the movie Fahrenheit 451 (1966 film), Guy Montag discreetely puts a copy of a book entitled "Gaspard Hauser" into his bag before the rest of the books in that residence are torched.
• British progressive rock band IQ released in 1997 the concept album "Subterranea", loosely inspired by the singular story of Kaspar Hauser.

[edit] External links

• An illustrated article
• A pedigree of the Baden family, including Kaspar as an alleged member
• Kaspar Hauser and other feral children at FeralChildren.com
• Page about Kaspar Hauser, in Germanda:Kaspar Hauser

de:Kaspar Hauser es:Kaspar Hauser eo:Kaspar Hauser fr:Kaspar Hauser ko:카스파 하우저 hr:Kaspar Hauser it:Kaspar Hauser he:קספר האוזר hu:Kaspar Hauser nl:Kaspar Hauser ja:カスパー・ハウザー pl:Kaspar Hauser pt:Kaspar Hauser ru:Хаузер, Каспар simple:Kaspar Hauser fi:Kaspar Hauser sv:Kaspar Hauser