Seeking Enlightenment

[Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

> Can someone tell me who Caspar Hauser is/was? 

There's a film by Hertzog (I know I can't spell) that tells most of
the story.  My memories are much decayed, but the essence is that ... 
No, wait: I just so happen to have a book about "Wolf Children" in a 
box beside my desk (really), together with ... yes, here it is.

The following is from _Wolf Children_ by Lucien Malson [except where
noted thus]:

At about five in the afternoon on 26 May 1828 an extraordinary
young man trotted along Nuremberg's Unschlittplatz to the surprise
of one of the citizens who was resting in a chair outside his house.
This is how Anselm von Feuerbach begins the story of Kaspar in his
book _Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben des Menschen_.

This unknown boy was wearing a felt hat with a red leather band in
which was stuck a faded picture of the city of Munich, a black silk
scarf, faded jacket, coarse shirt, roughly made trousers and badly
patched top-boots heeled not with leather but with horseshoes.  His
pockets contained a small handkerchief embroidered with his initials,
some pieces of paper on which were scribbled a few Catholic prayers,
a rosary and a small pack of gold dust.  He was carrying a letter
addressed to `The Honorable Captain of the 4th Cavalry Squadron of the
6th Nuremberg Regiment', and so the astonished citizen took the boy to
the local barracks where the mysterious letter was opened.  It said in
effect: `This boy wishes to serve his king.  He was entrusted to me by
his mother.  I have tought him to read and write, and brought him by
night to Nuremberg.'  On another sheet was written: `The boy is
baptized and his christian name is Kaspar.  He was born on 30 April
1812.  When he is seventeen, take him to Nuremberg where his father
who is now dead served in the cavalry.  I am only a poor girl.'  The
soldiers left Kaspar to sleep on the straw in the stables.  They shook
him awake at eight o'clock next morning and at about ten o'clock took
him to the local police station where he was given a pen and wrote his
name: Kaspar Hauser.

At first Kaspar liven in a cell usually reserved for vagrants.  He
played with a coin and then with various toys which were brought to
him by local people.  Most of all he enjoyed playing with a horse, and
this he adored.  He had a man's body but the mind of a three-year-old
child. [...]  He would not eat meat [...]  He preferred bread and
water.  He cried frequently, shouted out and was frightened by
everything and nothing.  He laughed when he was happy, particularly
when he saw white horses, though black ones terrified him.  When there
was nothing to distract him, he lapsed into a sort of brutish
passivity.  He amused himself by writing the letters of the alphabet,
the numbers from one to ten, and by covering whole pages with his
signature.  He could scarcely be said to speak at all and was only
able to utter a jumble of sounds and the odd word or sentence in
patois [...]  On 18 July 1828 Kaspar left the police station for the
house of Dr Daumer who had taken pity on him.  After a few months, his
face began to acquire a certain symmetry and he lost his very
noticeable prognathism.  He was a thick-set boy with clear blue eyes,
fine skin, and delicate hands. [...]

[Various improvements in Kaspar's condition are then described.  Some
are quite unremarkable -- he learns to climb stairs, is persuaded to
eat meat, and begins to draw (badly) -- but others are strange:]  He
disliked all smells except those of bread, aniseed and cummin.  The
presence of magnetized metals made him feel ill but in December this
curious weakness disappeared.

[The description continues, but I will omit some details.]  [...]
wondered why he had no parents [...] preferred girls' clothes to boys'
because they were prettier [...] see perfectly well in the dark [...] 
could not grasp the idea of his reflection [...]  In the stories he
told, he confused dreams with reality. [...] had to be educated, or
rather re-educated, from the very beginning [...] acquired the use of
`I' only very slowly. [...]

All of this was to change in the next three years.  [Kaspar began to
take lessons in town, including Latin (!), but didn't particularly
like them.] [...]  Though slow-witted, he was always full of simple
and direct questions: `Who made the trees?'  `Who puts out the stars
and lights them up?'  `Where is my soul?'  `Can I look at it?'  `Why
doesn't God answer my prayers?' [...]  He sought desperately to
remember and a few details came back from the past.  He seemed to
think he had `arrived in the world' and `discovered men' in Nuremberg.
Before this, he had lived in `a hole' or `a cage' on a diet of bread
and water.  He had once been put to sleep with some opium, the smell
of which he recognized at Daumer's house, and he remembered playing
with two wooden horses during his imprisonment.  His daily food was
brought to him by someone whom he never saw and who would sometimes
stand behind him drawing figures, letters and numbers over his
shoulder.  This was the first person he could remember and he referred
to him simply as `Man'.  It was soon reported in the town that Kaspar
was about to reveal his secret.  The excited gossip which ensued was
to prove fatal, for on 17 October 1829 he had a visit from someone who
must have been 'The Man'.  [...] [Kaspar was found "half-dead" in the
cellar, was able to say only `Man' over and over, spent 48 hours in a
coma, and took a month to recover.]  It turned out that `The Man' had
been seen in town and recognized.  Feuerbach's cryptic comment, that
he was `not allowed to reveal' all he knew, no doubt added to the
heated curiosity of those who were following the story and eagerly
awaiting some further revelation.  One day in 1833, while staying with
Feuerbach, when he was just 22, Kaspar was attacked for a second time
in the park at Ansbach.  He was stabbed with a knife and died the
following day.  A small monument was later erected on the spot where
he had fallen inscribed with the words: `Here one unknown was murdered
by another.'  This has turned out to be only half-true.  It is almost
certain that Kaspar was in fact the son of Ste'phanie Beauharnais,
Jose'phine's niece, who had been married off by Napoleon to Prince
Charles of Baden.  So that the crown would revert to the children of
the morganatic line, Kaspar, the son of Charles and Ste'phanie, was
taken away from them and entrusted to the care of Baron Griesenberg's
game-keeper, Franz Richter, otherwise known as `The Man'.  The name of
his murderer was Johann Jacob Muller.  These revelations were made
only sometime afterwards by Edmond Bapst, who threw light on what was
indeed a mysterious and murky business.

[Well, that's it for that source.  Whether or not the Napoleon
connection is true, the significance of "wooden horse" may now be
clear.]

-- Jeff