A hooded man stands over you, wielding a hammer,
dripping with your blood. You cower below him, head still aching from the force of the
blow. You can’t see his face, but you can recognise his voice. This man is a monster
– he imprisoned you, tortured you, and just when you thought you’d finally escaped his
clutches, he returned to finish the job. “You thought you could escape me?” he
says with a laugh as he raises the hammer. “No. You die here. Nobody can ever know.”
But before he can bring the hammer down and end your short life, there’s a rustling
upstairs. It’s your foster family! They’ve finally returned. When your hooded attacker
hears them coming, he bolts, disappearing like a candle in the night. You breathe a
sigh of relief, having staved off death for another day, but part of you knows you haven’t
seen the last of him. Part of you knows you never will.
And worse still, when your foster family finally finds you, they see your wound, and you tell
them your tale…None of them believe you. But you know he’s out there. The hooded
man who once imprisoned you. The hooded man who wants you dead.
Imagine waking up with no memory of who you are; one day, every detail of your life is
lost to you and you can’t even remember your own name. All you know is that you spent
your whole childhood imprisoned against your will. And if that’s not bad enough, imagine
that you also have a number of assassins hunting you, only you can’t remember why. Now, this
all sounds like it could easily be the plot of a new John Wick-style hitman action movie,
but these events actually occurred during the life of one of the most enigmatic men
who ever lived. This is the life and mystery of Kaspar Hauser, History’s Most Mysterious
Man. Welcome to 19th century Germany, a time of
rapid population growth that led to the creation of slums in urban areas where the infant mortality
rate was on the rise. Among all this, in 1828, a boy – believed to be as young as sixteen
– was found wandering the streets of the city now known as Nuremberg. The boy, dressed
only in tattered clothes, had nothing in his possession save for an envelope containing
two letters. Who was this boy? Where did he come from?
What was he doing here? The answers to these questions – or, in some cases, the lack
thereof – would go on to horrify everyone. The first letter, addressed to Captain von
Wessenig – the captain of a local cavalry regiment – was seemingly penned by an anonymous
labourer who had found Kasper and raised him. The second letter, however, was dated 1812
and believed to have been written by Kasper’s mother. It stated that he was being sent to
join the military as she could no longer care for her son. This strange feral child that
had one day appeared walking the streets of Nuremberg in tatters must have been terrified
of his new surroundings; Kasper had no clue that, over the course of the next five years,
he would quickly become one of the most talked-about people in Europe.
At first glance, Kasper appeared to be nothing more than a common orphan or street urchin,
though appearances can be deceptive. He was initially unable to communicate verbally;
his eyes- being unused to the sunlight- were reddish, and his feet were badly blistered
from a long and agonising walk. All these new and frightening sensations – pain, sunlight,
exhaustion – must have terrified the teenage boy. Despite being a teenager, Kasper seemed
to be a total stranger to the rest of the world around him. He was detained for being
a vagrant and brought before the local authorities. While they tried to figure out exactly what
to do with the boy, they noted that he only appeared to have very little ability to communicate.
The phrases that he could say – “Don’t know” and “I want to be a rider like my
father” – were all he could use to express himself, even when he tried to let guards
know he was thirsty. He seemed to only be able to write his name, and couldn’t describe
where he had come from or what had happened to him. His behaviour was noted as being very
abnormal, Kasper had no knowledge of how to eat using proper manners, and would only consume
bread and water. Strangely, the scent of things like meat, vegetables and alcohol would cause
him to suffer violent convulsions, and coffee even made him vomit.
Something terrible had happened to Kasper, they just needed to figure out what.
No-one knew where he’d come from, or what had been done to Kasper since his birth, and
he had no way of explaining his origins. During his two months in prison, his care was overseen
by one Andreas Hiltel. During his time there, mayor Bürgermeister Binder had taken a keen
interest in Kasper and had the boy visit him to try and build a more detailed picture of
his unknown origin, and to offer Kasper education under a teacher named Professor Friedrich
Daumer. Much to Herr Binder’s surprise, it reportedly only took a mere few weeks for
Kasper to learn how to read and write, greatly improving his communication skills.
While some believed that, at this time, Kasper’s speech was still not coherent enough to determine
the events of his past, the mayor was determined to know where the boy had come from. According
to Herr Binder, Kasper told him the following horrific story. He was kept from a young age
in a small, dark room where he was made to sleep on a straw bed and fed only on a diet
of bread and water. The only other human being young Kasper had any interaction with was
a stranger, an unnamed man who would leave bread next to Kasper as he slept. Occasionally,
the man would also give the boy water that tasted bitter and, according to Kasper, made
him sleep for much longer than normal. After this unnamed figure drugged him, the
boy would awaken to find his hair and fingernails had been cut and he’d been cleaned up as
best as possible; although on one occasion Kasper awoke to find he’d been beaten by
his captor for being too noisy. The young boy was kept like this, in horrendous conditions,
made to live in an almost-vegetative state, taught by the unknown man how to write his
own name and say the few phrases he knew, but with no comprehension of what they meant.
He was living the real Oldboy experience, and nobody knew why.
The story of what had happened to Kasper, as interpreted by Binder, soon garnered a
lot of attention, and speculation as to whether any of this was true became widespread. People
all across Europe speculated, some believed that Kasper had been raised in the forests,
similar to a feral child but with at least some prior parenting, hence the phrases he
knew how to say. Modern-day theories range from Kasper being epileptic, or having some
sort of undiagnosed medical condition that gave him visions and led to a lot of his extravagant
claims. Others argue that if the story of his abuse was in fact true, then the boy might
have gone mad as a result; driven to delusions by prolonged suffering.
Another theory posited that Kasper Hauser was actually a prince. It was speculated by
some at the time that the infant prince of Baden, who officially died in October 1812,
was actually switched out with a different baby who died on the aforementioned date,
leaving the prince to emerge as Kasper Hauser in 1828. The Grand Duke of Baden at the time
had no male heir, meaning that his uncle Louis became the next in line, so it seemed plausible
that there could have been a plot to put Louis in charge by taking the Duke’s son out of
the picture. After all, why would Kasper have been put through such horrific mistreatment
unless he posed some sort of threat to a person of great power? Despite being a popular theory,
there is a lot of evidence to the contrary that seems to refute this tale of switched
babies; a number of letters that the Grand Duke’s mother wrote include details relating
to her grandchild’s birth and the illness that led to its death in 1812.
Things only got stranger for Kasper the older he got, as his dark past returned, and the
young man suffered a number of attempts on his life. Or at least, that’s what he claimed.
After being placed in the full-time care of his teacher, Friedrich Daumer, Kasper was
discovered with a heavily-bleeding wound on his forehead, hiding in Daumer’s cellar
on the 17th of October 1829, when he was either seventeen or eighteen. According to the boy,
a hooded man had broken into the house and attacked him, telling Kasper “You still
have to die ‘ere you leave the city of Nuremberg!” He was, understandably, shaken up by the ordeal,
especially as Hauser also claimed that he recognized the assailant’s voice as belonging
to the man who had held him captive. As much as this story seemed to fuel the Prince of
Baden theory that surrounded him, some think it’s possible that his head injury was self-inflicted
and done so that Kasper could garner sympathy after a recent argument he and Daumer had.
The professor had told Kasper he thought the boy was a liar.
One thing no-one could refute about Kasper Hauser: Many of the stories he told of his
life were undeniably exaggerated. Even the story about spending his early years in captivity
seemed to have plenty of holes in it. For one thing, if he’d spent so much time living
without light, he would have suffered from a disease known as rickets. This occurs when
the body doesn’t receive enough vitamin D, which we naturally absorb from sunlight,
and causes the bones to soften, but no reports ever mentioned Kasper having any skeletal
deformities. The fact he seemed to very quickly adapt to the new world he found himself in
also cast doubt into people’s minds as to whether anything the boy had claimed was even
remotely true. People suspected that the attempted assassinations
on Kasper Hauser were nothing more than hoaxes, and that any injuries he sustained were carried
out by the boy himself as a plot for more attention and further pity. Although this
wouldn’t have been understood at the time, this is symptomatic of a mental health condition
known as Munchausen’s Syndrome. Those with this condition intentionally embellish details
about their lives and can even go as far as inflicting injuries on themselves as a way
to garner sympathy from those around them. The mystery was just getting stranger and
stranger… Whether true or fictionalised, Kasper Hauser
claimed on a further two instances to have been attacked by assassins intent on killing
him. After the first attack, Hauser was placed under the care of Johann Biberbach, a member
of the local authorities. On 3rd April 1830, the Biberbach household was shocked to hear
the noise of a pistol shot coming from Kasper’s bedroom. Hauser was once again found with
a bleeding wound to the head. He claimed that an unseen assailant no one else noticed had
shot him, but when pressed for details, Kasper said he could provide no details of his latest
attacker. Was it the hooded man, returning again to
silence his extremely talkative victim? Kasper later changed his story, claiming that
he’d accidentally knocked a pistol that was displayed on the wall down, causing an
accidental shot that led to his injury. Much like the previous ‘assassination attempt’,
this incident followed a similar argument wherein Kasper was accused of lying. Perhaps
the harshest review of Hauser’s character was given by Mrs. Biberbach, who called the
young man “full of vanity and spite”. The authorities decided to move Hauser once
again and in May 1830, he was transferred to the house of one Baron von Tucher. The
Baron would also go on to make several complaints about Kasper Hauser’s tall tales. The tallest
of tales would come in December of 1833, when – now at twenty-one – Hauser came home
with another heavily-bleeding wound, this time in his chest. His story was that a stranger
lured him to the Ansbach Court Garden and stabbed him when he’d arrived, leaving a
small bag behind as they fled. When the police searched the Court Garden, they did indeed
find a small purse containing a note in German that read:
“Hauser will be able to tell you quite precisely how I look and from where I am. To save Hauser
the effort, I want to tell you myself from where I come. I come from the Bavarian border,
on the river. I will even tell you the name: M. L. Ö.”
Kasper Hauser ultimately died from the wound on the 17th of December 1833. His death was
regarded as suspicious, given the number of contradictions and inconsistencies in what
he’d claimed happened. Why would an assassin intentionally leave behind a note mentioning
where he was from? Another strange detail at the scene was that there was no second
set of footprints. It had been snowing heavily, but only Hauser’s own prints were present.
If Kasper had been murdered, then the perpetrator was a ghost.
Given all these contradicting details in the story, the Ansbach court strongly suspected
that Hauser had stabbed himself – maybe for attention, like the other attacks – but
he’d ended up stabbing himself deeper than planned. Doctors at the time even agreed that
the wound could have been self-inflicted. As for the note? It became widely believed
that Hauser had just written it himself, in a ploy to create more public interest in his
story. As it turned out, it worked, but he didn’t survive to see it.
No-one knows for certain if Kaspar Hauser lied throughout his life, but there were so
many contrivances in the accounts of many of the events that he experienced – especially
the attempted assassinations – that just didn’t seem to add up. In fact, the entire
mystery that surrounded Kasper was probably thought up by Hauser himself, either as a
way of attracting attention, or as the result of severe mental illness. We may never know.
All we know is that, ultimately, the strange, enigmatic boy who wandered the streets of
Nuremberg won in the end, as his true identity is still debated to this day.
Now go watch “Man Lives 19 Years In Airport” or “The Most Shocking Unsolved Murders In
The World” for more spine-chilling mysteries!
