Kaspar Hauser: Observations and Theories

Opinion has been divided over just who Kaspar Hauser was, where he came from, who his parents were and which background he came from, and of course the circumstances surrounding his death.  In the first part of this article, I presented the facts surrounding his story.  In this part I will look at observations and theories surrounding him.

We can discount the claims of confinement immediately. Had Kaspar been confined in a small, narrow cell from birth until his seventeenth year, with no exposure to any outside stimuli, then his brain would never have developed further than that of a baby. The cell would be the only life he knew, and anything beyond that would in fact have been terrifying to such a being. Indeed, given his claims of having two toy horses and a toy dog, no such being would know what they were and even the function of playing with them may well be an alien concept to them. Another giveaway are the observations of Sargeant Wust. It is highly unlikely that anyone kept in a narrow stone cell for almost two decades would have soft and unblemished hands. All the above apart, any child kept in a cell, fed only bread and water, would not survive one year, would not survive six months, before dying of malnutrition. To claim that he were kept confined for seventeen years in such conditions is then not only an impossibility, it is an absurdity.

Even if we accept that Kaspar were kept confined for a number of years, his release would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible to cope with. We are told he had extremely acute eyesight at twilight yet was unable to read house numbers in broad daylight. This is nonsense. Deprivation from light – and the candle incident suggests he was fully deprived of light – for a number of years would not only have damaged his eyes beyond repair, it may well have sent him blind. Consider this is exactly what happened to pit ponies which, when released from their confinement underground, were usually euthanised because they were blind. Even if he retained his eyesight, imagine the reaction of someone locked in darkness for a number of years to bright sunlight. The result would be extremely painful to such an individual.

The very release of someone confined a great number of years into the open would be extremely traumatic, and perhaps more than they could cope with. Everyday sights, sounds, smells, other people, and even just the openness of being outdoors we are all used to would be extremely frightening to any individual suddenly released from confinement in a tiny cell for most of their life. There are psychiatric hospitals and prisons the world over where long-term inmates have become institutionalised, their confines being the only life they can cope with, which are testament to that.

Apart from his soft hands, the letters which Kaspar carried make a lie of his assumed peasant background. To claim that any peasant in early 19th century Bavaria could read and write, albeit with poor spelling and grammar, is to stretch credulity to the limit. The letters could indeed have been dictated, but then by whom? For most people of this time the only person they could trust was their parish priest. Can there be any credence that the mother’s local priest would happily pen the words “strike him dead or hang him up a chimney.”? Indeed, how likely is it that any priest, knowing of a child being cruelly confined would not either alert the authorities or even take the matter into his own hands?

Yet Kaspar Hauser, for all his supposed idiocy, apparently quickly learned to not only read and write but also how to conduct himself in polite society. We are told that he met Lillia von Stichaner at one of Feuerbach’s dinner parties. So on one hand we are being told of a boy whose confinement has led to severe idiocy, yet on the other hand we are being asked to accept that Kaspar Hauser was intelligent and refined enough to attend the dinner parties of polite early 19th century society? Who is kidding who here?

Indeed, Kaspar Hauser when given the chance managed to show a marked intelligence. If he did not have such, then not only would he not been able to keep journals, but he would never have even been considered for a job as a copyist, let alone employed as one, nor able to hold such a position down. The position, which involved copying legal documents by hand, would be quite a task for most people nowadays, let alone in the 1830s, yet Kaspar apparently managed to hold this position down for the last two years of his life.

All the evidence points to a boy from a privileged background, if not gentry then almost certainly the rising middle-class of the times. We can equally however discount the claims of Kaspar being the hereditary prince of Baden. The background to this story lies with the royal family of Baden of the time. Stephanie de Beauharnais gave birth to a boy on 29 September 1812, and who died on 16 October 1812. The claims were that a dying baby was switched and the true prince spirited away. As Grand Duke Karl of Baden and Stephanie had no male progeny, upon Karl’s death the title fell to his uncle, Louis, who in turn was succeeded by his half-brother, Leopold. The culprit here is said to be Leopold’s mother, Louise Caroline of Hochberg, to assure the succession of her sons to the Duchy of Baden, the story going that she disguised herself as a ghost, the White Lady, to switch the babies.

The convoluted claims above are of course full of holes. If Countess Caroline switched the babies, why allow the true prince to survive? Indeed, if evil enough to switch a healthy baby with one which was dying, why not just kill the true prince? Indeed, how could Caroline know for sure that the sickly baby would die? As a member of the royal family why even go to the lengths of disguising herself as a ghost, when she would have been a well-known visitor to the household. All nonsense. Wonderful nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless.

DNA analysis from blood on underpants believed to be those of Kaspar Hauser were compared with descendants of the Dukes of Baden and no match was found. Further DNA tests in 2002 took six samples of Kaspar’s hair and clothing known to have belonged to him. These samples were identical to each other, but differed from the 1996 samples. When tested against DNA samples supplied by Astrid von Medinger, a descendant from the female line of Stephanie de Beauharnais, sequences were not identical but the deviation observed is not large enough to exclude a relationship as the difference could be caused by a mutation. At the same time however, the samples equally showed commonality with the pattern among the general German population. In other words the results were inconclusive and do not prove nor disprove relationship.

I therefore contest that Kaspar Hauser may not have been of noble birth, but he was almost certainly middle-class, and far from learning reading and writing, he was relearning them. Feuerbach saw through this pretence, as did Daumer, and many others.

One can only wonder what form of questioning Kaspar Hauser was subjected to in the early days, when he told his tales of being confined all his life. Those who questioned him were firmly of the noble birth theory, and it is entirely possible that their questioning fed him leading questions, which put the idea of his past in his mind, and then for him that became reality. In The Interrupted Journey, journalist and paranormal investigator John G Fuller recounts the tale of Barney and Betty Hill, who claimed to have been stopped by a UFO and taken aboard the craft by aliens. Reading the transcripts of hypnotic regression sessions under Dr Benjamin Simon, one is immediately struck by the amount of leading questions put to the couple. Basically Simon was feeding the story to them, and for them it became a reality. Barney Hill would never speak of the events, but Betty Hill went on to claim further visitations, and went to her grave convinced in her mind that the events were one hundred percent true, because for her they were.

This False Memory Syndrome has since become evident in many other places, not least in cases of ‘Satanic child abuse’. There have been a plethora of cases where children and even adults have been fed leading questions and have told fantastic stories about being subjected to sexual abuse and even seeing babies and other children being sacrificed by Satanic cults to which their parents belonged. This inevitably led to the children being taken into care – and all charges being dropped when the accusations have thrown up absolutely no evidence. In one such case a teenage girl was taken into care after under hypnotic regression she claimed to have been raped and sexually abused over a number of years by all members of a Satanic cult, including her own parents. Yet when she was subjected to a physical examination, she was proven to still be a virgin. It was only then that the hypnotherapy recordings found that she was being fed leading questions, leading to False Memory Syndrome. The last I heard the poor girl was trying very hard to rebuild her relationship with her family. I therefore wonder if Daumer, who certainly carried out experiments with magnets on Kaspar Hauser, attempted Mesmerism – inducing a trance through the use of magnets – and likewise fed him leading questions, leading to False Memory Syndrome?

So what to the physical and apparent mental deficiencies of Kaspar Hauser? His marked short stature and damaged legs were claimed by Dr Preu to be due to some means of restraint or confinement. They may well have been. But given that Preu was working for Mayor Binder, who was pushing the noble birth theory and who all too readily accepted his claims of being locked up all his life. This was also in 1826, when congenital deformities were not fully understood nor as widely researched as they are today.

In modern medicine there is a condition which can affect children subjected to extreme emotional deprivation and / or extremely stressful environments, known as Psychosocial Dwarfism or Psychosocial Short Stature (PSS). PSS symptoms include decreased growth hormone and somatomedin secretion, resulting in short stature, weight inappropriate for height, and immature skeletal development. PSS is progressive as long as the child is subjected to their abusive environment and can also lead to cognitive abilities degenerating. It is common in feral children and those who have been locked in confined spaces for extended lengths of time. PSS can stop the body to stop growing during confinement, but it is a temporary one. Once released from confinement and given proper care, a PSS victim will experience a gradual return to normal growth. PSS was identified in 1994 by American psychologist John Money, who referred to it as Kaspar Hauser Syndrome.

It appears then that Kaspar Hauser may well have been abused and kept in confinement for long periods by a person or persons unknown, but certainly not for the 17 years he claims. He was a middle class boy who had previously been taught to read and write, but whose confinement had led to PSS, severely affecting his physical, emotional and psychological growth and causing him extreme psychological trauma.

The impression I get of Kaspar Hauser is that he was essentially an innocent character, confused by his past abuse, and continued abuse by those around him. I do believe he had a great deal of mental deficiency, as evidenced by his zeal for a project, only to let it go by the wayside when it became obviously too difficult for him. Yet this did not prevent him utilising his underlying marked intelligence when necessary, as evidenced by him holding down a responsible job in a legal office. Indeed, I would add that he was not innocent of a great deal of conniving, and that too required a marked intelligence. Kaspar to me sounds like an autistic child whose apparent disability masks great hidden talent.

Because of this mental composition, I believe that Kaspar was capable of many things, including playing the fool when it suited him to get the attention he had previously been deprived of and craved so very much. To this end I believe he knew exactly what he was doing when he made a grab for the candle flame, and when he stroked a ball like it were a living creature. Essentially, I believe that all his other problems aside, Kaspar Hauser suffered from Münchhausen’s Syndrome and that disorder was eventually to be his undoing.

In the case of Kaspar Hauser, I believe his Münchhausen’s Syndrome manifested itself for three reasons. Firstly, it was essentially a cry for help and to gain him the attention, love and comfort he sought. Secondly, it was a way of working out his frustrations when he was being pressurised when things were beyond him. Thirdly, it was a reaction to ill treatment by others. It is notable that Kaspar’s three attacks took place when he was placed with those who had the least patience with him; Herr Daumer, Herr Biberbach and Doktor Meyer.

I do not believe for one moment that there were ever any attacks or strange men, or that the gunshot wound was any accident. I firmly believe that Kaspar Hauser’s injuries were self-inflicted, with the last going too far. They were not attempts at suicides, but merely cries for help, and with Kaspar’s mental impairment, he could not possibly have known the consequences of doing such a thing.  Let us not forget that he demonstrated in his dream of Frau Binder that he proved he could not differentiate dreams from reality.  Therefore, it is possible that he may not have known how severe the injuries he inflicted upon himself could be.

Those who all too readily believed that Kaspar Hauser was being pursued by some mysterious stranger, from whom his life was in danger, were also those who believed that he had been confined all his life and who were pushing the claim that he was of noble blood. Therefore, they believed there were attempts to silence him once and for all. This beggars belief when one considers that if they were serious about silencing him, then they would have done so when he was a baby, or would never have released him from confinement. If he were such a danger to a royal house, why allow him to go free, or even to live in the first place?  That defies logic.

Some others claim that the first attack was from a blackmailer who had uncovered the true identity of Kaspar Hauser and was demanding money to buy his silence. If that were the case, then why attack the boy at all? Or if Kaspar had previously encountered a blackmailer and that visit was a warning to come up with the money, why would the blackmailer not simply expose Kaspar, or kill him there and then. Consider also that the first attack came before Kaspar was in gainful employment. He had no resources of his own with which to pay any blackmailer, and had he continually asked for money, which by all accounts it is doubtful he would have been given, then questions would follow. Had he stolen it, then the money going missing would have been noticed, or Kaspar would have been caught stealing.

The pistol incident was no accident. Taking place in the days before breech-loading guns, the pistol in question could only have been muzzle-loading, which means that for to go off, it must already have been loaded with gunpowder and a ball. How likely is it that anyone would wall-mount a primed and loaded firearm? As likely in those days as it is now – not at all. It is my guess that Kaspar saw someone load and fire such a gun, and decided to give it a go himself. Whether he wounded himself with it deliberately, or that was just an unfortunate consequence of his actions is open to conjecture. I am tempted here to go with the latter; Kaspar was clowning around with the gun, which he had loaded, it went off, injuring him, and believing in his childlike mind that he would get into trouble, he concocted a fantastic story, in the way any child would do. Unlike Frau Biberbach, there is one thing I am certain of, it was not a deliberate attempt at suicide.

As to the dark stranger in the second attack, we have Kaspar’s claims that there was indeed a strange man who came to the chancery earlier and told him to be at the Hofgarten at 2:30pm, and we have this seemingly corroborated by later eyewitness statements. One wonders however just how these eyewitnesses were questioned. Were they given leading questions, suggesting that there was anyone ‘strange’ in the Hofgarten, or in Kaspar’s company? Some witnesses certainly saw Kaspar heading there, but alone. The workman claims to have seen such a character with Kaspar, but appears to have been concentrating more on Kaspar’s lack of an overcoat in bitterly cold weather, and this will become important a little later.

Given that he claimed to have been attacked by a strange man previously, how likely is it that Kaspar would have trusted any such stranger turning up out of the blue and telling him to come to the Hofgarten? Even a child under such circumstances would surely either call out for help, or tell an adult as soon as possible. I would suggest that it is entirely possible there never was a dark stranger and that eyewitness statements were fed by leading questions. Some may ask why then would Kaspar Hauser insist it were true, despite being threatened with a beating? I would suggest that lying there, in pain, bleeding profusely, the young man was confused, and that for Kaspar his lie had become reality; like his False Memory Syndrome the dark stranger was real – in Kaspar’s mind.

Alternatively there may have been a dark stranger in the Hofgarten, but there is nothing to suggest that Kaspar talking with him was anything more untoward than two strangers passing the time of day. For all we know, the man may have been, like the workman, somewhat concerned about the lad’s lack of dress in such inclement weather.

There is another idea which strikes me, and it concerns why Kaspar headed for the park in the first place, and why the ‘stranger’ was there as well; and that is the reason why some single men and teenage boys have hung about in certain places since time began. There is a possibility that the stranger was hanging about the park, looking for a young boy for sexual purposes, and seeing Kaspar alone, approached him, with Kaspar possibly panicking, a knife being produced by either himself or the man, and it ending with the boy being stabbed.

Another alternative to this is that Kaspar approached the man, which would certainly explain why he was in the park in the first place. Kaspar was described as having the mind of a boy of about 12-13 years old in the body of a young man. All his other problems apart, he must have suffered a great degree of sexual frustration and confusion. The psycho-sexual aspects of his dream of Frau Binder coming to him in the night and taking his headache away are certainly not lost on me. There is every possibility therefore that it was Kaspar who saw the stranger and approached him for sexual favours, perhaps the man rebuffed him, a scuffle ensued, during which Kaspar was stabbed.

if the man did stab Kaspar however, then how come no witnesses observed anyone running from the scene? In such a place, anyone running would have appeared out-of-place, and when the town heard of the much-loved Kaspar Hauser being killed, surely someone would have come forward to say they saw a man running from the Hofgarten? If he were there, then he appears to have walked away calmly, which to me suggests that Kaspar stabbed himself.

There have been claims that it would be impossible for Kaspar Hauser to stab himself in the upper left chest. I don’t know where anyone gets such ideas, but they are clearly nonsense. As you read this, clench your right hand, as if you were holding a knife, and bring your imaginary knife up to your left chest, as if stabbing yourself. You will soon see that it would perfectly possible to stab yourself in any part of the left chest, even down the side. And this would be all the easier for someone to make a deep wound if they were wearing a shirt but no overcoat, exactly as the workman asserted that is how Kaspar Hauser was dressed.

Many have stated that people who kill themselves by stabbing rarely do not just plunge a knife in, but attempt several ‘test’ cuts first. Not everybody is Kaspar Hauser, however, and there is no proof that he was attempting suicide (why go to the Hofgarten to do it?) but was possibly merely trying to gain attention and sympathy, and due to his mental deficiency, was not aware of the dangers and plunged the knife too deep. The absence of a knife does not prove that Kaspar never had one, as he may have discarded of it in a nearby brook or elsewhere when he was returning home.

So, many would ask, what of the purse containing the note in Spiegelschrift; mirror writing? Well that is quite simply explained – Kaspar Hauser produced that note himself. There is one little fact which few writers mention, and that is the fact that the small velvet purse found on the scene in fact belonged to Kaspar. Why would any murderer hand their victim a purse, and a handwritten note which could incriminate them? They would not. Therefore we are left with Kaspar producing the note himself. Could he possibly write in Spiegelschrift? I have commented before on Kaspar’s mental deficiencies hiding an underlying intelligence, and I have seen examples of such things before. When I read of this note I was immediately reminded of the case of one boy, whose name escapes me, who was autistic, yet produced quite fantastic drawings of scenes around London. Then one of his tutors pointed something out – they were all mirror images of the actual scenes. That Kaspar held down a job as a copyist for two years, he evidently had an aptitude for writing. There is absolutely nothing to suggest then that he was incapable of mirror writing.

Many writers have condemned Kaspar Hauser as a fraud and a charlatan. I certainly cannot bring myself to do so, no more than I could be angry for a long time with a naughty and mischievous child, which is essentially what Kaspar was. I believe he was a kind and trusting boy with a good heart, as one finds most children to be. But one who was maltreated and abused in childhood, possibly being locked up in a confined space for a long time, but certainly not for seventeen years. This abuse and lack of love and care was further compounded by people who used him for their own ends, and those who had no patience for him and further abused him. He could be bright and intelligent, but when frustrated he cried out in the only way possible, by lying and injuring himself. And one more attempt at that, ended up being fatal, ironically not by his own hands, but by infection caused by the bumbling Doktor Heidenrich pushing his unclean finger into the open wound.

It is little wonder then that Kaspar reacted in the way he did, particularly as he was passed around from one ‘carer’ to another and treated as more of a freak show than a human being. Being emotionally deprived, Kaspar would have looked for love wheresoever he could find it. And while Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach remained friendly with the boy, the way he treated him as little more than a guinea pig in a psychological experiment was wholly reprehensible and shameful. The same can be said for Daumer, who used Kaspar Hauser as little more than experiment in the quack medicine known as homeopathy (and possibly Mesmerism). In researching this article, I had to look up Nux Vornica and was extremely alarmed to learn that it is strychnine. There is little wonder that it did much to calm Kaspar Hauser; it is a wonder that Daumer never poisoned the boy.

I equally condemn Mayor Binding, Johann Biberbach and his wife, Earl Stanhope, and the sadistic Johann Georg Meyer. Indeed, the only people who appear to come away with any cleanliness are George Weichmann – the kind cobbler who offered Kaspar help in the first place, and Baron Tucher, who gave the boy a responsible job and tried his best to teach him responsibility and self-reliance. The rest either abused Kaspar Hauser for their own ends, or never tried to understand him and so instead vilified and bullied him, and of all these they had one thing in common; not one of them was a fit guardian who was qualified to care for Kaspar Hauser.

Essentially Kaspar Hauser was merely a child looking for love, as any child will, only constantly to be rebuffed and refused that love, and whose short life was ended in an attempt to win that love.

As tragic as his death was, it was perhaps a blessing for him that he never lived longer to suffer further abuse and ill treatment from those should have known better, but simply did not care that their “experiment” was a human being, with all-too-human emotions, and all-too-human failings.

The perplexing and tragic case of Kaspar Hauser

26 May 1828 was a holiday and market day in the German market town of Nuremberg.  As farmers and merchants were getting ready to buy, sell and make merry, local cobbler George Weichmann noticed a strange, sturdy, yet frightened looking youth with a bad limp heading towards the city’s New Gate.  Weichmann offered to help the boy, but he was startled and seemed unable to speak.  All he could do was hand over a letter addressed to “Captain of the 4th squadron, 6th Calvary Regiment, Nuremberg”.  Thinking the lad may be an imbecile and concerned for his wellbeing, the kindly cobbler took him the house of Captain Wessenig of the Calvary, where the servants took him in to await their master’s return.

The servants offered the boy food and drink.  He hungrily devoured an entire loaf of bread but refused meat offered to him.  A cup of beer given to him provoked fascination with the lustre of the cup itself, while he ignored the contents.  He was startled by a pendulum clock striking, which he shied away from.  A lighted candle drew his fascination, and the boy attempted to grab the flame, burning his hand.  One servant threw a ball to him, which landed in his lap, but rather than throw it back, he sat and stroked it as if it were a living creature.  He would not speak but to answer “Don’t know.” to every question put to him.

When Captain Wessinig returned home, he was told of the boy who was presented to him immediately.  The lad eagerly handed the captain the letter, which actually consisted of two notes, with poor spelling and grammar.

The first letter was undated and stated;

“Honoured Captain

I send you a lad who wished to serve his king in the Army.  He was brought to me on October 7th, 1812.  I am but a poor labourer with children of my own.  His mother asked me to bring up the boy, and so I thought I would raise him as my own son.  Since then, I have never let go one step outside the house, so no-one know where he was raised.  He, himself, does not know of the place or what 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 will not keep him, then you must strike him dead or hang him up a chimney.”

The second letter, dated October 1812, stated;

“The child has been baptised.  His name is Kaspar; you must give him his second name yourself.  I ask you to take care of him.  His father was a Calvary soldier.  When he is seventeen, take him to Nuremberg, to the Sixth Calvary 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.”

Having ascertained the boy was named Kaspar and was 17 years old, Captain Wessenig was less than impressed however.  Thinking Kaspar to be either an imbecile or a hoaxer, he had him taken to the Vestner Gate Tower, where he was delivered into the hands of Sargeant Wust.  Wust handed the boy a sheet of paper and a pen, and Kaspar legibly wrote “Kaspar Hauser” on it, but continued to answer all other questions with “Don’t know.”

Sargeant Wust, with archetypal German efficiency, recorded a detailed description of Kaspar, saying he was a broad-shouldered youth of about 17 years of age, light brown hair, blue eyes, wearing “odd” clothes which did not belong to him; his trousers and shirt were worn and far too large, his shoes so small and tight that his toes had burst them, causing terrible blisters which made walking difficult.  Wust also recorded that Kaspar’s hands were soft and smooth, unlike those of anyone used to heavy manual labour.  All this and the letters apart, there was nothing to offer a clue as to the boy’s true identity.

Kaspar was kept in a police cell, not as punishment but rather as a means of temporary accommodation, where he was well cared for.  The jailer, Andreas Hitel, noted that he appeared to be at home there and could sit still in the darkness for hours upon end, the lack of light causing him no discomfort.  It was to the jailer he started to open up, showing that he had an incredible sense of hearing, as well as one of smell, being able to correctly identify people, plants and animals by scent alone.  This was the first indication that Kaspar was no imbecile and further evidence was to follow.

News of Kaspar spread like wildfire through the town, and daily people would gather outside the cell to peer at him through the window.  Andreas Hitel, had grown incredibly fond of the boy and moved Kaspar downstairs to his family rooms, where he continued to tutor him in speaking, reading and writing.  He had a small room to himself there where he could be observed unawares by official and unofficial visitors.  Although Kaspar appeared to learn quickly, Hitel stated that he had been “forcibly deprived of all education and opportunities for mental development”, thus accounting for his “childlike innocence”.

Jakob Friedrich Binder, Mayor of Nuremberg, was the first to start enquiries as to where Kaspar Hauser actually came from, and introduced the first in a long line of “experts” who would make all sorts of judgements and ultimately use and abuse poor Kaspar for their own ends.  The first to examine him was State Medical Officer, Dr Preu, who gave Kaspar’s height as 4 foot 9 inches, stated he was of broad build, and probably 16-17 years old.  He also noted that an unusual formation of the knees suggested some form of prolonged physical constraint.  Preu was a signatory to a statement affirming “This person is neither crazy nor an idiot, but evidently has been raised like a half-wild person, had been forcibly and in the most heinous way removed from all human and societal education.”  In the official public proclamation of 14 July 1828, Mayor Binder further stated that Kaspar was endowed with “enormous intellectual curiosity and an extraordinary memory”.

It was Mayor Binder however who took a quantum leap forward and suggested that Kaspar Hauser was of noble birth and had been locked up against his will to keep his identity a secret.  Indeed, Binder carried out conversations with Kaspar, in which the boy apparently told him that all his life he had been locked in a small, narrow, low-vaulted room, where he had no visitors and had never seen the sun.  The only other human being Kaspar saw, according to Binder was the “monster who handed him his only nourishment, bread and water.” (from the public proclamation).

Kaspar told that during his confinement in this room, the only things beside him were two toy horses and a toy dog.  He claimed that sometimes the water would taste bitter and would cause him to sleep, upon wakening from which he would find his hair and nails cut and his straw changed.  He further claimed that towards the end of his confinement a strange man who kept his face obscured visited him, taught him to walk, to write his name and to say “I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was”, although he said he did not understand what the words meant.

Doubts were officially cast upon Binder’s findings and the state, sceptical of the claims, withdrew his proclamation.  Not until a number of copies were out however, and rumours of just whom the mysterious boy from nowhere may be were soon rife among German and further European society.  The favourite theory was that Kaspar Hauser was in fact the son of Grand Duke Karl of Baden, and Princess Stephanie de Beauharnais; thereby making him the adoptive grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte.  Royal conspiracies are nothing new but were alive and well in the early 19th century.

The official investigation of Kaspar Hauser fell to Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, President of the Bavarian Court of Appeals and the most prominent lawyer of his time.  Only days before the public proclamation, Feuerbach had in fact travelled to Nuremberg to interview Kaspar Hauser, and found him “enjoy(ing) from morning until night hardly less clientele than the kangaroo or tame hyena in Mr Von Aken’s celebrated menagerie.”  Kaspar’s small room was now full of gifts the public has bestowed upon him, and Feuerbach and his party found him “anything but shy or timid”, stating that the boy was transfixed by the bright clothes the party were wearing and actually approached them very quickly and with obvious joy.

Feuerbach noted that Kaspar was prone to spasms, convulsions and brief periods of catalepsy, but also observed that he could now express himself in “badly tousled and jumbled syntax”.  And although he had to guess most of what the boy was saying, Feuerbach stated “The curiosity, the thirst for knowledge… …were beyond all imagining and deeply moving to watch.”

Wishing to receive further observations, and apparently concerned about Kaspar Hauser’s health, Feuerbach placed him with teacher and poet Friedrich Daumer.  Daumer’s mission was to tutor Kaspar, as well as record observations and report back to Feuerbach on a regular basis.  Why Feuerbach should have chosen Friedrich Daumer is best known to himself, but far from putting the boy under professional medical and / or scientific care, he was instead placed in the care of a man of ill health and who belived in mesmerism, pneumonology and homeopathy.

Daumer claimed that Kaspar’s childhood to teen confinement had caused in the boy an “inner state” of a magnetic force which had heightened his abilities.  He noted that all of Hauser’s senses were extremely acute.  He could see better at twilight and could make out house numbers at 200 yard which he could not read in broad daylight.  HIs other senses were no less acute, and Kaspar was apparently sensitive to thunderstorms, church bells and even spiders.

Having progressed Kaspar Hauser in the basics of education, Daumer felt that the tuition was having a detrimental effect on the boy’s health, leading to severe headaches and nervous tics.  He therefore lessened the tutelage and allowed Kaspar to spend more time outside.  At the same time, along with Doctor Preu’s successor, Doctor Osterhausen, he began to administer homeopathic ‘cures’ which had diverse responses.  Diluted sulphur caused face blisters, while diluted silica caused vomiting.  Most treatments were, not surprisingly, disastrous but nux vornica appeared to alleviate his symptoms.

In an attempt to discover his past, Kaspar Hauser was encouraged to keep a journal of his everyday thoughts and memories, and in these he was able to describe the room he was kept in and his treatment at the mysterious man who brought him food, and taught him to write his name.  Believing that memories may surface in dreams, Daumer persuaded him to write a ‘dream diary’.  The keeping of this and the daytime journal was to expose unforseen unfortunate circumstances.  The first dream Kaspar recorded was that the Mayor’s wife, Frau Binder, had come to the side of his bed and asked how his headache was.  However, he told Daumer, believing it to have happened, that Frau Binder had come to him in the night and taken his headache away, and nothing the teacher said could convince Kaspar otherwise.  This was a serious setback for Daumer and Feuerbach.  For if as Daumer observed, Kaspar Hauser took a while “to understand the true nature of dreams” and differentiate them from reality, then the same could be equally said of his memories of his supposed past incarceration.

Slowly, the bolts in Kaspar Hauser’s story were beginning to come loose.  Far from being the genius Feuerbach and Daumer expected, Kaspar was showing every sign of being a dullard.  In his History of a Crime Against a Human Soul, Feuerbach wrote “In his intelligence there stirs nothing at all of genius, not even any particular outstanding talent.  What he learns he owes to persistent, tenacious diligence.  As for the zeal of burning enthusiasm with which, in the beginning, he seemed to wish to storm the gates of all knowledge, that has long been muted, almost extinguished.  In everything he undertakes, he gets no further than the beginning or remains only mediocre.  Without a glimmer of fantasy, unable to make any kind of joke, or to understand even a metaphorical way of speaking, he has a dry but completely healthy common sense.”

Neither was it lost on Feuerbach that where Kaspar Hauser excelled it was only in himself and his personal circumstances and experiences.  He noted “his judgement and sharp intellect are so right that he could shame and embarrass many a pedant.”, which is exactly Kaspar Hauser was to do, for a little while at least, a little later.

Daumer, the quack to the end, blamed Kaspar Hauser’s dullness on a meat diet, ironically which he had introduced the boy to.  Feuerbach for his part tried to blame it on tutors trying to instill a classical education in Kaspar.  It is not lost on me, nor I suppose the reader, that even at this point Daumer and Feuerbach were still trying to find reasons for Kaspar Hauser’s apparent dullness – embarrassing many a pedant indeed.  But whatever the reason’s for Kaspar’s slow mind and narcissism, it was clear by this time that the two men had tired of both the boy and their “experiments”.  Events however were about to overtake them and present them with the opportunity to pass Kaspar Hauser to yet another ‘expert’.

On 17 October 1829 Kaspar was found in Daumer’s basement with a deep wound to his forehead.  Upon being revived, he told a tale of a tall man, dressed in black and with a black mask covering half his face, jumped out of the shadows and attacked him with a knife.  There were those who suspected that the wound may have been self-inflicted.  However, Daumer, Feuerbach and associates took it seriously, and the boy had a round the clock police guard.  Friedrich Daumer saw his opportunity and grabbed it.  Claiming that his failing health and frailty made him unable to guarantee Kaspar’s safety, the boy was taken under police guard to the home of one Johann Biberbach.

Kaspar Hauser stayed there only six months, during which there were quarrels with Herr and Frau Biberbach, at the end of which Kaspar had another brush with death.  on 3 April 1830 a shot was heard in Kaspar’s room.  When his escort rushed in, he found the boy bleeding from a head wound and a pistol lying nearby.  Kaspar’s story was that he was reaching for some books, when he slipped on the chair he was standing on, made a grab to prevent falling, and accidentally set off the wall-mounted pistol.  Many this time, not least Frau Biberbach, were convinced this was an attempt at suicide.  He was moved to the home of Baron Tucher, who had been in touch with Kaspar since his early days in Nuremberg.

Baron Tucher appears to be the only person who took any real interest in Kaspar Hauser of recognise any human value in him. Tucher stated that while Kasper was around 18-20 years old, he had the “intellectual capacity of a boy of 13 to 14”.  He also found the boy to be kind-hearted.  Tucher was certainly the only one to instill any self-reliance in Kaspar, continuing his education and managing to find him gainful employment as a copyist in a legal office.  Unfortunately another pedant was about to undo all the good Baron Tucher was instilling in Kaspar, and it was to have tragic consequences.

English peer Phillip Henry, Fourth Earl of Stanhope, had become obsessed with the story of Kaspar Hauser, and without even meeting the boy, had already convinced himself that Kaspar was indeed of noble birth and the lost Duke of Baden.  Travelling to Nuremberg, Stanhope met Kaspar and, behaving extremely kindly to and ingratiated himself to the boy and promising to take him back home to his estate in England.  Stanhope either bribed or equally ingratiated himself to the Bavarian authorities, because astonishingly he was suddenly granted full custody of Kaspar Hauser and took him under his wing. What happened next was unclear however.  Either Lord Stanhope has seen through Kaspar, read Feuerbach’s reports, or simply lost interest.  Whichever, in December 1831 Kaspar Hauser found himself moved yet again, this time into the charge of Johann Georg Meyer in Ansbach.  Stanhope abandoned to Meyer’s care completely in February 1832.

Meyer was a strict and pedantic teacher, some have even gone so far as to call him a bully, with whom relations with Kaspar Hauser were apparently strained, with the teacher losing patience with his apparent lies and excuses.  Kaspar had never been told that Lord Stanhope had abandoned the case altogether and the trusting boy still spoke of hope upon hope of the English nobleman coming to take him away to England.  Although Feuerbach had long since stopped believing in the boy, he still visited him.  Then in May 1833 Feuerbach died suddenly, which was a deep and grievous loss for Kaspar.  Moreover Kaspar Hauser was now friendless, as well as in the sole charge of Meyer, with whom his relationship soured further daily.

On Saturday 14 December, 1833, Kaspar Hauser attended religious lessons in the morning, then he helped the church parson building a large cardboard box, which he showed some enthusiasm for.  He lunched with Doktor Meyer at 12:30pm and returned to the parson’s house at 12:45pm.  He only left at 2:30pm when the parson had to attend the church.  As he walked with the parson, he cheerfully told him he would now call upon Miss Lillia von Stichaner, whom he had met at one of Feuerbach’s dinner parties, to help build a fire screen for her, as he had previously promised to do.  They parted with Kaspar Hauser heading in the direction of the von Stichaner home.

In later reports people stated they saw the well-known Kaspar Hauser heading towards the Hofgarten Park, in the opposite direction to the von Stichaner residence.  Shortly afterwards others saw him in the Hofgarten Park.  A workman, Joseph Leich, saw Kaspar there in the company of a man unfamiliar in the area.  He said he remembered it clearly as Kaspar was wearing no overcoat in bitterly cold weather.  The stranger was described as 6 foot tall, mid-40s, with a dark beard and moustache, wearing a blue coat and a round, black hat.  Seven other witnesses later confirmed seeing a stranger of that description in the Hofgarten or around the city square.

These reports were eyewitness testimony given to the police following the final twist in the enigma of Kaspar Hauser’s short and tragic life.  For at 3:30pm on the same afternoon, the bell rang at Doktor Meyer’s home, and when the door was opened, Kaspar Hauser burst in, grimacing and pointing to his chest, then attempted to pull Meyer towards the Hofgarten.  When Meyer saw that Kaspar was bleeding, he asked him if anything had happened to him in the park, Kaspar blurted out “Went to Hofgarten.  Man had knife.  Gave me purse.  Stabbed.  Ran as fast as I could.  Purse still there.”  Meyer, as caring as ever, demanded to know what he was doing in the Hofgarten in the first place.  Kaspar replied “Man came to chancery this morning.  Message I should be in Hofgarten at 2:30pm for something to be shown to me.”  He then collapsed and it was only at this point Doktor Meyer dragged Kaspar Hauser home and laid him on a couch.

Doktor Meyer was convinced the wound, which he did not think serious, was self-inflicted to gain pity and attention, and bluntly told Kaspar Hauser so.  He threatened the boy with a birching for more than an hour as he lay bleeding and in pain on the couch, but Kaspar would not change his story one iota.  A Doktor Heidenrich was called for to examine Kaspar, and equally convinced it was not a serious wound, thrust an ungloved and unwashed finger into it – only to widen the wound and find that it went so deep that his finger touched the boy’s still beating heart.  Now convinced the boy’s life was in danger, Dr Heidenrich told Dr Meyer so, and it was only at this point that the latter ran off to report the stabbing to the police.

Police Constable Herrlein searched the Court Garden, and found a small violet purse, inside of which a pencilled note was found written in Spiegelschrift; mirror writing.  When deciphered the note read;

“Hauser will be
able to tell you quite precisely how
I look and from where I am.
To save Hauser the effort,
I want to tell you myself from where
I come _ _ .
I come from from _ _ _
the Bavarian border _ _
On the river _ _ _ _ _
I will even
tell you the name: M. L. Ö.”

As the police conducted their enquiries, set about deciphering the note and taking eyewitness statements, Kaspar’s condition steadily deteriorated.  On 17 December 1833 Kaspar Hauser died, in a final ironic twist not of the wound to his chest, but as the post-mortem found, of bacterial pleuritis and pericarditis; infections caused by the bungling Doktor Heidenrich thrusting his unguarded finger into the wound.

Kaspar Hauser was buried in Stadtfriedhof in Ansbach. The inscription on his headstone is in Latin, but the English translation reads, “Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious. 1833.”  A memorial to him was later placed in the Hofgarten Court Garden, which reads “Hic occultus occulto occisus est” (“Here a mysterious one was killed in a mysterious manner.”).

Upon the death of Kaspar Hauser being made public, Lord Stanhope and Doktor Meyer went to lengths to denounce him as a cheat and an impostor, who had ended his own life by suicide.  Stanhope in particular could not have gone further to distance himself from the strange case of Kaspar Hauser, even going to the lengths of publishing tracts in which he roundly denounced the boy as a fraud.

Ever since his death, there have been a number of theories about Kaspar Hauser, who he was, where he came from, and the mysterious matter of the attacks upon him and his mysterious death.  No-one is nearer to a full explanation today than they were in 1833.  In the second part however, I shall address these and put my own theories forward concerning the mysterious Boy from Nowhere.

Link to Part 2:

https://charlesfortslocker.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/the-boy-from-nowhere-part-2/