Kaspar Hauser
Kaspar Hauser (* allegedly April 30, 1812 ; † December 17, 1833 in Ansbach ) was known as a "puzzling boulder".
Hauser appeared on May 26th, 1828 in Nuremberg as a 16-year-old, apparently mentally retarded and little-talking youth. His later statements that for as long as he could remember he had always been kept alone in a dark room with bread and water, attracted international attention. When understood literally, Hauser's information cannot be reconciled with knowledge of modern medicine.
A contemporary rumor spread that Hauser was the Hereditary Prince of Baden , born in 1812, who had been exchanged for a dying infant and put aside in order to enable a branch of the Baden royal family to succeed to the throne. In the historical literature, this “prince legend” is considered refuted due to documents published later and eyewitness accounts of the prince's death. A scientifically published genetic analysis from 1996 showed that a blood sample attributed to Hauser cannot come from the Hereditary Prince of Baden. Another genetic analysis from 2002 could not provide any counter-evidence due to numerous contradictions.
On October 17, 1829, Hauser was found with a harmless cut, and on December 14, 1833, he came home with an ultimately fatal stab wound. In both cases, he claimed to have been the victim of an assassin. His followers suspected a politically motivated crime. According to forensic investigations, however, it was a matter of self-harm that he had inflicted on himself out of disappointment with the decreasing public interest in himself.
Life from May 26, 1828
On Whit Monday , May 26th, 1828, the master shoemaker Weickmann met a 16-year-old boy on the Unschlittplatz in front of house number 9-11 in Nuremberg , who exclaimed “He Bue” and said “Neue Torstrasse” as he approached. Weickmann later recalled a brief conversation in which the boy said "Regensburg" when asked about his place of origin. He was carrying a letter addressed to the Rittmeister of the 4th Squadron of the 6th Chevauxlegers Regiment in Nuremberg (at that time Friedrich von Wessenig). After he had been shown the way to von Wessenig's apartment, he said to the latter: “A söchtener Reuter would like to be like my father gwen is” (“I would like to be such a rider like my father was”). After a short stay in his apartment, von Wessenig had the boy taken to the police station, where he wrote down the name "Kaspar Hauser" and showed that he knew money, could say prayers and read limited numbers. He answered few questions and his vocabulary seemed limited.
The letter addressed to von Wessenig bore the headline "Von der Bäierische Gränz that places is unnamed 1828". Its anonymous author posed as a poor day laborer and announced that the child had been "laid" for him in October 1812. He had pulled it up and read it, wrote it and taught Christianity, but had not left a step outside the door since 1812; now the boy wanted to be a rider. In an enclosed letter allegedly from the mother, the so-called “Mägdleinzettel”, the first name Kasper was mentioned and the date of birth was “30. Aperil 1812 “. The child's father, a chevaux layer from the 6th Regiment, was dead. Based on a comparison of scripts, it was assumed that both letters were written by the same person, the maid's note apparently with a disfigured handwriting.
Kaspar Hauser was taken to the Luginsland prison under the care of the prison guard Andreas Hiltel. At first he only ate bread and only drank water. His mental state aroused the interest of lawyers, theologians and educators, who conducted numerous studies with him and gave him lessons in speaking. Despite the Franconian surroundings, Hauser kept his old Bavarian dialect throughout his life. It quickly became a public attraction: “Anyone who wanted to see it was admitted to it. From morning to evening Kaspar really enjoyed hardly less popularity than the kangaroo and the tame hyena in Mr. van Aken's famous menagerie, ”as the legal scholar Anselm von Feuerbach vividly described, even among the visitors. Hauser's sensory organs were described as over-sensitive and his muscles as underdeveloped.
At first it was suspected, as in a report by the city court doctor Karl Preu from June 3, 1828, that Kaspar was “raised like a half-wild person in the woods”. After many conversations with Hauser, the mayor Jakob Friedrich Binder wrote a public announcement (dated July 7, 1828) in which he reported another previous history, which Kaspar himself later put down in writing - enriched with a few additions. According to this much-believed and much-doubted story, for as long as he could remember, he was always kept completely alone in a half-reclining position in an almost lightless room. While he was asleep, they brought him water and bread, cleaned him and put him in fresh linen, and had his hair and nails cut - the depth of his sleep was explained by the assumption that he was given opium . He relieved himself in a vessel that stood in a depression in the floor and was also emptied at night. Only shortly before his release was a man whose face he had never seen appeared at his place. He instructed him to write by guiding his hand and then brought him to just before Nuremberg. It was only on this march that he learned to stand and walk. He had learned the sentence that he wanted to be a rider like his father from the unknown man by repeating himself over and over again without grasping the meaning of the words.
On July 18, 1828, Hauser was housed for care and upbringing with the high school professor and later religious philosopher Georg Friedrich Daumer , who was on leave due to sickness and who subsequently gave him lessons in numerous subjects. This showed that Hauser had a considerable handicraft and artistic-drawing talent. Daumer, a well-read scholar with an unusually strong propensity for speculation even for his time, also carried out numerous homeopathic and magnetic experiments with Hauser . He attributed special characteristics and sensitivities to him, such as the ability to feel Daumer's arm movements from a distance of 125 paces as a "blow" without looking.
On October 17, 1829 at lunchtime, Hauser was found in the basement of Daumer's apartment with a severely bleeding cut on his forehead. He stated that he had been attacked by a masked man who had inflicted the wound on him with a sharp instrument and threatened him: “You have to die before you get out of the city of Nuremberg”. Hauser stated that he recognized the masked man by his voice as the person who had brought him to Nuremberg. As traces of blood showed, Kaspar had fled first to the first floor, where his room was - but then not further in the direction of the upper rooms, where, as he knew, other people were, but down again and through a trap door the cellar. Despite police investigations and the offering of a high reward, the incident could not be resolved. For security reasons, Hauser was then housed with the family of the Biberbach municipal council, permanently guarded by two police officers. The alleged assassination stimulated public interest in Kaspar Hauser and gave new food to rumors about his possible origin from the high nobility. However, allegations of fraud were also voiced, first in literary terms from Johann Friedrich Karl Merker: Caspar Hauser, not unlikely to be a fraud. (Berlin 1830).
On April 3, 1830, a pistol shot was fired in Hauser's room in the Biberbach house. His two guards in the anteroom found Hauser lying on the floor, unconscious and bleeding from his head. Hauser later stated that he climbed into a chair to get a book. When he fell over, he tried to hold on to a gun hanging on the wall and accidentally triggered the shot. The wound on the right side of the head turned out to be harmless; it is doubtful whether it was caused by the shot. The incident caused the local authorities to deal with Kaspar Hauser again. Since his initially good relationship with the Biberbach family had meanwhile been clouded, he was placed with his guardian Gottlieb von Tucher for a year and a half. There it was kept stricter, in particular the rush of curious visitors was restricted. Hauser also lived, as was announced in 2013 by the director of the Nuremberg City Archives, Michael Diefenbacher, temporarily with the guardian's mother, Susanna Maria Tucher Freifrau von Simmelsdorf, née. Haller Freiin von Hallerstein (1769–1832), the common mother-in-law of the philosopher Hegel and a great-grandniece of the Pietist prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782), Maria Helena Wilhelmina Tucher Freifrau von Simmelsdorf, née. Haller Freiin von Hallerstein (1804–1834).
Despite being sealed off by the guardian, the English traveler Philip Henry Earl Stanhope , whom the extraordinary attracted everywhere, managed to make Hauser's acquaintance. The lord, who was very fond of Kaspar, tried to get Hauser to look after him. After he had received this in December 1831, he placed him in Ansbach in the household of the teacher Johann Georg Meyer. With this he followed a suggestion made by the court president Anselm von Feuerbach, who took care of the moral and physical well-being of Kaspar during Stanhope's absence; the gendarmerie lieutenant Joseph Hickel was appointed "special curator". He had the confidence of Feuerbach and had access to the investigation files. Stanhope spent large sums of money to clarify Hauser's origin. He financed two trips to Hungary because the sounds of the languages spoken there seemed to bring back memories in Hauser. The lord later stated that the fruitlessness of these trips had aroused his first doubts about the authenticity of Hauser's story. Stanhope left Ansbach in January 1832 and never appeared again. Although he continued to pay for Kaspar's maintenance, the move to England, which he had promised his protégé, came to nothing. After Hauser's death, Stanhope finally moved away from him. In his materials on the history of Kaspar Hauser (Heidelberg 1835) he brought together all the incriminating evidence against Hauser known to him, because he considered it his duty to “confess publicly that I was deceived”. The special curator Hickel certified the Lord in an official report: "He loves the truth and hates the liar forever".
Kaspar Hauser frequented the best social circles in Ansbach. He was won over and loved as a passionate dancer; but he never had a closer relationship with a woman. Hauser's relationship with teacher Meyer, a pedantically strict character, to whom he later expressed his “very big thanks” on his deathbed was tense. In Meyer's opinion, Hauser was unsuitable for professions that would have required higher intellectual training. Von Feuerbach brought him to his court as a clerk and copyist at the end of 1832. Was supervised pastoral Risch Hauser from Herr Fuhrmann, who also him on 20 May 1833 in the Gumbertuskirche in Ansbach Konfirmierte . A few days later, on May 29, 1833, Anselm von Feuerbach died, a painful loss for Kaspar.
On December 14, 1833, Hauser suffered a life-threatening stab wound. He stated that a stranger had invited him on behalf of the court gardener to visit the artesian fountain in the Ansbach court garden . However, there was no one there. Thereupon he went in the direction of the Uz monument; a bearded man spoke to him here, handed him a bag and, when he reached for it, stabbed him. The purple women's bag found in the courtyard garden contained a note with the text written in mirror writing:
“Hauser will be able to tell you exactly how I look and where I am from. To spare the Hauser the trouble, I will tell you myself where I come from _ _ I come from _ _ _ the Bavarian border _ _ On the river _ _ _ _ _ I even want to tell you the name: ML Ö. "
Kaspar Hauser died on December 17, 1833 around 10 p.m. of the consequences of the stab wound. The doctors involved in the forensic examination did not agree on whether the wound was caused by self-harm or by external influences. King Ludwig I offered the then unusually high sum of 10,000 guilders as a reward for catching a possible perpetrator, but without result. After the investigation was completed on September 11, 1834, the district and city court of Ansbach held the view that “one could not avoid the well-founded doubt as to whether Hauser was murdered by someone else, or whether a crime was committed against him at all”. Police advisor Merker decided in a further publication for “self-wounding without intention to kill”. Kaspar himself said on his deathbed to Pastor Fuhrmann: "Why should I have anger or hatred or resentment towards people, nothing has been done to me."
Kaspar Hauser was buried on December 20, 1833 in the Ansbach city cemetery with strong participation from the population. His tombstone bears the Latin inscription:
"HIC JACET CASPARUS HAUSER AENIGMA SUI TEMPORIS IGNOTA NATIVITAS OCCULTA MORS MDCCCXXXIII"
"Here lies Kaspar Hauser, a mystery of his time, the origin unknown, mysterious death in 1833."
In the courtyard garden, not far from the Uz monument, a memorial stone was erected with the inscription in Latin:
"HIC OCCULTUS OCCULTO OCCISUS EST XIV. DEC. MDCCCXXXIII "
"Here a mysterious man was mysteriously killed Dec. 14, 1833."
Hereditary Prince Theory
After the alleged assassination attempt on Kaspar Hauser in October 1829, the first vague suspicions were circulating in Bavaria, which later gave rise to the global rumor that Hauser was the Hereditary Prince of Baden, born on September 29, 1812, and one who was cradled with you dying child. Countess Luise Karoline von Hochberg , the second ( morganatic ) wife of the almost forty years older, Grand Duke Karl Friedrich von Baden, who died in June 1811, is considered to be the perpetrator or initiator . Hochberg, who was raised to the rank of imperial countess in 1796, originally a mere petty aristocratic lady-in-waiting, wanted to help her own descendants to succeed to the throne by exchanging the hereditary prince. After Hauser's death, it was alleged that he was murdered because of his princehood.
The allegedly exchanged prince, who officially died on October 16, 1812, was the first-born son of Grand Duke Karl and his wife Stéphanie , an adopted daughter of Napoleon . Karl had inherited the throne directly from his grandfather Karl Friedrich, as his father Karl Ludwig , the eldest son from Karl Friedrich's first marriage, had died before the latter. In the event that the male line that emerged from his first (befitting) marriage, Karl Friedrich had provided for the succession of his sons to the throne from his second marriage - a regulation that his grandson Karl expressly affirmed in a house and family statute of October 4, 1817 and which in the the following year became part of the Baden constitution. The ability of the Hochberger, who was originally unequal and now elevated to princes and margraves, to succeed in succession was doubtful, but was recognized by the great European powers in the so-called Aachen Protocol in 1818 , while Bavaria's claims to the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine were declared "null and void". After Karl's untimely death in December 1818, his uncle Ludwig inherited the grand ducal dignity because Karl's second son, the Hereditary Prince Alexander, who was born in 1816, had also died as an infant. Margrave Friedrich, an older brother of Ludwig, had died in May 1817; his marriage had remained childless. Ludwig remained unmarried and died in March 1830 as the last margrave from the Zähringer line, which opened the succession to the throne for his half-brother Leopold as the first representative of the Hochberg line, which ruled until 1918. The accumulation of deaths in the older line gave rise to all sorts of unproven rumors about alleged crimes committed at the Baden court.
The Grand Duchess had not seen her first son dead, as she was in poor health from the difficult birth. Her later silence as well as some controversial statements by her youngest daughter Marie Hamilton , who Kaspar Hauser is said to have taken for her brother, contributed to the spread of the rumor.
According to scientific studies, the assumed exchange of children can be ruled out on the basis of the sources known today (since 1951 at the latest) if the book by the Chief Public Prosecutor Otto Mittelstädt ( Kaspar Hauser and his Baden Princehood. Heidelberg 1876) is not recognized as a definitive refutation. Mittelstadt's argument, which was based on the official documents about the emergency baptism, the opening of the corpse and the burial of the prince, has been corroborated by later sources, namely the letters of Margravine Amalie , the mother of Grand Duke Charles. The margravine - herself a mother of seven and, according to the then Prussian ambassador at the Baden court, a “strong-minded, strong-minded woman” - described the newborn prince in a letter dated October 1, 1812: “But if you look at him, you are not amazed that he caused so much trouble to be born. It is enormous in size and thickness. Truly, I have seen few children on this scale. He's very much from Baden. ”Amalie herself was present at the birth and was always with her grandson in the years that followed. She particularly enjoyed, she wrote in a letter dated October 11th, that the child reminded her so much of his father of the same age. In two letters of October 19 and October 27, she then reported on the prince's illness, the danger of which had only become apparent on the day of his death. At four o'clock in the afternoon she learned from her son that the child had a “ stuck flow ” (suffocating shortness of breath) and was going to die; she gave up immediately and stayed with the prince until after the prince's death. The letter of October 27 states:
“The poor little one had a very long agony. … Herr von Edelsheim, who was in the next room with several men and women, came in for a moment to look at the child and heard this sigh. It made such a horrible impression on him that he went out again at once. The last half hour has been quiet. He seemed to be asleep. Eyes and mouth closed without aid. Then he looked wonderful. The features seemed more developed and he was still pale as death. Everyone who saw him admired him. The next morning he wasn't so beautiful anymore. "
“ Kolb [a supporter of the prince theory] stated in 1883 that another child could not easily have been foisted on the mother; had it been present, the doubts would have to be silent. This also applies to the grandmother according to the circumstances outlined above; but she was there. ”The midwife Horst, who carried out the emergency baptism, should also have noticed a change, as she, entrusted by the mother exclusively with the care of the Hereditary Prince, was almost always close to him.
The Hochberger also had no motive for murdering Kaspar Hauser. Leopold had ascended the throne with the consent of all the great powers, while Hauser had grown quiet. Incidentally, he never made claims to the Baden throne, and he could not have enforced them on his own. If the Hereditary Prince had actually been swapped in 1812, from Baden's point of view it would have made sense to remove any surviving confidants instead of committing a murder that would cause a stir all over Europe.
After Hauser's death, the news of his alleged murder spread like wildfire, and democratically-minded pamphleteers quickly knew how to use the matter for the political struggle against the House of Baden. The denunciation of the Baden diplomat Heinrich von Hennenhofer , who was very influential under Grand Duke Ludwig and whom the oppositionist Joseph Heinrich Garnier named in his booklet Some Contributions to the History of Caspar Hauser (Strasbourg 1834) as the alleged murderer of Hauser, should also be seen in this context . “Hennenhofer was hated by the liberals of the Vormärz as a favorite and absolutely devoted servant of the autocrat Ludwig. By attaching this murder to him, one also discredited the hated political system. "
For completely different reasons, the Kingdom of Bavaria also had an interest in spreading the suspicions directed against Baden. Bavaria has been trying for a long time to regain the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine , which had been lost to Baden in 1803 , but was unable to assert itself against the great powers with its territorial claims. After his accession to the throne in 1825, King Ludwig I tried to assert these claims again "and with a persistence that should keep not only his own ministers, but also the German and European cabinets in suspense." After even considering military intervention had been, there was last exchange of blows with legal arguments at the diplomatic and journalistic level. The Bavarian government resorted to archival theft, which was discovered and led to revelations that were embarrassing for Bavaria. Nevertheless, in October 1827 Ludwig I ordered that some successfully stolen documents should not be returned to Baden.
“The files were mainly about the history of the Hochberg family; If there had been even the slightest record of a prince swap in the archives at that time, Bavaria would certainly have made use of it, because the end of the House of Zähringen was imminent. "
On the other hand, Margrave Wilhelm (brother and advisor to Grand Duke Leopold) entrusted his family records:
“That such a fable was taken up by various Bavarian writers with pleasure in order to ... be used against us is in itself very understandable [because of the territorial dispute], even King Ludwig of Bavaria did not shy away from using even more reprehensible means against us …. "
It is uncertain whether the extensive official report (“concerning the so-called Kaspar Hauser”) by court president Anselm von Feuerbach of April 8, 1830 to the justice ministry of King Ludwig I was even noticed. In it Feuerbach had casually mentioned what he wrote cautiously, the "romantic saga" of the Baden princehood of Kaspar. In fact, Ludwig I only seems to have been informed of the conjectures immediately after Kaspar Hauser's death, namely by his stepmother, Queen Karoline , who had been informed of the prince theory by Feuerbach.
"... Mama told me ... Kaspar Hauser had been taken for a son of her brother [Grand Duke Karl], namely that another child had been foisted instead of him. The late President Feuerbach would have written to her about it, wishing she should take care of him, but in order not to endanger him, she did not ... "
Ludwig I was convinced of the murder of Hauser and reacted indignantly to the thesis of self-wounding: "The name of the person who had been indented in Ansbach (or Nuremberg) that Kaspar Hauser had inflicted the wound on himself must be investigated, everything in general. what relates to KH and to the crime is to be investigated continuously ... ”On December 29, 1833 he set a premium of ten thousand guilders“ for the discovery of the perpetrator ”. He sharply criticized the police and official measures in Ansbach. It is therefore likely that the Ansbach court, instead of expressly recognizing self-wounding, formulated its doubts about the murder thesis so cautiously with consideration for the Munich government; In any case, in a draft of his final report it had been stated more clearly that "one could not avoid the suspicion that a murder by someone else's hand on Hauser had not been committed, that a crime had not been committed."
Even the investigations that went on for years under the leadership of Interior Minister Ludwig von Oettingen-Wallerstein did not provide any evidence that Kaspar was murdered on behalf of Baden. The minister was “dismissed under almost dishonorable circumstances, not least because of this failure in 1837” Ludwig I had no longer dared to have another journalistic dispute with Baden because of Kaspar Hauser, since the case had long been dominated by writers hostile to the monarchy, both from Baden and Bavaria Aristocracy did not matter.
Feuerbach's attitude
In a report to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice on April 8, 1830, Feuerbach called the story of the prince who had been swapped over as "a romantic saga that lacks any juridically factual evidence". At the beginning of 1832, however, in a secret mémoire addressed to Queen Dowager Karoline , he clearly spoke out in favor of the prince's hypothesis, although he admitted that his evidence "would not have decisive weight before any judge's chair". Already in his recently published treatise Kaspar Hauser or Example of a Crime against the Soul of a Human Being (Ansbach 1832) he had already indicated the possibility of a princely descent from Hauser. At the end of March, in a letter to his son Anselm , he complained about his deteriorating health, fainting attacks and amnesia; He could no longer do anything scientific, his Kaspar Hauser did not show indistinct traces of it. Stanhope later reported that he had learned from a very credible witness that Feuerbach had said that perhaps he had written a novel in his old days. The rumor that Feuerbach was poisoned because of his standing up for Kaspar Hauser was interpreted by his biographer Gustav Radbruch as meaning that it “corresponds to the need to let a man who lived as a fighter for rights also die as a fighter for rights ". In fact, Feuerbach succumbed to the effects of a stroke after he had already suffered two such attacks (in April 1829 and July 1832).
Later representatives
In the 20th century, the prince theory was mainly propagated by the natural scientist Hermann Pies, a staunch occultist (as he himself known) , and by anthroposophists (such as Johannes Mayer and Peter Tradowsky ):
“For Tradowsky, the Hauser question is always a question of worldview. Kaspar is 'a truly unique figure' who 'could have fulfilled a mission of fate'. Apart from the ideas based on anthroposophy, Tradowsky ... offers hardly anything new. ... In his ... book 'Kaspar Hauser or Wrestling for the Spirit' Tradowsky writes that it should be noted that Rudolf Steiner saw Kaspar Hauser as the heir to the throne of Baden. Could Steiner's opinion be one of the reasons for Tradowsky's uncritical attitude towards historical facts? "
The arguments for exchanging the Baden hereditary prince (for example for the son of the worker Blochmann), which are still widespread in the non-scientific Hauser literature, were largely developed in the 1920s by amateur researchers. They do not stand up to critical scrutiny, as the historian Ivo Striedinger (professor of archival studies at the University of Munich and director of the Bavarian State Archives) explained in detail in his large literary report Neues Literatures on Kaspar Hauser, published in 1933 .
“The simple-minded fairy tale” ( Fritz Trautz ), “represented so eloquently” by Pies and other authors, is still widely regarded today as a theory to be taken seriously, mainly because of Piess's publications:
“The sheer volume of the Hauseriana production by H. Pies, the largely comparatively moderate tone of these publications, the serious presentation provided with a large annotation apparatus, the detailed knowledge of the author acquired over decades of preoccupation with the subject - all of this is suitable for the oeuvre as a whole To create an effect which it probably does not deserve with its selective one-sidedness and its lack of criticism and of contemporary historical framework knowledge. "
"Pies [goes] at the beginning of the view that emerged as early as 1829 that the circumstances of the long imprisonment reported by Hauser in connection with the 'Nuremberg assassination' led to the conclusion that the young man had a high descent - a conclusion that is by no means necessary in the first point, but it is Feuerbach immediately made it his own and then apparently prevails with the 'Hauserians' as well as with H. Pies himself. There is no need to discuss the untenable constructions ...; As little as GF Kolb at the time, H. Pies can shake the results of Mittelstädt's book. "
Striedinger criticizes the argumentation of the prince theorists ("Hauserians") as follows:
“Where the Hauserians do not like an officially certified fact, they invent a forger. Klee needs three of them here. One of them must be bribed, the second acts as the obedient executor of the orders of a criminal camarilla - existing only in the imagination of the Hauserians. The misfortune happened to Mr. Klee that he had forgotten the entry in the burial book [about Blochmann's funeral in Munich in 1833, who, according to Fritz Klee, is said to have been buried as a false hereditary prince in 1812]. Was there an equally bribed scribe working at the funeral home in Munich? "
"Admittedly: the assumptions are restricted by a 'may', a 'probably', a 'may'. But that does not prevent them from being taken as the basis of the conclusion in the next sentence, which is: 'All in all, a number of weighty reasons justify the assumption that in Joh. Ernst Bl. We actually see the child who has been put under.' No word is too sharp to brand such a way of building chain links! "
Klee's detailed explanations about alleged inconsistencies in the entries relating to Blochmann are incorrect and untenable.
A fundamental objection to the hereditary prince theory derives from Kaspar Hauser's gross unreliability, which (as explained in the section on the theory of fraud) has been attested many times and which the later Hauserians also partly admitted. The Hereditary Principle Theory seeks to provide an explanation for Hauser's alleged incarceration and the two alleged assassinations for which he is the only witness. Although his statements cannot be correct in several points, they are nevertheless used by the Hauserians for the formation of theories and mixed up with the other available sources. This approach runs counter to the principles of the historical-critical method, which was developed by historical historism and continues to set standards as external and internal source criticism : “There was a time when the source reports were put together like a mosaic and only then were critically weighed against each other where they contradict each other. The newer method discards this procedure. She says: a source which, where it can be controlled by others, proves to be implausible, also deserves no faith for the information for which it is the only and uncontrollable source. "
Message in a bottle from 1816
As an indication of Hauser's high descent, the Hauser literature occasionally cites a message in Latin that is said to have been found in a bottle at Kembs on the Upper Rhine in September 1816 . According to a report by the Paris Moniteur universel on November 5, 1816, the message was as follows:
"Cuicumque qui hanc epistolam inveniet:
Sum captivus in carcere, apud Lauffenburg, juxtà Rheni flumen: meum carcer est subterraneum, nec novit locum illegally qui nunc folio [really: solio] meo potitus est. Non plus possum scribere, quia sedulò et crudeliter custoditus sum. "
“Whoever finds this letter: I am being held prisoner in a dungeon near Lauffenburg on the Rhine : my dungeon is underground, and the place is not known to those who have now taken hold of my page [really: thrones]. I can't write any more, because I am carefully and cruelly guarded. "
The letters “S. Hanès Sprancio ”was later (1926) interpreted as an anagram from His son Caspar .
According to Jean Mistler, official documents show that the original signature was different. In the archive of the Préfecture du Haut-Rhin there is a copy of the alleged message in a bottle with the signature Hæres Spaniæ (Heritage of Spain) and the note that one can read differently. In a previous official correspondence, the prefect of the Haut-Rhin had been given the reading Hæres Franciæ (legacy of France). Mistler considers this variant to be correct and suspects that it was one of the many documents that filled files that certain French royalists circulated at the time, the fraudster Mathurin Bruneau, who posed as Louis Charles de Bourbon , or one of the numerous others Assisting pretenders to the throne in France of the Restoration . Out of political caution, the prefect preferred the more harmless reading of Hæres Spaniæ , and the Paris police then passed on a completely corrupted version to the press. The S. was definitely not part of the signature, but an abbreviation for Signé (signavit = has drawn). The already ambiguous interpretation as an anagram from His son Caspar is therefore lacking in its basis; a connection with the Hereditary Prince of Baden, who was born in 1812, is out of the question for other, obvious reasons (including because his father was still alive in 1816).
Fraud theory
Even during Kaspar Hauser's lifetime there were voices that doubted his credibility, up to and including the assumption that he had already staged the suspension. But it is often assumed that Hauser actually came to Nuremberg as an outcast child and only gradually developed into a charlatan there. So there has been a fatal interplay between a naive public and a person who is mentally damaged - through family neglect or due to their disposition - and who is now elevated to the mythical figure. The “dungeon fairy tale” was probably only “asked into” Kaspar. He then faked the attacks in order to attract new attention and to rekindle the rumors about his origin, which had temporarily subsided. In order to remain credible, Hauser inflicted more serious injuries in the second alleged assassination attempt than in the first, but probably inadvertently caused his death. This then consolidated the prince legend.
Interpretations that deny the factuality of the crimes allegedly committed against Kaspar Hauser are summarized in this article for the sake of simplicity under the term "theory of fraud". It should be noted, however, that these interpretations differ in some points, especially in the assessment of Hauser's personality and in the assessment of his contribution to the creation of legends, so that the frequently asked question: “Deceiver or prince?” Seems too short-reaching .
Doubts about the dungeon narrative
The almost lifelong imprisonment claimed by Kaspar and his first supervisors in a dark room, in which he could not move, is now considered excluded by serious house researchers. It is incompatible with his physical and mental condition for medical reasons. “Very likely,” says Walther Schreibmüller, “Kaspar was cut off from intercourse with the environment for a long time, so that he was above all mentally neglected.” An analysis of the medical sources, however, revealed “no medical evidence ... the longstanding solitary confinement of Cover Kaspar Hauser with bread and water. "
The professor of psychiatry Karl Leonhard judges as follows:
“In our time, when you know exactly what hospitalism is, you should definitely stop taking Kaspar Hauser's story as real. Under the conditions in which he claims to have lived since early childhood, he would not have gotten out of the state of an idiot and moreover would not have lived long. His story itself shows even the grossest inconsistencies, so that one is amazed that it was ever believed, and is still widely believed today. "
Striedinger explains, among other things:
“Shouldn't his organs have to be unsuitable for standing, walking, speaking after 16 years of non-use? Instead, he wants to make believe that he learned to write in one lesson in a dark room, then read in a second, and finally, in a few minutes, to walk! The other decorations, too, reveal all too clearly their origin in white lies. At first the unsuspecting Kaspar hadn't thought that he would be asked who brought him to eat, who changed his linen and cut his nails, how and where he relieved himself. The often repeated doses of opium, which were used to explain, would have shattered a man over time, even killed, by how much sooner a child, and the story of cleanliness has its refutation: it is well known that every person left to himself becomes impure, a child incapable of thinking it remains, - that is undeniable. ... One of the doctors involved in the opening of the corpse ( Dr. Heidenreich ) saw the striking size of the liver and the small size of the brain as evidence of long imprisonment; but he did not discuss whether both could not also have other causes. Where would we end up if we had to assume that all of our fellow human beings who have too large a liver and too small a brain their own were locked up for years in their childhood? No! It is no different: the whole story of Kaspar Hauser's imprisonment is a fairy tale. He was never illegally imprisoned and therefore his dungeon can never and nowhere be found. "
One of the main mistakes in the treatment of the case was that the physical and psychological anomalies apparently present in Hauser were always traced back to the suspected childhood development without even considering other medical explanations during his lifetime.
Heidenreich's view that there was a brain malformation is moreover very doubtful. The doctor Peter Josef Keuler compares the official dissection findings of the regional court physician Dr. Albert with Heidenreich's report, which was only published later (who was present at the autopsy): "The latter [comes] to considerably different statements, especially about the bony skull and the shape and size of the brain", while Dr. Albert's skull and Hauser's brain showed no abnormalities. Keuler, who lists Heidenreich's research interests and writings, among other things, proves his proximity to the teaching of phrenology :
“Heidenreich obviously only looked at the autopsy of the brain from a phrenological point of view and, because of this bias, came to his findings that differed from Albert's findings. [His] autopsy findings of the skull can therefore no longer serve as the basis for medical conclusions about Kaspar Hauser's state of health or as evidence for the incarceration theory.
The neurologist Günter Hesse also rejects the dungeon story:
“The story of his 14y. Obscure with bread and water combined with anesthesia with opium at short intervals is an invention of his supervisors [originating from the spirit of romantic medicine]: When he arrives in Nuremberg, he shows neither vitamin nor protein deficiencies nor signs of chronic opiate abuse . ... [He is] not out of contact [...]: He immediately turns to the first citizen he meets and asks for information. ... The first examiner, Dr. Preu, does not consider KH to be 'stupid', but, like all the following ... reviewers of the first weeks in Nuremberg, attests to him exceptionally high intellectual gifts. ... There are no indications of a physical deficit in the examination protocols. One emphasizes one's healthy face color (!) In the signaling and considers the… age of 16 years to be correct according to one's physical condition. … 4 years later, both… teacher Meyer and… Frh. Tucher the intelligence age of the now 20 year old than that of a 10 to 12 year old. "
According to Karl Leonhard, the apparent decline in his comprehension can be explained by the fact that at the beginning he “learned so quickly what he had long since mastered” and then later waned “when he really should learn something new”.
"In some cases, the alleged lack of knowledge was immediately recognizable as an expression of pseudodementia , for example when, according to Daumer's report, Kaspar wanted to teach a cat to stand upright and to eat with its front paws when he said, when his finger was crushed, the wooden horse bit him when he was surprised that the oxen and horses did not go to the toilet, or that a dirty garden statue did not clean itself when he annoyed a gray horse, that it was 'shining', that is, letting water and nothing more wanted to ride on him because he had 'blown'. All these statements, which should prove a complete inexperience, require a very wide range of knowledge. "
Striedinger also opposes the efforts of some Hauser apologists to modify Kaspar's dungeon narrative to incorporate it into their constructions in a less ludicrous form. For the historian's task is precisely to choose the reliable sources and discard the unreliable ones. "Applied to our case: if one accepts Kaspar's stories and 'personal testimonies' as credible, then one must not reject essential parts in order to make assumptions of one's own."
Doubts about the attacks
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The slip of paper found in the Ansbacher Hofgarten with the inscription in mirror writing is regarded as an important indicator. According to the fraud theory, Kaspar wrote it himself because the imagined attacker, unlike the alleged assassination attempt in 1829, was supposed to leave a trace this time. To support this thesis, reference is made to linguistic similarities with texts from Hauser. The words "I want to tell you myself" are reminiscent of formulations at the beginning of his two autobiographical essays: "The story of Kaspar Hauser, I want to write it myself" or "... I want to write it myself". According to the teacher Meyer, Hauser also frequently made the spelling error “where from”, for example in his Latin-German vocabulary book, in which he translated “unde” with “where from”. The wrong case (“den” instead of “dem”) also occurs frequently in his exercise books. In addition, the note was folded in a peculiar triangular shape, just as Kaspar used to fold his letters: this was particularly shocking for Ms. Meyer, who (unlike her husband) had a very warm relationship with Kaspar. The lines
"I come from _ _ _
the Bavarian border _ _"
apparently take up the headline of Hauser's well-known letter to von Wessenig. When Wessenig's servant Johann Mathias Merk, who was one of the first to speak to him after Kaspar's arrival in Nuremberg, was heard again on May 5, 1834, he testified that Kaspar had told him back then that daily "across the border" to school to have gone. In view of the numerous anomalies, Mistler speaks of Kaspar's “leitmotifs”, one could almost say that he signed the slip as clearly as with his name. Another argument is that the author of the text apparently assumed that Hauser would survive the injury ("Hauser will be able to tell you exactly ..."): this speaks against an assassination attempt and is consistent with the assumption of self-wounding without suicidal intent. The senseless inscription "to hand in" (on the outside of the folded piece of paper), also in mirror writing, suggests the identity of the author and recipient. Hauser had betrayed himself through his clumsiness in trying to construct a different counterpart. Its authorship, argues z. B. Walther Schreibmüller, also make it understandable that Hauser did not inquire about the contents of the bag, although he had made it a point to look for it. He had chosen the form of mirror writing in order to be able to change his handwriting more easily, and this was where his skills as a skilled draftsman benefited. In this context, two statements made by Kaspar in a fever are noteworthy, which can be interpreted as an indication of previous writing exercises: after the testimony of the witness Kitzinger, he said: “I have to write a lot with pencil today,” and his nurse, Frau Lorenz, heard from him: “You cannot read anything written with white lead.” Teacher Meyer also testified that he had seen a purple bag in Kaspar's possession, but was not sure about its identity.
In addition, according to Hauser's critics, there are numerous inconsistencies and improbabilities in his portrayal of the assassination attempt. At first, the behavior of the alleged assassin appears to be completely incomprehensible. The meaning of the bag and the mirror label is not apparent in Kaspar's version, nor is it why the assassin should have let Hauser escape alive, especially since a loud cry for help could easily have put persecutors on his heels. In addition, he should have expected that Kaspar would notice the danger and inform his protectors of the strange invitation from an unknown person. The assassin could then have been caught by observing the three entrances to the courtyard garden. It is surprising that Hauser, who supposedly feared an attack on his life, had accepted the invitation so carelessly. When he didn't meet anyone at the artesian well, it would have been obvious to go to the nearby court gardener's apartment and ask: "I was invited, why is nobody there?", He was supposedly invited on behalf of the court gardener. Instead, Kaspar went in the direction of the Uz monument, and there, not at the agreed meeting point, he wanted to have met the assassin. So he couldn't have known that Kaspar would go there. Striedinger's assumption, however, is plausible that Kaspar went to one of the stones near the monument that had to carry a bench in the summer; Sitting on such a stone he could have inflicted the stab wound more easily than while standing. Despite the cold weather, Hauser did not wear a coat to make it easier to use the stabbing weapon - it is believed:
“Skirt, waistcoat, undercoat and shirt offered strong resistance to the sting, it had to use force; but when he hit the warm skin he should have braked, he didn't do that, and so it went like in Heine 's poem, he 'pricked himself a little too deep'. Without knowing how dangerous the wound was, he hurried home: the Ansbach citizen, who met him first, thought he had come along 'quite lescher (!)'. "
As an alternative to Striedinger's depiction, it was also assumed that Hauser put the stabbing weapon against a solid object, such as a tree, and then moved his body towards the tip of the weapon. This could explain even better that Kaspar was no longer able to brake in time when the resistance suddenly subsided after penetrating his thick canvas-reinforced clothing, because the whole body would have been even less able to do this than the arm. In addition, Hauser could have slipped on the slippery ground due to the snow. With regard to the various medical opinions, it should be noted that, contrary to Pies' presentation, “none of the doctors, not even the section doctors Dr. Albert and Dr. Koppen, unreservedly affirmed the killing of Kaspar by someone else's hand, several times the experts even consider self-harm to be more likely. ”Overall, the regional judge Walther Schreibmüller came to the conclusion in his assessment of 150 years of Kaspar Hauser's research :
“If one weighs up all the circumstances that speak for and against third-party or self-harm, there can be no reasonable doubt that Hauser inflicted the stab wound on himself on December 14, 1833, with the intention of re-awakening dwindling interest in himself . "
Schreibmüller sees Hauser's motive for self-harm without the intention of suicide to be based on the following circumstances: Kaspar's life situation had deteriorated due to the death of his benefactor Feuerbach, and the already tense relationship with teacher Meyer had now become even more difficult. Hauser's foster father, Lord Stanhope, had no personal contact with his protégé since January 1832.
“In particular, however, the subordinate clerkship that Kaspar performed at the appellate court had to severely injure his immoderate vanity. It is irrelevant here that this vanity was inevitable in the very special situation of Kaspar and therefore forgivable, as Stanhope rightly pointed out. Under these circumstances, however, it was obvious that Hauser should awaken the dwindling interest in his person by a sensational act, and above all Stanhope had wanted to make it clear that he was no longer safe in Ansbach and on German soil in general to care for the Lord To keep his promise to take Kaspar with him to England. "
The supporters of the fraud theory do not believe Hauser's account of the alleged assassination attempt in 1829 either. His behavior (namely the flight to the basement and the lack of a cry for help) appears just as implausible as the daring of the alleged attacker, who then did not harm Kaspar dangerously, left no trace and whose motives remained completely in the dark. It is also suspect that Hauser only wanted to have seen the assassin in the brief moment of the crime, but was still able to describe his clothes pretty precisely down to the type of boot heels. Kaspar could have made the cut with his razor, which he then brought back to his room before going into the basement. The motive for this staging is the desire for new attention as well as a pre-incident discussion with Daumer; Kaspar wanted to move from the role of the criticized to the role of the endangered, the person in need of pity. In the writings of the criminalist Merker, Hauser later read that a cutting weapon was a suspicious tool in his case; that is why he took up a stabbing weapon in 1833. Mistler emphasizes the motivic proximity of the “Nuremberg assassination” to the dungeon narrative: “The narrow, foul-smelling room in which he was 'attacked', the cellar into which he took refuge, the masked black man: all of this is only minimally removed from the binder told stories, the underground dungeon, the vessel set in the ground and the man who looked after him without ever showing himself. "
Kaspar could also have staged the alleged pistol accident of April 1830 to arouse pity. In addition to some doubts about Hauser's account, this is supported by the fact that the incident was apparently preceded by disputes with the Biberbach family.
Both the cut in 1829 and the pistol shot in 1830 followed emotionally stressful arguments, and both incidents led to a change in Kaspar's living conditions (the end of his time with Daumer and the Biberbach family). Assuming stagings, it is reasonable to assume a repetition of this pattern in the stab wound of 1833, i.e. self-harm with the aim of improving the living conditions experienced as unbearable - especially since both Daumer and Meyer each reported behavioral abnormalities of Kaspar before the alleged assassinations reported and the stab wound was preceded by a warning from Kaspar (a “very serious” reprimand by Meyer on December 9th).
Striedinger believes that the number of traces that could have supported Hauser's versions of the assassinations was negligibly small: In 1833 and 1829, “people who wanted to have seen suspects: the opposite would be, especially in view of the reward offered, more surprising. But sometimes these statements were too vague, sometimes the signaling did not fit, sometimes there were contradictions in the time information and other facts. ”-“ Against the assumption of self-wounding, ”says Schreibmüller,“ nothing can be deduced from this that the murder weapon was used has not been found and it is unknown where Kaspar acquired it. Several years after Kaspar's death, a worker found a double-edged dagger while raking in the courtyard garden east of the Uz monument, which, according to a medical report, would have been suitable in every respect to cause a corresponding wound ... Kaspar could have acquired the dagger at the folk festival, for example in Nuremberg in the summer of 1833, where he had been walking around alone for three weeks. "
Personality and Myth Kaspar Hauser
Kaspar's insincerity and psychiatric aspects
Serious doubts about Hauser's credibility arise from the testimony of numerous people around him who portrayed him as lying, including supporters of Kaspar. "G. v. Tucher, with whom Kaspar had lived for a year and a half, reported in a petition to the Nuremberg City Court of Hauser's highly developed vanity, his immeasurable lying, falsehood and hypocrisy. "Even Daumer," who had believed in Kaspar as in the Gospel, " (Schreibmüller) admitted a change of Kaspar in the "direction of insincerity, untruthfulness and pretense", and in Feuerbach's estate there was a note on which he had noted:
"Caspar Hauser is a smart, cunning owl, a rogue, a good-for-nothing who should be killed,"
for Striedinger the "outcry of the tormented soul of someone shamefully deceived" - "devastating for Hauser, also devastating for the view that Feuerbach believed in K. Hauser until the end of his life."
According to Karl Leonhard's judgment, Kaspar's insincerity is to be regarded as pathological: “As other authors have already said, Kaspar Hauser was a pathological swindler. [Rahner had also come to the conclusion that Hauser was a 'hysterical psychopath with pseudologia phantastica'; the more recent psychiatric terminology speaks of a histrionic personality disorder . ] In addition to his hysterical nature, he must have had the persistence of a paranoid personality because he was able to get through his role so steadfastly. Both the hysterical and the paranoid traits can be recognized from many reports on his behavior. "
This clinical picture would also make it understandable why so many contemporary witnesses, among them highly educated, believed Kaspar's stories:
“It is known that people of this kind [hysterical swindlers] are so successful in cheating, not because of their clever approach, but because of their confident demeanor. The healthy person adds a guilty conscience to a swindler and is deceived when the guilty conscience is obviously not there. It is absent from the hysterical swindlers because they live completely in their roles and at the moment are not even aware that they are lying. "
The fact that Kaspar stuck to the story so unshaken that he had sat in a dark room for many years and knew absolutely nothing about his life otherwise, indicates, says Leonhard, a "great energy"; this can also be seen in the assassination attempts and in the reports on Kaspar's striving for validity, on which his sometimes excessive eagerness to learn might also be based; Leonhard speaks of a "paranoid ambition" here. This paranoid trait distinguishes him from simple hysterics, who easily lose sight of long-term goals.
Striedinger, who is also convinced of Hauser's pathological predisposition, does not want to unreservedly describe him as a "cheat":
"KH was not a systematic deceiver, but a hysteric who was pushed by the circumstances and lack of understanding of those around him onto the downhill path of continued fraud, from which there was no turning back."
Kaspar really wanted to become a soldier when he came to Nuremberg; the story of the incarceration was “only gradually asked into him; In time he came to meet the questions with his own inventions and he got used to cleverly confirming assumptions made in his presence. ”-“ He wanted to please people by responding to their ideas and giving them the answers who expected them, and experience taught him that it was to his advantage. So he soon reached a point from which he could no longer return, if he did not want to be pushed out of his comfortable circumstances again into an unsteady vagabond life or even to be persecuted and punished as a cheater. This explains the first information he gave the amiable mayor. As it is rightly stated in an official letter signed by Feuerbach, 'the alleged victim of inhuman treatment was questioned in the most artificial way, perhaps often only guessed'. "This was also the case with the magnetic and homeopathic experiments whom he pretended to feel influences in ludicrous strength, and all of this corresponded only too well to his morbid disposition, his tendency to flattery and his joy in lying for the sake of lying.
There is broad consensus on the points mentioned, as Schreibmüller explains: “Even an unusually sharp critic of Hauser like Eduard Engel [Kaspar Hauser. Swindler or prince? (Braunschweig 1931 et al.)] Admits that he did not come to Nuremberg with a fraud plan; he really wanted to be a rider, as perhaps his father actually was. Kaspar was not a criminal by nature; But those around him wanted to be betrayed and Kaspar did not resist this will after all. Similarly, Julius Meyer thinks that when he appeared, Hauser had no plan to arouse the interest of the whole world through his story and to achieve the social and material advantages that were later bestowed on him. Whether the unexpected interest, namely suggestive questions about his origin and thoughtless conversations conducted in his presence, had allowed Hauser to develop a comprehensive plan for deception will never be cleared up. One will have to agree with these views of Engel and Julius Meyer. "
Daumer is ascribed a not insignificant role in Kaspar's development: “Hauser stayed in the Daumers house for a year and a half, who certainly gave him great care, but made him an explicit object of observation; This was particularly true of the homeopathic experiments and treatments that the doctor Dr. Preu did exactly what Daumer wanted. Such a thing had to strengthen the drive to make oneself interesting and to remain interesting, which was not surprising in Hauser's youth, location and Nuremberg beginnings. "
Other medical aspects
In a detailed refutation, Peter Josef Keuler rejects Günter Hesse's seizure theories, which for a time were believed to be possible, according to which Kaspar Hauser suffered from various convulsive disorders as a result of brain malformations and at the same time from a rare skin disease ( epidermolysis bullosa syndrome with microencephaly ). His criticism "primarily concerns Hesse's method, symptoms and findings that Kaspar Hauser offered to interpret only in the sense of his seizure theory and to disregard facts that contradict his theory or not to take them into account due to insufficient research within the house literature." Leonhard had already accused Hesse of confusing hysterical with epileptic phenomena in Kaspar Hauser.
Kaspar's identity
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As far as Hauser's identity is concerned, opponents of the prince theory often assume that the two letters that Hauser brought with him when he arrived in Nuremberg contained "a good deal of truth" (Mistler). Nothing can be said with certainty about this. There is no agreement as to the extent to which Kaspar was involved in the writing of the two letters. Comparisons of scriptures do not allow a definitive statement here, since the traditional facsimiles are unreliable. According to Striedinger, however, the sentence “he can also write my handwriting as I write” (in the letter to von Wessenig) “is clearly inserted in the event that the handwriting of the letter should be recognized immediately as the Kaspars.” Striedinger speculates, however, that the letter to Kaspar was dictated, while Eduard Engel is convinced that Hauser was the author; otherwise Mistler, who doubts that Kaspar was in charge of the pen.
Bavaria is usually assumed to be Kaspar's homeland; In addition to its dialect, the vaccination scars speak for this: Bavaria was the first country in the world to introduce compulsory smallpox vaccination in 1807 . In Austria, too, compulsory vaccinations were introduced in 1812; in other countries (such as Baden), however, not. Günter Hesse thinks that Hauser came from Tyrol, because the epidermolysis bullosa , which he suspects in him, is a common hereditary disease in Tyrol. Hesse's thesis that Hauser is the same person as Kaspar Hechenberger, who was born out of wedlock there, and whom Hesse found in Innsbruck's vaccination lists, is apparently not tenable, because the magazine Der Spiegel claims to have established during research that Kaspar also died in Tyrol.
Striedinger speculates that Hauser “came from the people of Kärrners who wander around the country like gypsies…. They were on the move in the summer and moved into winter quarters in the cold season…. If Kaspar temporarily visited the community schools during such winter stays - the influence of which teacher Meyer had demonstrated on him - only to disappear again when the blackbird fell for the first time, then it is explained why he was not missed in any school. If his orderly drove him to the vicinity of Nuremberg in his tarpaulin wagon, the strange couple was not noticed either on the streets or in taverns. "
Genesis and spread of the myth
Mistler sees in the "extremely thrown together" Hauser myth a collective creation, gradually formed by the "public voice" (the "fama publica"), which followed its changing whims; starting with the idea of the " wild man ". Mistler speaks of a “phenomène de psychologie collective”. Hauser can be compared to modern media stars created out of nowhere, who often make a name for themselves again with spectacular actions when public interest in them wanes. The rumor that Kaspar Hauser was a prince appears in Mistler's interpretation as one of the causes of his tragic death - which in turn gave this rumor new nourishment: “By repeatedly hearing the legend of his high birth, Kaspar may have slipped into this mythical role from time to time and in any case he figured that by a great coup he would disarm the infidels. But against whom should he have carried out this coup if not against himself? ”As Mistler emphasizes, Kaspar had never called himself a prince, but rather behaved completely passively in the efforts to determine his origin. Only once did he allow himself a slight irony: after Hickel returned from one of the exploration tours in Hungary, Kaspar asked him if he had any information about his parents with him.
"The public's lively and at the same time often naive sympathy and receptiveness for the mysterious and wonderful that surrounded Hauser or seemed to surround him," says Fritz Trautz after Mistler, "can only be understood if you think how very much it is that time - beyond a somehow always given sensationalism - from a literary tradition that is younger in its density to ideas of a youth spent in the wilderness or in dungeon, to the occult and extraordinary of an individual childhood. "Here is an example to think of Jean Paul's novels , in which one repeatedly encounters the motif of a childhood spent underground, as well as that of child robbery and the prince in disguise. In addition, the baroque drama Feuerbach quoted, Life a dream of the Calderón de la Barca, and well-known legends about mysterious prisoners such as the man in the iron mask come into consideration as sources of inspiration for the development of the Hauser myth; likewise the motif of the evil stepmother and other set pieces of the horror literature. Some authors also see references to the childhood fantasies, which are frequent after Sigmund Freud ( Der Familienroman der Neurotiker. 1909), of being a stepchild or adopted child, and that in truth of being descended from supposedly better, usually socially superior parents. The supernatural acuity of the senses and the magnetic and homeopathic experiments that were carried out with him are to be seen in the context of speculative ideas about somnambulism at the time; around the same time as Hauser, the case of the Seer von Prevorst aroused the interest of physicians and natural philosophers.
The authoritarian conditions of the Biedermeier period also had to be conducive to the rumors about Kaspar Hauser. The censorship switched off all unwanted expressions of opinion, participation in public life had become as good as impossible. All the greater was the interest in sensations and peculiarities that brought a little variety to the monotonous everyday life, and a pronounced hatred of the authorities made people receptive to the monstrous accusations against a German princely house.
The fraud theory is represented in the Hauser literature only by a "small minority" (Schreibmüller); the belief in Kaspar Hauser and his Baden princehood was, wrote Eduard Engel, a "German spiritual disgrace", which Striedinger said, however, that it threatened to take on worldwide proportions. The next Hauser anniversary will give “numerous ignorant and unscrupulous scribes” an opportunity “to dig out the old nonsense in sheets and papers of all kinds and all over the place and to spread the wrong ideas into wide circles again.” Little could be done about that : “Because the leaders of the Hauser movement are and will remain unteachable and irreversible, and what their followers and followers are, I am very inclined to apply to them the saying of that witty French woman who said: La seule chose qui peut donner une idée de l'infini, c'est la bêtise humaine. [The only thing that can convey an idea of the infinite is human stupidity.] "
DNA analysis
By means of genetic analyzes , attempts were made in 1996 and 2002 to determine a genetic match or deviation from the still living female descendants of Grand Duchess Stéphanie from presumed remains of Hauser's genetic material.
During the first analysis, a trace of blood was taken from the waistband of the underpants that Hauser is said to have worn when he was fatally stabbed. The sample came from the inside of a double layer of material in order to minimize possible traces of contamination or changes due to environmental influences. The item of clothing was originally stored by the Ansbach court and was brought to the Kaspar Hauser Museum (now: Margrave Museum) in Ansbach via the Historical Association for Middle Franconia.
The Institute for Forensic Medicine at the University of Munich , headed by Wolfgang Eisenmenger, and the state Forensic Science Service Laboratory in Birmingham came to the conclusion that Kaspar Hauser was not a son of Stéphanie de Beauharnais. The forensic doctor Gottfried Weichhold, who was involved in the investigation, also ruled out contamination of the blood trail by foreign DNA, among other things because "the easily recognizable sequence image" would then have shown a "mixed trail". In addition, on the question of the origin of the samples, he said:
“The history of Kaspar Hauser's clothing is well documented. The traces of blood on the clothes show the shape they should have according to the known reports from the day of the murder. It has only been possible to examine mtDNA for a few years . In those years nobody has been able to falsify the blood trail. Why should someone have done it beforehand? "
Supporters of the hereditary prince theory criticized the conclusions because of the uncertain starting material in their opinion and suggested a new genetic engineering investigation. In connection with the documentary Murder Case Kaspar Hauser produced by Caligari Film GmbH for ZDF , several tissue samples were given to the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the University of Münster for analysis. They allegedly came from three locks of hair (one from the Ansbacher Museum, two from the “estate” of Anselm von Feuerbach), from a blood stain on his trousers and from Hauser's hat. According to an “expert opinion” dated October 15, 2002, to which Der Spiegel referred, these samples differed on the one hand from the genetic material from the blood of the underpants, on the other hand two samples from the hat could not be fully evaluated, and one further sample from the brim as well as the blood stain on the pants showed a deviation from the hair samples. In contradiction to this, the head of the investigation, Bernd Brinkmann , later wrote: "The DNA sections from these samples matched one another, an indication that they could have come from the same person."
The hair attributed to Hauser has now been compared with a hair sample of Astrid von Medinger, which is descended in a direct female line from Stéphanie de Beauharnais. There was a discrepancy in only one essential position (two further discrepancies observed were not used for the assessment, since they could result from mutations in individual hair cells.). A difference in just one gene location often occurs in different people, and the examined DNA segment assigned to Hauser is “a pattern that is relatively common in the local population.” On the other hand, the significant deviation found does not have to “not necessarily lead to an exclusion [of a relationship] ”, because for its development“ a mutation over generations is theoretically possible. ”(In 1996, as in 2002, the mitochondrial DNA was examined , which is inherited exclusively through the female line and therefore only survives Mutations can change). Brinkmann's conclusion was: "At this point in time it would be irresponsible to formulate an exclusion, so that there is still the possibility that Kaspar Hauser is a biological relative of the Baden family."
A scientific publication of the genetic analyzes from 2002 does not exist, the published statements are contradictory. The tradition of curls of hair is not clear. Brinkmann waited in vain for further samples: “We do not know why we are not receiving any further samples. Today a result would be achievable with minimal sample quantities. "
In 2012, a legal historian from Karlsruhe tried to show that the ownership of the royal crypt and the coffins and the remains in them in the Pforzheim Castle Church , until the middle of the 19th century, the burial place of the ruling margraves and grand dukes of Baden and their closest family members, in the state of Baden -Wuerttemberg lies. If so, DNA samples could be taken from the remains of Grand Duchess Stéphanie and her early deceased sons, who were also buried there, and compared with one another, although public interest and piety had to be weighed. At the same time, the rumor was circulating in the regional press that the coffins of Stéphanie's two sons had long since disappeared in the crypt. However, this turned out to be a mistake because the coffins are there.
reception
The Kaspar Hauser phenomenon has not only fascinated scientists and criminologists, but also writers and poets, filmmakers and artists. In the meantime (as of 2008) several studies of the history of reception refer to numerous cultural adaptations and adaptations of the material. The following notes are therefore only to be understood as highlights.
The Hauser criminal case inspired the anonymous author of a leaning song in 1834 ( you could say, people, // who this child, who Kaspar Hauser was ) and in 1838 provided the material for the French melodrama Gaspard Hauser , one of the first stage successes of the author Adolphe d ' Ennery . Not only as a criminal case, but, according to the grave inscription Aenigma sui temporis , also as a "riddle of its time" and a general parable on the relationship between the individual and society, Jakob Wassermann dealt with the subject in his historical novel Caspar Hauser or The Sluggishness of the Heart (1908) who, more than any other literary treatment, contributed to popularizing the subject in Germany.
The poem Paul Verlaines Gaspard Hauser chante (from the Sagesse cycle from 1881), which Kaspar Hauser discovered as a figure of identification for the homeless poet of the modern age, played a key role in the poetry . It was recreated by Richard Dehmel ( Lied Kaspar Hausers , in the Erlösungen collection from 1891) and Stefan George ( Gentle looks a silent waiser , published in 1915 in the Contemporary Poets Collection ), and one of the most important is influenced by this tradition Poems of Expressionism, the Kaspar Hauser Lied (1913) by Georg Trakl .
In free connection with the name or set pieces of the biography, lyrical poems by Rainer Maria Rilke ( The boy in the first part of the book of pictures , 1907), Hans Arp ( Kaspar is dead , 1919) and Klabund ( The poor Kaspar ) take the subject on, the latter also with an unpublished play that was only recently discovered in the estate of his friend Gottfried Benn . Walter Benjamin wrote the story Caspar Hauser (1930) for his children's radio broadcasts as part of the Berlin-Brandenburgischer Hausfreund series ; as he said "just as exciting for adults". The basic situation of Kaspar Hauser, who learns to stammer and speak under duress in his dungeon, isolated from the world, was also chosen by Peter Handke as a template for his speaking piece Kaspar (1968), in which a young man on stage heard the voices of nameless “Einager " is exposed.
The figure of Kaspar Hauser also plays a major role in Guntram Vesper's work, especially in the 1979 volume Nördlich der Liebe and süd des Hasses . It corresponds to Vesper's predilection for mysterious and unsolved (criminal) cases. Paul Auster's novel City of Glass (German: Stadt aus Glas , 1989) plays with identities and existences and makes the figure “a symbol of human error in the realm of ambiguous signs, in a Babylonian reality” (Schmitz-Emans). In Kurt Drawert's fantastic novel I thought my shadow was someone else and greeted (2008), a “Kaspar Hauser revolutionary” who is not just passively suffering escapes the dungeon-like, absurd underworld of an authoritarian society, a bitter allegory of the extinct GDR .
Recently, Günter Brus and the puppet artist Burgis Paier have devoted themselves to the topic of Kaspar Hauser in a joint exhibition (Graz, 2008). In February 2009 Sabine Richter installed the poem Somebody, Kaspar Hauser by the Polish poet Ryszard Krynicki as a twelve-meter-long tape in the middle of the cobblestones on Nuremberg's Unschlittplatz, a “poetic stumbling block”.
In music, Kaspar Hauser became the subject of an epitaph for Kaspar Hauser (1997) by the composer Claus Kühnl , a "meditation on a day in the life of Kaspar Hauser towards the end of his imprisonment", for an organist, a registrant and two ad hoc Player. In 1969 the German songwriter Reinhard Mey published the song Kaspar on his LP Ankomme Freitag, the 13th , in which he describes the fate of Hauser from the perspective of a teacher's son. The American singer Suzanne Vega sang in Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song) (1987) how the imprisoned child lets the wooden horse in his hand feel life and freedom. The composer Reinhard Febel composed the opera Seconds and Years by Caspar Hauser in 1991/92 on a libretto by Lukas Hemleb , which was premiered in 1992 by the Dortmund Opera. The pop group Dschinghis Khan tried a text from the pen of Bernd Opinion . Tobias Weis and Heiko A. Neher created the musical Caspar Hauser (2002). The choral music theater Kaspar Hauser or Unter Menschen by FK Waechter and Martin Zels (composition) premiered in 2006.
The story of Kaspar Hauser was also filmed several times. A silent film by Kaspar Hauser , directed by Kurt Matull , was released as early as 1915 . In 1966, ZDF broadcast a two-part film adaptation of the Kaspar Hauser case by Robert A. Stemmle with Wilfried Gössler in the leading role. Michael Landon played Kaspar Hauser in Mystery of Caspar Hauser ten years earlier . Werner Herzog filmed the material under the title Everyone for himself and God against all with Bruno S. in the role of Kaspar Hauser. And Peter Sehr filmed it again in 1993 under the title Kaspar Hauser - Crimes against the Soul of a Human Being , with André Eisermann in the lead role of the prince deprived of his inheritance in the sense of the hereditary prince theory.
The Kaspar Hauser Festival has been taking place in Ansbach every two years since 1998, and its historical metaphysical concept is based on anthroposophy . Contrary to the assertion in the foreword of the program booklet for 2014 that the festival is a comprehensive encounter between the arts and sciences , historical research, among other things, should be accepted as completed. The festival is supported by the city of Ansbach. A Hauser monument (by Friedrich Schelle) erected in 1981 can be found in a small square at the beginning of Platenstrasse. In May 2007 a statue of the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa was placed in front of the house where Kaspar Hauser lived and died in Ansbach . The bronze figure shows Kaspar Hauser, who is sitting on a stone mound and has arms and legs around a spherical maple tree. In the Margrave Museum , a department deals with Kaspar Hauser.
Kaspar Hauser as a pseudonym
The name Kaspar Hauser was used as a pseudonym by some authors: sometimes by Kurt Tucholsky , as well as by an unknown author who published plays for a “Proletarian Punch and Judy Theater” under this name in Berlin in the 1920s ( Die degenerate Princess. 1922; Punch as a spy. 1922).
Kaspar Hauser as an eponym
Hauser's name has entered the technical terminology of behavioral biology as the Kaspar Hauser experiment : In such an experiment, young animals are reared with specific deprivation of experience in order to be able to differentiate innate from learned behavior.
The so-called Kaspar-Hauser syndrome is also known in medicine and psychology . It occurs in babies or children who grew up for a long time without personal contact and without loving attention or warmth and at the same time received hardly any social or cognitive stimulation (see also: Deprivation ). The first author to relate Kaspar Hauser's story to the subject of hospitalism was W. Abegg. In his article - published in 1962 in the magazine Der Psychologe - he suggested "to designate the picture of extreme home damage after this unique case as Kaspar Hauser syndrome ".
Furthermore, the psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich spoke of a Kaspar Hauser complex to mark the “absolute isolation” of modern mass people, which makes them anti-social and culturally negative.
With reference to the affirmative-speculative Hauser literature, the educational scientist Friedrich Koch developed the idea of a Kaspar Hauser effect . He problematized the different educational ideas and measures to which Kaspar Hauser was exposed in Nuremberg and Ansbach, under the aspect of civil virtue education. According to his opinion, which is not only derived from the Hauser case, dogmatic educational constraints block the way to self-discovery, with the result of indomitation and loneliness, both for the ostensibly adapted child and for the child or adolescent who defies the educational requirements.
See also
literature
Scientific non-fiction books and treatises
- Ivo Striedinger : Hauser Kaspar, the "enigmatic boulder". In: CVs from Franconia. published on behalf of the Society for Franconian History by Anton Chroust , III. Volume, 1927, pp. 199-215.
- Eduard Berend : Review by Hermann Pies, falsifications and trend reports of an “official” house literature. In: Deutsche Literaturzeitung , weekly for criticism of international science. New series IV, the whole series 48, issue 36 of September 3, 1927, col. 1769–1773.
- Ivo Striedinger: New literature about Kaspar Hauser. In: Journal for Bavarian State History. 6th year 1933, pp. 415–484 (digitized version )
- Hanns Hubert Hofmann : Hauser, Kaspar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 119 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Jean Mistler: Gaspard Hauser, a drame de la personnalité. Fayard 1971, ISBN 2-213-59361-2 ↑
- Fritz Trautz: On the problem of personality interpretation: On the occasion of the Kaspar Hauser book by Jean Mistler. In: Francia . 2, 1974, pp. 715-731 (digitized version )
- Lore Schwarzmaier: The Baden court under Grand Duke Leopold and the Kaspar Hauser affair: A new source in the records of Margrave Wilhelm von Baden. Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine 134, 1986, pp. 245-262.
- Walther Schreibmüller: Balance of 150 years of Kaspar Hauser research. In: Genealogisches Jahrbuch 31. 1991, pp. 43-84.
- Walther Peter Fuchs : The Kaspar Hauser Problem. In: Walther Peter Fuchs: Studies on Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden. (= Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg: Series B, Research. Volume 100). Stuttgart 1995, pp. 9-35.
- Reinhard Heydenreuter : Hermann and the Kaspar Hauser case. In: Manfred Pix (ed.): Friedrich Benedikt Wilhelm von Hermann (1795–1868). A genius in the service of the Bavarian kings. Politics, economy and society on the move. Stuttgart 1999, pp. 523-539.
- Reinhard Heydenreuter: King Ludwig I and the case of Kaspar Hauser. In: State and Administration in Bavaria. Festschrift for Wilhelm Volkert on his 75th birthday. Munich 2003, pp. 465-476.
- Oliver Singer: Kaspar Hauser - a Baden question? The origins of the legend of the hereditary prince exchanged. In: Heinrich Hauß, Paul-Ludwig Weinacht (Hrsg.): Waymarks of Baden history. Lectures on the occasion of the state exhibition 'Baden! 900 years' in the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe. (= Series of publications by the Badische Heimat regional association. Volume 5). Freiburg 2013, pp. 95–111.
Medical historical treatises and medical statements
- Günter Hesse: Kaspar Hauser's illness. In: Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift. 109, 1967, pp. 156-163.
- Karl Leonhard : Kaspar Hauser and the modern knowledge of hospitalism. In: Confinia Psychiatrica. 13, 1970, pp. 213-229.
- Philipp Portwich: Kaspar Hauser, natural philosophy medicine and early homeopathy. In: Medizinhistorisches Journal , Vol. 31, H. 1/2 (1996), pp. 89-119.
- Peter Josef Keuler: Kaspar Hauser's boulder as a medical phenomenon. A medical historical analysis of the traditional sources. University Library, Bochum 1997, DNB 954602935 (Dissertation University Bochum 1998. University Library Bochum, call number UA237915).
For literary and other reception
- Peter Frieß, Andreas Fickers (eds.): Wolfgang Eisenmenger and York Langenstein talk about Kaspar Hauser and the molecular witnesses of a crime (= TechnikDialog , issue 6). Deutsches Museum / Lemmens, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-932306-09-0 .
- Birgit Gottschalk: The child of Europe. On the reception of the Kaspar Hauser material in literature. DUV, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-8244-4166-7 (dissertation Uni Siegen 1992).
- Friedrich Koch : The Kaspar Hauser Effect. About dealing with children. Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1995, ISBN 3-8100-1359-5 .
- Kálmán Kovács: Kaspar Hauser stories. Reception stations. Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-36120-3 .
- Wilfried Küper : The crime against mental life. Feuerbach and the Kaspar Hauser case in terms of criminal law history. Heidelberg 1991, ISBN 3-925678-21-2 .
- Herwig Oberlerchner: The Kaspar Hauser Myth. Psychoanalytically oriented associations on the trail of the enigmatic foundling. Verlag Wissenschaft & Praxis, Sternenfels 1999, ISBN 3-89673-068-1 .
- Claudia-Elfriede Oechel-Metzner: Working on the Kaspar Hauser myth. Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-631-53620-8 (also Univ. Diss. Leipzig 2004).
- Stephan Pabst: Mythology of modern authorship: Kaspar Hauser. In: Renate Stauf (ed.): Germanic-Romanic monthly. New episode. Volume 59, Issue 2, Heidelberg 2009, pp. 281-307.
- Dorothea Peters: The Kaspar Hauser case as a criminal case and as a novel by Jakob Wassermann. Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-037866-5 .
- Monika Schmitz-Emans : Questions about Kaspar Hauser. Designs of Man, Language and Poetry. Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3651-4 , ( books.google ).
- Christian Schoen: Kaspar Hauser: Imagery. With contributions by Eckart Böhmer and Wolfgang F. Reddig. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-7917-2822-3 .
- Ulrich Struve (ed.): The imagined boulder. Studies on Kaspar Hauser's reception. Heidelberg 1995, ISBN 3-8253-0331-4 .
- Berthold Weckmann: Kaspar Hauser. The story and its stories. Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-88479-867-7 (also Univ. Diss. Bonn 1992).
- Thomas Weitin : Tabula rasa. Enlightenment narratives in Feuerbach's Kaspar Hauser. In: Ders .: Testimony. The right of literature. Munich 2009, pp. 292-312.
- Sascha Ziemann, Lutz Eidam : Paul Johann Anselm from Feuerbach's "Kaspar Hauser". A book and its story. In: Journal for the entire field of criminal law. (ZStW), Volume 125, Issue 4, 2013, pp. 931-946.
Introductory presentations
- Anna Schiener: The Kaspar Hauser case. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7917-2247-4 ( review ).
Important older representations and source collections
- Johann Friedrich Karl Merker: Caspar Hauser, not unlikely to be a fraud. Represented by the Police Council Merker. Berlin, with August Rücker, 1830 (digitized version)
- The same thing: news about Caspar Hauser from authentic sources and considerations about their evidential value for the incarceration story of the young man. LW Krause'sche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1831. ( google.de )
- Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach : Kaspar Hauser or example of a crime against a person's soul. Ansbach 1832 ( books.google.de
- The same: Mémoire. Who would like to be Kaspar Hauser? Leipzig 1853 ( bad-bad.de )
- Georg Friedrich Daumer : Messages about Kaspar Hauser. Nuremberg 1832 (reprint: Geering, Dornach 1983, ISBN 3-7235-0359-4 ) ( digitized volume 1 volume 2 )
- Johann Friedrich Karl Merker: Some reflections on the story of Kaspar Hauser described by Mr. von Feuerbach. Contains the evidence that in the nineteenth century the belief in miracles and fairy tales was not extinguished. In: Polizeirath Merker in Berlin (ed.): Contributions to facilitate the success of the practical police, No. 11, March 14, 1833 to No. 23, June 6, 1833. Published as a separate print in the Krauseschen Buchhandlung, Berlin 1833 ( books .google.de )
- Karl Heinrich von Lang : Kaspar Hausersche literature. Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 101-106, 1834 (digitized version)
- Count Stanhope : Materials on the history of Kaspar Hauser. Heidelberg 1835 (Reprint: Schutterwald / Baden 2004) (digitized version)
- Georg Friedrich Daumer: Revelations about Kaspar Hauser. Frankfurt am Main 1859 (reprint: Kaspar-Hauser-Verlag, Offenbach am Main, ISBN 3-9806417-7-5 ) (digitized version )
- Julius Meyer: Authentic communications about Caspar Hauser. With the approval of the Royal Bavarian State Ministries of Justice and the Interior, compiled for the first time from the judicial and administrative acts and annotated by Dr. Julius Meyer, Royal Bavarian. District Court Assessor. Ms. Seybold, Ansbach 1872. (digitized version)
- Georg Friedrich Daumer: Kaspar Hauser. His essence, his innocence. Coppenrath, Regensburg 1873 (reprint: Geering, Dornach 1984, ISBN 3-7235-0387-X ) (digitized version)
- Otto Mittelstädt: Kaspar Hauser and his Baden princehood. Heidelberg 1876.
- W. Höchstetter: Hauser, Kaspar . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, pp. 89-92.
- Julius Meyer (Ed.): Caspar Hauser. Manuscript left behind by Josef Hickel, kb gendarmerie major, member of Hauser's investigative commission and court-appointed guardian of the same, together with a autobiography of Caspar Hauser. C. Brügel and Son, Ansbach 1881 (reprint, Dr. Klaus Fischer Verlag, Schutterwald / Baden 2004).
- Antonius von der Linde : Kaspar Hauser. A modern legend. 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1887 (digitized version)
- Andrew Lang : The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. In: Historical Mysteries. (1905) (full text)
- Julius Meyer: Authentic messages about Caspar Hauser. Second, revised edition. Fr. Seybold, Ansbach 1913 (New chapter: Die Prinzenlegende. Pp. 195–245).
Anthologies
- Hermann Pies (ed.): Kaspar Hauser - eyewitness reports and personal testimonials. Stuttgart 1925.
- The same thing : forgeries and trend reports of an “official” house literature. Record-based findings. Nuremberg 1926.
- The same thing: the official files on Kaspar Hauser's wounding and death. Bonn 1928.
- The same thing: The truth about Kaspar Hauser's appearance and first time in Nuremberg. Saarbrücken 1956.
- The same: Kaspar Hauser. A documentation. Ansbach 1966.
- The same thing: fakes, fake news and trend reports. Ansbach 1973.
- Luise Bartning (Ed.): In Memoriam Adolf Bartning. Old and new on the Kaspar Hauser question from the deceased's literary estate . Viewed and compiled by H. Pies, Ansbach 1930.
- Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach, Georg Friedrich Daumer, Anselm Johann Ludwig Feuerbach: Kaspar Hauser. Edited and with background reports by Johannes Mayer and Jeffrey M. Masson . (= The Other Library. 129). Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
- Ludwig Feuerbach : Correspondence. In: Werner Schuffenhauer (Ed.): Ludwig Feuerbach. Collected Works. Volumes 17 to 20, Berlin 1984 ff.
- Jochen Hörisch (Ed.): I would like to become someone like ...: Materials on Kaspar Hauser's speechlessness. (= Suhrkamp pocket book science. 283). Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1979, ISBN 3-518-27883-5 .
Anthroposophical representations with source material
- Johannes Mayer, Peter Tradowsky: Kaspar Hauser, the child of Europe: represented in words and pictures. Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-87838-385-1 .
- Johannes Mayer: Philip Henry Lord Stanhope, Kaspar Hauser's opponent. Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-87838-554-4 .
Contemporary revelatory writings
- Joseph Heinrich Garnier : Some contributions to the history of Caspar Hauser, together with a dramatic introduction , GL Schuler, Strasbourg 1834 (digitized version)
- Friedrich Seybold: Kaspar Hauser or the boulder. Romantically portrayed by xxx. Balz'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1834.
- WC size A. (i.e. Caroline von Albersdorf): Kaspar Hauser or hints to reveal some secrets about Hauser's origin, the cause of his imprisonment and murder (etc.). Jakob Rußwurm, Regensburg 1837 (digitized version)
- Joseph Schauberg: Record-based representation of the investigation carried out at the criminal court of the Canton of Zurich into the murder of the student Ludwig Lessing from Freienwalde in Prussia. Second supplement booklet. Contributions to the history of Kaspar Hauser. Friedrich Schultheß, Zurich 1837 (digitized version)
- WC size v. A. (i.e. Caroline von Albersdorf): Kaspar Hauser or the correct disclosure of the previously unknown secrets about Hauser's origin, the cause of his imprisonment (etc.). Second increased and improved edition. Ernst August Fleischmann, Munich 1839 (digitized version)
- NE Mesis (d. I. Sebastian Seiler ): Kaspar Hauser, the heir to the throne of Baden , Paris (d. I. Jenni, son, Bern) 1840. Further editions with changed content, 1845 a. 1847. A translation into Dutch: S. Seiler: Kaspar Hauser de troonopvolger van Baden , A. Koots & Comp., 'S-Gravenhage 1848. (digitized version )
- Georg Möller: The modern constitutions of Germany. Opposite the secret Vienna conference resolutions. From a German patriot. Pierre Baret, Mulhouse 1844, pp. 78/79; 180 to 188. (digitized version) . Georg Möller, b. in Mannheim 1790, died in Geneva 1867. Officer of the French Legion of Honor, captain of Baden, republican and democrat
- Adolf Gerwig: History of Kaspar Hauser, heir to the throne of Baden. A picture of the German royal courts . Second edition enlarged and improved by new sources. Oven u. Bauer, Pittsburg, Pa. 1859. ( digitized version ) The first edition appeared in 1852 in the publishing house of Friedrich Stahl's widow in Cincinnati. Gerwig was a member of the Baden Constituent Assembly from 1849
Fiction
- Jakob Wassermann : Caspar Hauser or the inertia of the heart . Novel. 1908. (Reprint: dtv, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-10192-X ).
- Karl Röttger : Kaspar Hauser's last days or The short life of a very poor . A documentary novel. 1933.
- Peter Handke : Kaspar. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1967, ISBN 3-518-10322-9 .
- Paul Heinrich: Hauser. Poems. Nachttischbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-937550-20-6 .
- Ruth Schaumann : Ansbacher Nänie. Novella. Grote Verlag 1936. (2nd edition. FH Kerle Verlag, Heidelberg 1962)
Comic
- Bart Proost (drawing), Criva (text), Verhast (coloring): Kaspar Hauser - Im Auge des Sturms stainlessArt GmbH Comicverlag, Aachen, Germany, 2020, ISBN 9783982141190 , (Title of the original edition: Kaspar Hauser - In het oog van de storm , Saga Uitgaven, Zedelgem, Belgium, 2019 (Flemish))
Performing arts
theatre
- 2012: someone like Kaspar Hauser ... or the difficulty of becoming a person, by Günther Schäfer
- 2013: The story of Kaspar Hauser. Director: Alvis Hermanis , text version: Carola Dürr and Ensemble
- 2013: We Children of Europe - Kaspar Hauser, text and direction: Matti Melchinger
- 2015: Kaspar Hauser and The Speechless from Devil County. Thorsten Biheyne, Alexander Kerlin and the Dortmunder Sprachchor
- 2017: Kaspar Hauser or The Outcasts could attack at any moment! By Lisa Charlotte Boudouin Lie, UA on February 1, 2017 at the Schauspielhaus Wien
Film adaptations
- Kaspar Hauser (The Tragedy of Kaspar Hauser), directed by Kurt Matull, D 1915.
- Mystery of Caspar Hauser (from the series "Telephone Time"), directed by Arthur Hiller , USA 1956.
- The Kaspar Hauser case, 3-part television series, director: Robert A. Stemmle, D 1966.
- Each for himself and God against all - Kaspar Hauser, director: Werner Herzog , D 1974.
- Kaspar Hauser (1993) , directed by Peter Sehr , D / A / S 1993.
- La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (original title), directed by Davide Manuli, 2012.
Radio plays
- 1950: Kaspar Hauser, the riddle of its time - author: Kurd E. Heyne , director: Fritz Benscher , leading roles: Hans Christian Blech , Wolfgang Büttner , production: Bayerischer Rundfunk
- 1952: Kaspar Hauser - author: Kurd E. Heyne, director: Wilm ten Haaf , title role: unknown, production: Radio Saarbrücken
- 1952: Kaspar Hauser - author: Kurd E. Heyne, director: Theodor Steiner , title role: Erik Schumann , production: Hessischer Rundfunk
- 1954: Kaspar Hauser - author: Kurd E. Heyne, director: Eduard Hermann , title role: Horst Frank , production: Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
- 1958: Kaspar Hauser - author: Hans Scholz , director: Gert Westphal , title role: Peter van Hamme , production: Südwestfunk
- 2007: Revelation 23 , episode 18: Human sacrifice, author: Jan Gaspard , composer: Andy Matern , production: Bastei Lübbe (Lübbe Audio)
Ballet, opera and musical
- 2009: Kaspar Hauser , ballet in two acts; Irineos Triandafillou (music), Jaroslaw Jurasz (choreography), ballet of the Nordharzer Städtebundtheater
- 2010: Kaspar Hauser - Alone among people , musical; Jürgen Eick (text), Walter Kiesbauer (music)
- 2012: Kaspar Hauser, the Child of Europe , opera; Dylis Rose (lyrics), Rory Boyle (music)
- 2014: Kaspar Hauser , opera in two acts; Music: Franz Schubert , arranged by Alexander Krampe, idea & libretto: Dominik Wilgenbus, director: Dominik Wilgenbus, Orchestra of the Munich Chamber Opera in Nymphenburg Palace , Munich
- 2016: Kaspar Hauser , ballet by Tim Plegge, music by Shostakovich , Schubert , Górecki and Larcher , premiere on February 13, 2016 at the Staatstheater Darmstadt
- 2016: Kaspar Hauser , opera by Hans Thomalla , premier on April 9, 2016 at the Freiburg Theater , with Xavier Sabata , staged by Frank Hilbrich .
- 2018: Kaspar Hauser - Aenigma eternum. A symphonic poem for mixed choir and symphony orchestra. Music by Walter Kiesbauer
Songs
- 1969 and 1996 (new recording): Kaspar - Reinhard Mey
- 1980: Kaspar Hauser - Dschinghis Khan
Web links
- Literature by and about Kaspar Hauser in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Kaspar Hauser in the German Digital Library
- Kaspar Hauser in the Bibliotheca Augustana
Individual evidence
- ^ Ivo Striedinger: Hauser Kaspar, the "enigmatic foundling". In: CVs from Franconia, III. Vol., 1927, pp. 199 f .; Fritz Trautz: On the problem of personality interpretation: On the occasion of the Kaspar Hauser book by Jean Mistler. In: Francia 2, 1974, p. 716 f .; Walther Schreibmüller: Balance of 150 years of Kaspar Hauser research. Inn: Genealogisches Jahrbuch 31, 1991, p. 43 f.
- ^ Jean Mistler: Gaspard Hauser, un drame de la personnalité. Fayard 1971, p. 28.
- ↑ a b c d e Walther Schreibmüller: Balance of 150 years of Kaspar Hauser research. In: Genealogisches Jahrbuch 31. 1991, p. 79.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 44.
- ↑ "He was always in a small, narrow, low room on the ground floor, the floor of which was not boarded up, but, it seems, made of solid earth, the ceiling of which, however, consisted of boards pushed together and fastened. Two small, elongated windows were covered with piles of wood and therefore only a faint, dusky light penetrated through them; he never saw the sun. ” Hermann Pies : Kaspar Hauser Eyewitness reports and personal testimonies. Chapter 17 in the Gutenberg-DE project
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 200 f .; Binder's announcement and the various versions of Hauser's autobiography can be found e.g. B. in: Jochen Hörisch (Ed.): I would like to become someone like ...: Materials on the speechlessness of Kaspar Hauser. Suhrkamp 1979.
- ↑ a b Fritz Trautz, p. 717.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 44 f; Karl Leonhard: Kaspar Hauser and the modern knowledge of hospitalism. In: Confinia Psychiatrica. 13, 1970, p. 217.
- ^ Fritz Trautz, p. 717 f .; Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 62 ff.
- ^ Antonius von der Linde: Kaspar Hauser. A new historical legend . First volume: 1823–1833. 1887, p. 193 ff.
- ↑ Fritz Trautz, p. 718 f.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 170 f. - Hauser's guardian Christoph Karl Gottlieb Sigmund Tucher Freiherr von Simmelsdorf (1798–1877) was a brother of Maria ("Marie") Helena Susanna Hegel, nee. Tucher Freiin von Simmelsdorf (1791–1855), wife of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Gottlieb v. Tucher married his Stuttgart cousin Maria Helena Wilhelmina Haller Freiin von Hallerstein (1804–1834), a great-great-niece of the pietistic prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger , in 1828 . See Reinhard Breymayer: Between Princess Antonia of Württemberg and Kleist's Käthchen von Heilbronn. News on the magnetic and tension fields of Prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Heck, Dußlingen 2010, p. 31.
- ^ Philip Henry Earl Stanhope: Materials on the history of Kaspar Hauser. Heidelberg 1835, p. 47.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger: New literature on Kaspar Hauser. In: Journal for Bavarian State History. 6th year 1933, p. 426.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 46 f.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller, 1991, p. 47.
- ↑ a b Walther Schreibmüller, 1991, p. 48.
- ↑ a b Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 468.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 422.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 69.
- ^ A b Reinhard Heydenreuter: King Ludwig I and the case of Kaspar Hauser. In: State and Administration in Bavaria. Festschrift for Wilhelm Volkert on his 75th birthday. Munich 2003, p. 469.
- ^ Lore Schwarzmaier: The Baden court under Grand Duke Leopold and the Kaspar Hauser affair: A new source in the records of Margrave Wilhelm von Baden. Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 134, 1986, p. 253 ff. - On Lady Hamilton's "double talk" cf. Walther Peter Fuchs: The Kaspar Hauser Problem. In: Walther Peter Fuchs: Studies on Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden. (= Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg: Series B, Research. Volume 100). Stuttgart 1995, p. 30 f.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 61; agreeing u. additionally Lore Schwarzmaier, p. 247. (Schwarzmaier quotes an older version of Schreibmüller's balance sheet of a 150-year Kaspar Hauser research , published in: 91st Yearbook of the Historical Association for Middle Franconia, Ansbach 1982/83, pp. 129–172)
- ^ This is Fritz Trautz's view, see Fritz Trautz, p. 723.
- ^ Adalbert Prince of Bavaria : Queen Caroline of Bavaria and Kaspar Hauser. In: The onion dome. 1951, p. 102 ff.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 57 f.
- ↑ a b Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 76.
- ↑ Lore Schwarzmaier, p. 250.
- ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter 2003, p. 472.
- ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter 2003, p. 472; Lore Schwarzmaier, p. 258.
- ↑ Printed in: Hermann Pies: Kaspar Hauser. A documentation. Ansbach o. J. (1966), p. 77 ff; a draft of the letter is shown in: Johannes Mayer and Peter Tradowsky: Kaspar Hauser. The child of Europe. Stuttgart 1984, p. 410, Figure 109.
- ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter 2003, p. 473.
- ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter 2003, p. 474; compare also Antonius von der Linde: Kaspar Hauser. A new historical legend. Second volume: 1834–1884. Wiesbaden 1887, pp. 64 ff, 92.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 362.
- ↑ Reinhard Heydenreuter 2003, p. 476.
- ^ Paul Johann Anselm Feuerbach, Mémoire , 1853. Link bad-bad.de
- ^ Gustav Radbruch: Paul Johann Anselm Feuerbach. A legal life. II edition. 1957, p. 209.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 54 f.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 50.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 439.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller: Kaspar Hauser's death. In: Jahrbuch für Fränkische Landesforschung 45. 1985, pp. 197–200, see in particular p. 199. (Review by Johannes Mayer / Peter Tradowsky: Kaspar Hauser - Das Kind von Europa. Stuttgart 1984)
- ↑ Ignatz Hösl: Ivo Striedinger [obituary], in: Journal for Bavarian State History, 15th year 1949, pp. 195–197 ( digitized version )
- ^ Ivo Striedinger: New literature on Kaspar Hauser. In: Journal for Bavarian State History. 6th year 1933, pp. 415–484 (digitized version )
- ↑ Full Professor of History at the University of Mannheim; Southwest German regional history was one of his main areas of work. See: W. Paravicini: Nekrolog: Fritz Trautz (March 31, 1917 to May 31, 2001). In: Francia 29/1. 2002, pp. 269–271 (digitized version )
- ^ Fritz Trautz, p. 723 u. 729 ff.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 444.
- ↑ On the alleged exchange with Blochmann see: Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 443 ff. And Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 58 f.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 203.
- ^ Facsimile of the copy in: Jean Mistler, p. 373.
-
↑ For the "Message in a Bottle" see:
- Jean Mistler, p. 368 ff.
- Fritz Trautz, p. 723 f.
- Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 439 ff.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 52.
- ↑ Peter Josef Keuler: The foundling Kaspar Hauser as a medical phenomenon. A medical historical analysis of the traditional sources, Bochum, Univ.Diss., 1997, p. 112.
- ^ A b Karl Leonhard: Kaspar Hauser and the modern knowledge of hospitalism. In: Confinia Psychiatrica. 13, 1970, p. 228.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 205.
- ↑ a b Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 210 f.
- ↑ Peter Josef Keuler, pp. 17, 32, 112.
- ^ Günter Hesse: Kaspar Hauser's illness. In: Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift. 109, year 1967, p. 156 f.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, 218f.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, p. 222.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger, 1933, p. 442.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 17.
-
↑ For the "Spiegelschrift" see:
- Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 65 and p. 70-74.
- Jean Mistler, p. 348 ff.
- Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 453.
- Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 207 f.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 206 f.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, p. 226.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller, p. 77 f.
- ^ Fritz Trautz, p. 717 f.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 62 f.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 206.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 384.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 167 ff.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 71.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1927, p. 208. For a detailed appraisal of the testimony see Walther Schreibmüller 1991.
- ↑ a b Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 53.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 449.
- ^ Richard Rahner: Kaspar Hauser. The solution to the riddle Greiser, Rastatt 1925.
- ^ Anna Schiener: The case of Kaspar Hauser. Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2010, p. 131.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, p. 219.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, p. 223 f.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 416 f.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 53 f.
- ^ Fritz Trautz, p. 716 f.
- ↑ Peter Josef Keuler, p. 104.
- ^ Karl Leonhard, 218.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 381.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 452.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 350.
- ^ Günter Hesse: Some data on Hauser's origin from Tyrol. In: Genealogisches Jahrbuch 31. 1991, pp. 87-93; Der Spiegel No. 48, 1996, p. 273.
- ^ Ivo Striedinger: Who was Kaspar Hauser? In: Die Einkehr, entertainment supplement to the Munich latest news. No. 24 v. March 25, 1925, p. 98.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 10 and 379 ff.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 104.
- ^ Martin Kitchen: Kaspar Hauser: Europe's Child. Palgrave MacMillan, 2001, pp. Xiv et al. P. 39.
- ↑ Jean Mistler, p. 61 ff.
- ↑ Walther Schreibmüller 1991, p. 54.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 455.
- ↑ Ivo Striedinger 1933, p. 475.
- ^ GM Weichhold, JE Bark, W. Korte, W. Eisenmenger, KM Sullivan: DNA analysis in the case of Kaspar Hauser. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine. vol. 111, 1998, pp. 287-291. Link to the institute text Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in the case of Kaspar Hauser. Rechtsmedizin.med.uni-muenchen.de
- ↑ Dr. Weichhold answers the questions put to him at uni-koblenz.de ( memento from July 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel No. 52, 2002, p. 134 spiegel.de
- ↑ a b c Bernd Brinkmann: Latest state of research in forensic medicine and pathology at the University of Münster. Foreword to: Anselm von Feuerbach: Kaspar Hauser. Reprint-Verlag, Leipzig 2006.
- ↑ Chatkorpus of the TU Dortmund chatkorpus.tu-dortmund.de
- ↑ Winfried Klein: The question of origin: Can the riddle about Kaspar Hauser be solved? In: FAZ Online , June 17, 2012. Accessed October 26, 2016.
- ↑ Winfried Klein: Kaspar Hauser's Riddle, Part Two: Loss of a Coffin in the Princely Crypt. In: FAZ Online , July 17, 2012. Accessed October 26, 2016.
- ↑ Wulf Rüskamp: Two children coffins and a track in Kaspar Hauser mystery. From badische-zeitung.de , from August 14, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
- ↑ pz-news.de ( Memento from October 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ printed in Jochen Hörisch 1979, p. 255 f.
- ↑ Monika Schmitz-Emans: Questions about Kaspar Hauser. Designs of Man, Language and Poetry. Würzburg 2007, p. 151.
- ↑ Kasper , lyrics by Reinhard Mey
- ^ Program booklet Kaspar Hauser Festival 2014 from July 27th to August 3rd: kaspar-hauser.info ; Kaspar Hauser Festival: kaspar-hauser.info
- ↑ Elisabeth Nau u. Detlef Cabanis: Kaspar Hauser Syndrome. In: Munich Medical Weekly. Volume 108 (17), 1966, pp. 929-931.
- ↑ W. Abegg: The Kaspar Hauser Syndrome. In: The Psychologist. 1962, 16.
- ↑ Alexander Mitscherlich: Oedipus and Kaspar Hauser. Depth psychological problems in the present. In: The month. 3, 1950, pp. 11-18.
- ↑ Friedrich Koch: The Kaspar Hauser Effect. About dealing with children. Opladen 1995, p. 72 f.
- ^ York Langenstein, former head of the State Office for Non-State Museums in Bavaria.
- ↑ Kaspar Hauser on Munich Music, accessed on September 2, 2014.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hauser, Kaspar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German foundling |
| DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: April 30, 1812 |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 17, 1833 |
| Place of death | Ansbach , Franconia |