Mute, almost unable to walk, Kaspar Hauser was found on May 26, 1828 at the age of 16. Closer returns to this mysterious case.
The name Kaspar Hauser probably means nothing to you. However, the story of this orphan with a dark past fascinated all of Europe at the beginning of the 19e century. It is in Nuremberg, in the heart of the former Kingdom of Bavaria, that this affair takes root. On May 26, 1828, two craftsmen crossed paths with a young teenager leaving a tavern. The gait unsteady, the soles of the feet so soft that he seems to have never walked, the stranger speaks a language that only he understands and seems disturbed by the light of the sun. On him, the two craftsmen discover two letters. The first, written by the hand of the child’s mother, specifies his date of birth and asks that he be sent to the 6th regiment of Schowilsche at the age of 17. The second, addressed to the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Squadron of the 6th Light Horse Regiment, is written by the hand of a man who would have brought up the child.
But the two letters, allegedly written 16 years apart, appear to have been written by one and the same person. The stranger is therefore imprisoned as a precaution. IIt then turns out that he is able to pronounce a few words (“Horseman want as father was”, “Horse! Horse!” And “don’t know”) and write his name: Kaspar Hauser. Over the weeks, the young teenager won the sympathy of the mayor of Nuremberg, Jakob Friedrich Binder, who took him under his wing. He learns to read and speak and eventually tells her his story. He says he spent his whole life in a dark little room without ever seeing anyone, eating only bread and water. His cell, about a meter by two, contained only a pile of straw to sleep on and a horse carved out of wood. He also explains that he has seen only one person in his life, a man with a concealed face who came to teach him to write his name and say a few words shortly before his release.
“Europe’s Orphan”
In Europe, many rumors are beginning to emerge. It is said that the teenager, nicknamed “the orphan of Europe” would be a bastard of noble descent and that his family would have tried to get rid of him. One wonders, for example, if he would not be the crown prince of Grand Duke Charles II of Baden and his wife Stéphanie de Beauharnais, who died two weeks after his birth in mysterious circumstances. The Duchess goes so far as to suspect the Countess of Hochberg of having kidnapped her son, but this theory is never proven…
One thing is certain, the young Kaspar Hauser leaves no one indifferent. It even turns out that some are after his life. On October 17, 1829, he was the victim of a first attack and wounded in the front. He was then placed under police protection, but suffered another pistol attack on April 3, 1830. Again, the young Bavarian comes out unscathed, but his luck ends up running out. On December 14, 1833, he was lured into the grounds of Ansbach Castle and then stabbed. He dies three days later, but his killer is never found. Only a word written upside down, readable only through a mirror, gives information about him: “Hauser can give you just my description, and tell you who I am. But to save Hauser the trouble, I want to tell you myself where I come from. I come from the Bavarian border…near the river…I even want to tell you my name too: ML Ö.“
Two centuries of mystery
No one ever found out who Kaspar Hauser really was or why he was murdered. In 2002, DNA tests carried out on the teenager’s hair found him to belong to the ruling family of Baden, but it was never confirmed that he was indeed the presumed dead son of Grand Duke Charles II. Another theory suggests that Hauser was a “wild child”, the victim of one of the many experiments carried out at the time to understand how a child far from any human contact would develop. But again, this has never been proven.