# The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: A Tale of Mystery and Intrigue

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The story of Kaspar Hauser, his appearance in the streets of Nuremberg and his early death has fascinated for close to two centuries circuitous paths, bankruptcies, intrigue and death threats resulted in several books and reproductions of administrative material, often distorted, all related to Kaspar Hauser But the first ever child, as he was constantly touted, who had spent his life locked up by his father in a well or cellar, came to the eyes of the world on 26 May 1828. And from the very beginning, something was not right about this story of a dark fairytale and a good, ennobling morality: it didn’t and doesn’t add up. Hauser reigned as a sensation across Europe for less than five years, and his strange story and his tragic death (ladder, hanging, suicide, murder unknown) were riddled with uncertainties. We get no further today than the inquisitive 19th-century journalist.

## The Mysterious Arrival

As inexplicable as was his arrival in Nuremberg, so was much of the life that followed. Hauser was soon found, thin, ill-clothed and unable to speak, pathetically walking the streets of Nuremberg carrying the two letters. One was to Captain von Wessenig of the 6th cavalry regiment. One purportedly from Hauser’s mother to his caretaker said that Hauser had been raised with no human or animal company, and that he wanted to become a cavalryman like his father. Hauser could repeat only a few phrases and he was clearly unable to understand much about the surrounding world.

Hauser was brought to the police station, where he signed a statement declaring his name to be ‘Kaspar Hauser’. Although apparently ignorant of many basic concepts, he could apparently read and write — though only haltingly, and was well acquainted with money. His physical development was also surprisingly robust, considering that he was supposedly born and left to die in a box. These incongruities led many to speculate about his true background.

## Life in Nuremberg

Following the discovery, Hauser was turned over to the care of a jailer, Andreas Hiltel, who was stationed at the Luginsland Tower — one of the outbuildings of Nuremberg Castle. Over the coming months, he would be visited by many people curious to hear his story, and it was gradually pieced together by observers and reporters. Hauser claimed that he had been kept in a small cell his whole life, with little human contact. He described the cell as two metres long, one metre wide, and 1.5 metres high. It contained a straw bed and a few wooden toys.

Hauser’s account was rife with bewildering details — he claimed, for example, to have been fed and watered while drugged unconscious — to fuel rumours that he had been drugged by his keepers. His story captured the public imagination and stimulated speculation about who he really was: a lost heir to a royal throne? An elaborate hoax?

## The First Attack

On 17 October 1829, Hauser was found with a gashing injury to his forehead, claiming that a masked attacker had constantly hit him on the head until the blood flowed. At the very least, the attack added an additional part to the mystery surrounding his life, with some hypothesising that the attack was a crude attempt to silence him, while others suspected the injury was self-inflicted in an effort to garner sympathy. It was after this attack that Hauser was placed into the care of Johann Biberbach, a municipal public official, whose involvement further complicates an already complex story.

## The Pistol Incident

Another incident was reported in April 1830, when a pistol in Hauser’s room went off and a bullet caused a tiny glancing injury to the side of his head; Hauser declared he was attempting to climb onto a stool to reach some books and the pistol somehow fell off the wall. His caretakers began to note that, indeed, Hauser had a penchant for spinning tales. The authorities began to grow more sceptical, and transferred him to the care of Baron von Tucher in May 1830.

## Lord Stanhope’s Involvement

As the years went on, the mystery of Kaspar Hauser’s background led to yet another twist in his story when he was taken up by the British nobleman Lord Stanhope, who poured considerable money into attempts to investigate Hauser’s origins, including expeditions to Hungary, where Hauser alleged he had formerly lived and remembered some words. In Hungary, Hauser was unable to recognise any landmarks or people, adding further fuel to fire of incredulity over his story.

Hauser soon grew disillusioned with Stanhope; perhaps he felt suspected of being an imposter. In January 1832, Stanhope ordered Hauser to move in with schoolmaster Johann Georg Meyer in Ansbach, although he continued to pay for Hauser’s expenses. He avoids as many obstacles as possible, but, on the other hand, his acute perception of everything leads to his mental deterioration At Stanhope’s behest, Meyer was told not to say anything to Hauser about his father, telling him instead that his father was dead.

## The Fatal Stab Wound

This aspect to the Kaspar Hauser mystery ended tragically with the young man’s death on 14 December 1833, killed by a stab wound to the chest. According to Hauser’s last confession, a man had beckoned him into the Ansbach Court Garden where he was then set upon and stabbed. By his side, police found ‘a bag which he said contained a note which would explain everything’. They recovered the document, but all it did was obfuscate. On the outside, the corner of a grammatically inverted note had been carefully shaved the mirror way.

As inconsistencies in Hauser’s story hinted, the authorities began to believe that he had caused the wound himself in a last, desperate cry for attention, or that he tried and failed to pull off a fraud that had spun out of control. Hauser died on 17 December 1833, aged only 21. He took the secrets of his birth and death to the grave. His gravestone in the Stadtfriedhof in Ansbach reads: ‘Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth unknown. His death mysterious.’

## Theories and Speculations

And so dozens, eventually hundreds, of theories — from the plausible to fully frangible magic — have been made of Kaspar Hauser’s story. One of the most prevalent is that Hauser was the heir to the state of Baden, switched at birth with a dead baby by ambitious relatives seeking to guarantee the succession for a different branch of the family, before being installed in a padlocked tower to prevent him inheriting the throne. Thus he was, at least in this theory, a pawn of royal intrigue, ruined by dirty family politics. This theory, however, has also been largely debunked, by historical record and by DNA testing.

Other explanations, from pathological liar to professional con man, seem more likely. Hauser’s self-contradictions, mysterious injuries and improbable narratives support this interpretation. The psychiatrist Karl Leonhard diagnosed Hauser as suffering from ‘a paranoid personality’, while Philippe Didier described him in 1857 as being a ‘pathological swindler’.

## Forensic and Psychological Insights

Despite detailed forensic analyses of both Hauser’s wounds and the note found near him, where he was stabbed to death, no definitive evidence emerged. A forensic study from 2005 concluded that, while the stab wound could have been self-inflicted, ‘it is difficult to absolutely exclude the possibility of secondary motives such as suicide or assignment’. Psychiatrists did conclude that his protagonist’s testimony contained ‘many contradictions and absurdities’, and hence that he was ‘not the victim he claims to be’.

Nineteenth-century discussions of Hauser’s brain — including that of Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Heidenreich, who examined the pickled brain after Hauser died — commented on abnormalities that may be consistent with epilepsy or cortical atrophy, but are not supportive. It is worth noting that the speculations of contemporary phrenologists can’t be entirely dismissed. Anyway, modern psychological views suggest that, although some aspects of his behaviour and stories are consistent with an idiosyncratic but normal man, Hauser’s reactions are more likely to reflect a troubled individual than a captive who was denied social contact for decades.

## Cultural Impact and Legacy

And his story, as detailed under several aliases in many books, has inspired novels, plays, films and artworks, entries in encyclopaedias and museum exhibits, ensuring that Kaspar Hauser is part of popular culture, whatever doubts might remain about his mind. But what of his body in the final reckoning? What, above all, are the indications of Kaspar Hauser’s years of confinement? Portland TrustPRODUCTION ARCHIVES OF THE DUCHY OF BADENLEVEL 5, PROTOCOL 137/2006III, KASPAR HAUSER‘S CONFESSION IN LEIPZIG ON 24 OCTOBER 1829 According to reports, during his few years in the tavern cellar, if stew for his meals was not ready quickly enough, or if he did not promptly fetch a bucket of water, he was reportedly deprived of food for a complete day. He would then drink his fill of water and lie down to wait. Frequently, he was beaten. He once went without food for three or four days as a punishment. Since Kaspar was found in the market place with no apparel but a shirt, people have suspected him of being a foundling — barefoot, crying, and without any clothes on at all. Perhaps he was dumped carelessly? Untended children with a vague resemblance to humanity have been found in certain places and at certain times. But the theory of Hauser being a wild child was never compelling since it denied too much. There is no real evidence that Hauser was ever a free-ranging bewildered soul. He was too young. Screams and despair scorch the confession with little of the pain of his first stirrings in limbo.

Hauser, of course, has never gone away. His remarkable life and death invite attempts to sort out what really happened, and what we would have to know about human nature to have a hope of getting it right. Kaspar Hauser died a plausible victim, and surely also something of an actor, in an age where the two roles were all too easily mistaken for each other. He stands as a reminder that, even now, the distinction teeters on a hair’s breadth. Even the frauds are desperately, gruesomely true.

## Conclusion

The story of Kaspar Hauser reads like the most intriguing of novels — a tapestry of mystery, speculation and human drama interspersed with startling facts and unusual circumstances. It began with the unexpected appearance of an apparently wild child, followed by an enigmatic series of actions, a baffling personality and, ultimately, a tragic end. The circumstances of his emergence and the aspects of his behaviour that appeared to be wild, untamed and untaught gripped the attention of contemporaries and still fascinate a modern audience, years after the extensive search into the alleged eight-year-old’s claims of confinement and subsequent fate. One hundred and seventy-five years after the mystifying case of Kaspar Hauser came to light, we still don’t know who he really was nor what happened to him.

The story of Kaspar Hauster’s existence is the quintessential reminder that the most fascinating piece of all is a humble and honest puzzle about the nature of being a person, and the invisible room in which those narratives take shape.