Kaspar Hauser (1993)

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Movie
Original title Kaspar Hauser
Country of production Germany , Austria , Sweden
original language German
Publishing year 1993
length 139 (theatrical version) or 180 (long TV version in 2 parts) minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Peter Very
script Peter Very
production Wolfgang Esterer
music Nikos Mamangakis
camera Gernot Roll
cut Heidi Handorf (theatrical version),
Susanne Hartmann (long TV version)
occupation

Kaspar Hauser (alternative title: Kaspar Hauser - crime against the soul life of a person ) is a German feature film by the director Peter Sehr , which deals with the life and fate of Kaspar Hauser .

The film was made in two versions: the theatrical version of 139 minutes had festival appearances at the Munich Film Festival ( June 27, 1993), the Toronto International Film Festival (September 11, 1993) and the Hof International Film Festival (October 1993). The general theatrical release followed on January 27, 1994. The 180-minute TV version was broadcast in two parts; for the first time on March 3rd and 4th 1995 by the co-producing broadcaster Arte .

Plot (TV version)

First part

The film begins in 1812 with the birth of the Crown Prince of Baden, who recently became the Grand Duchy by Napoleon's grace; the child is the son of Karl (Tilo Nest), Grand Duke of Baden, and Stephanie von Baden (Cécilie Paoli), Napoleon's French adopted daughter. The Grand Duchess would like to give her newborn son the French name Gaspar ; but her husband strictly refuses to do so, as the name reminds him of the German Kaspar .

However, since Karl's uncle Ludwig (Uwe Ochsenknecht) is striving for the Baden throne, he and his mistress Luise Karoline von Hochberg (Katharina Thalbach) devise a plan to get rid of the prince on the day of his birth and leave it to Luise Karoline to do the job. This allows the prince to be exchanged for the newborn child of a stable boy, so that the latter, under the guidance of the court doctor, can be mistreated so severely by the adjutant Hennenhofer (Hansa Czypionka) that within one day, the exchange is carried out and the real prince is hidden dies in cruel pain from his injuries.

For four years, the hidden prince grew up with a wet nurse on an abandoned estate; During this time, Ludwig had his predecessor Karl slowly poisoned by the court doctor, who was also here again willingly as a henchman, and was thus able to expand his position of power at the court of the languishing Karl. As Minister of War, Ludwig pursued an aggressive policy towards Bavaria in the dispute over the Palatinate, which Napoleon had awarded the Grand Duchy of Baden. In 1814, Luise informed Karoline Ludwig that the real prince was still alive and only hidden, and extorted Ludwig, who was next in the line of succession after the dying Karl, to appoint her own sons, fathered by Ludwig, as heirs of the Baden family Throne after Ludwig's death; she threatens him with failing to let the missing crown prince reappear. Ludwig lets this happen with grudging teeth so as not to endanger his own chances for the throne.

Secretly, Ludwig now lets the murderer Hennenhofer investigate the prince's hiding place in order to complete the work; But since Karoline Luise already suspects this, she makes arrangements to take the now four-year-old boy outside of Ludwig's access to Hungary. The wet nurse, with whom Kaspar was, feels cheated out of her fair wages for four years when Karoline Luise rushed to pick up the child and takes revenge by revealing the secret to Bavaria, which is hostile to Baden. Ludwig I of Bavaria (Dieter Laser) then bought Karoline Luise from the prince in order to take him into custody as a bargaining chip for the Palatinate.

Kaspar, who has already learned to speak normally, is now imprisoned in a Bavarian cellar dungeon; For 14 years the child lives in complete darkness and is sedated daily with opium-infused water, which over the years, together with the neglect due to the total isolation, leads to a gradual mental and physical disruption of the boy.

In 1828, during a diplomatic visit by Baron Wedel (Dieter Mann), who was in Bavarian service, to the court of Baden regarding the ongoing dispute over the Palatinate, Ludwig von Baden, who had meanwhile risen to Grand Duke after the death of Karl, smashed a valuable vase as an aggressive demonstration of power and hands a shard of it to Baron Wedel as a gift to Bavaria with the threat that if Bavaria intends to ingest it by force, the subject of the dispute, the Palatinate, would have equally sharp edges on which Bavaria would cut their hands bloodied . Baron Wedel accepts the shard, and within a few days Kaspar, who has now been released (now played by André Eisermann), is found on the market square in Nuremberg with a mysterious letter in his pocket and the deliberate, conspicuously preciously painted shard. The case of the enigmatic foundling quickly made the rounds in the southern German lands, so that Ludwig is now warned, due to Kaspar's suitable age, rumors spread by the Bavarian court about Kaspar's noble origin and the shard described in detail in the gazettes, that Bavaria is in possession of the Crown prince.

Kaspar is barely able to walk or speak because of the long incarceration and years of forced opium gifts; The simplest concepts and activities have become completely alien to him, and the time before the dungeon has also disappeared from his mind in its confused state. The only thing he's kept is his name. The gentle Nuremberg naturopath Georg Friedrich Daumer (Udo Samel) takes care of him, and after a thorough detox he teaches Kaspar to read and write and in pharmacy. The scholar Anselm von Feuerbach (Hermann Beyer) travels from Frankfurt to examine the famous boulder. After Kaspar has told him fragmentary about his time in dungeon, Feuerbach vows to arrest the criminals who have locked Kaspar in for years and to clarify his true identity, which he asks Kaspar to do, everything that he can remember from his previous life to write down for him in minute detail.

For this purpose, his foster father Daumer also uses naturopathic methods to give Kaspar's memory a boost, so that his previous life before his time in dungeon appears to him in a dream down to the smallest detail. Kaspar diligently writes down page after page in a notebook for the scholar Feuerbach. Ludwig sends the murderer Henneberger to examine Kaspar; Based on the detailed information in his notebook and a large birthmark on the neck, Henneberger identified Kaspar as the wanted Crown Prince and carried out a first assassination attempt on him, which however failed.

Second part

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Reviews

“This film adaptation of the familiar material ignores the educational aspects of the case and focuses on the historical criminal case. Despite solid individual achievements, it was not a completely successful film, as the wealth of information and the large number of people obscure the political background. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kaspar Hauser. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used