Odd this day
Alas! It’s the 191st anniversary of the death of young Kaspar Hauser, an unfortunate young man who may have been Prince of Baden, or the son of Napoleon — or a fantasist and liar who was not stabbed by a mysterious stranger in a park, but shoved a knife in himself to get attention.
He appeared in Nuremberg in May 1828, dressed like a peasant and wearing boots that were too small. He was carrying a letter addressed to an army captain, and when he found his way to the man, wept, said he didn’t know where he’d come from, and announced that he wanted to enlist as a trooper, like his father.
The letter was apparently from a “poor labourer with ten children” who had been looking after the boy, after a promise to Kaspar’s mother, but could barely afford to feed his own. Which sounds kindly enough, except that he closed with the words
…if you do not want to keep him, just beat him away or hang him up the chimney.
There was a separate note, apparently written by the boy’s mother, who said his name was Kaspar and that he was then 16. The captain had no idea what to do, so the police got involved, and — because he didn’t seem able to tell them where he was from — the kid was locked up as a ‘vagabond’.
His behaviour — reaching out to touch naked flames, not understanding mirrors — led people to believe he was a ‘wild child’, untouched by civilisation, and people started coming to peer at him. According to Jan Bondeson’s The Great Pretenders, some brought toys and coins, while others
…threatened him with a naked sword to see if he would flinch, or … clandestinely adulterated his simple [bread and water] diet to observe the disastrous vomiting and diarrhoea that would follow.
Eventually, he had a visit from Judge Anselm von Feuerbach, who was impressed with the boy’s intelligence and obedience — and Kaspar started to talk about his previous life. He’d been kept in a cell in which he couldn’t stand up, and fed only black bread and water. Some days, the water would taste funny, and he’d fall asleep and wake up to find someone had changed his clothes and cut his nails. And he wanted to become a trooper like his father. Obviously.
Everybody was appalled at what he’d suffered, the people of Nuremberg contributed to his upkeep, and von Feuerbach decided he must be high-born if someone had gone to such efforts to hide him away. And a tutor was found for him: George Friedrich Daumer, a spiritualist and homeopath who believed that Jews slaughtered their first born. People thought him
eccentric, and some believed him to be far from sane, [but] there was no objection to his becoming Kaspar’s guardian and tutor.
So he did, and fed Kaspar homeopathic ‘medicines’ and noted down the various terrible effects they had (even diluted) on the young man’s digestive system. Kaspar also had
…the most marvellous magnetic powers, and … could lead Daumer to needles or scissors that had been hidden away.
After about a year, though, Daumer wrote that Kaspar’s
…nature had lost much of its original purity, and a highly regrettable tendency to untruthfulness and dissimulation had manifested itself.
This is presented as a sudden change in most narratives, and perhaps it was. It may have been a gradual revealing of his true nature. But no one seems to have asked whether he just got pissed off with people making him vomit, shit, and look for random bits of metal. Anyway, things came to a head, and there was an argument when Kaspar denied playing truant. By some extraordinary coincidence, just as it looked as though the people looking after him thought he was a lying shit, the boy was found delirious, with a head wound. He’d visited Daumer’s friend Dr Preu, he said, who’d got him to eat quarter of a walnut, which made him feel sick, so he went to sit in an outhouse, where he was attacked by a masked man who said
You must die before you leave Nuremberg!
…and twatted him on the head with a cleaver. Kaspar knew, despite not seeing his face, that this was the person who had kept him in that cell. No one was found who fitted the description, so von Feuerbach decided that this had happened because word had got out that Kaspar was writing his memoirs, so the people who’d kept him in a cell because he was a secret duke or something decided he had to be silenced. Definitely the most plausible explanation.
Anyway, Daumer had had enough of Kaspar by then, so the boy went to stay with Herr Biberbach. Unfortunately, Frau Biberbach took a shine to Kaspar — according to Daumer, anyway. She wanted him for a ‘plaything’, but her feelings were not reciprocated. Bondeson says “this accusation [was] made many years later and [is] not corroborated by any contemporary source”, and that Mrs B
nourished a strong dislike for Kaspar. She claimed that he lied freely and threw violent temper tantrums when found out.
One possible interpretation of this, of course, is that she hated him for spurning her, but it could be that Daumer made the saucy allegations about her up. Maybe he fancied Frau B. Anyway…
Once, when reproached for untruthfulness, he was sent sulking to his room. Suddenly a pistol shot rang out … [They] found Kaspar lying on the floor, again bleeding from a head wound.
But this was easily explained. He had, you see, been up on a stool reaching for a book from a high shelf, but slipped and reached out for something to steady himself, and — what do you know? — if there wasn’t a loaded pistol hanging on the wall. He’d been given a pair to defend himself against the masked attacker.
Kaspar left the Biberbachs and moved in with a Baron von Tucher, for whom he apparently behaved, but then: enter stage left a dastardly British aristocrat. Philip Henry, 4th Earl Stanhope, may have been a spy, certainly had (unexplained) wealth, and was brother to the eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope.
Stanhope showered Kaspar with gifts and money, discovered he knew some Hungarian, and became convinced by the theory that the kid was noble in some way. Von Tucher wasn’t having any of this balls, and gave up his guardianship, so Stanhope took the kid on.
Apparently, Kaspar had convulsions when he heard the name of a particular Hungarian town, and bellowed “That is my mother!” when he heard the maiden name of one Countess Maytheny. Stanhope took him to Hungary to see if the sight of its castles and landscape would trigger memories. He didn’t. Stanhope lost interest in the young man, and buggered off, leaving him with a strict schoolmaster, Johann Meyer.
Soon enough, and this may not surprise you by now, Meyer started getting pissed off with the boy’s incessant lying. Kaspar’s staunchest defender, von Feuerbach, died in 1833, and suddenly there weren’t very many people left who thought he was a lost prince.
On 14 December, he went to a lesson with a local pastor, went for a walk with him in the afternoon, and then said he was going to call on someone. He was seen at about 3pm in a park with a strange man, despite the cold weather. At 3.30, bleeding, and apparently having difficulty speaking, Kaspar returned to Meyer’s house and said
Went to Hofgarten — Man had knife — Gave me pouch — Stabbed! — Ran as fast as I could — Pouch is still there!
He claimed he’d been given a message to meet someone in the park, and then collapsed. Meyer assumed he’d faked another attack on himself, because Kaspar did, after all, have form, and
As the boy lay groaning with pain on the couch, Meyer threatened him with a sound birching.
A doctor came by and explored Kaspar’s wound by the brilliant means of shoving his unwashed finger in. Surprised at how deep it went, he said the boy’s life was in danger. Another doctor said it was just a scratch, and he’d be fine. The police found a pouch in the park with a bit of paper inside, on which was written
Kaspar told the police he’d met someone in the street who invited him to the park to look at some specimens of clay. Oh, that old chestnut. He kept the appointment, but was met instead by a different man who gave him the pouch and then stabbed him. Meyer told the police he’d stabbed himself, apparently when Kaspar could overhear, but he didn’t have much time to be offended, because he was dead on 17th.
The knife had, indeed, gone pretty deep — enough to reach his heart and liver — but he might have survived if the first doctor had washed his hands. Bondeson says the most likely cause of death is “bacterial pericarditis and pleuritis”.
Stanhope and King Ludwig of Bavaria offered rewards, but no attacker was ever found. Meyer said Kaspar already owned a pouch like the one found in the park, and demonstrated, using a steak under a coat, that it was possible to stab oneself where Kaspar had been stabbed. He also said the note in the purse was in handwriting similar to Kaspar’s. Stanhope swiftly decided the kid had been an impostor all along, went round telling everyone, and wrote books about it.
The legends continued, though. He was Napoleon’s son. No, he wasn’t. He was the son of Charles, Grand Duke of Baden, and Stéphanie de Beauharnais, adopted daughter of Napoleon. Their son had died, so Charles was succeeded by his uncle and then that uncle’s half-brother Leopold. But no! Leopold’s mother had swapped the baby with a dying commoner, and that baby was Kaspar, kept in a dungeon for 16 years!
Well, except those bloody spoilsports, scientists, with their insistence on things like facts — ugh! [rolls eyes] — have found that the DNA doesn’t match.
It does seem, in the end, that Kaspar Hauser was most likely just a fantasist who stabbed himself. Ah, well.
