Why Was This Feral Child the Most Wanted Person in the World?

today's video is kindly sponsored by bright sellers a monthly wine club that matches you with wine you'll love find out more later in the video hey 42 here one spring day in 1828 a disheveled teenage boy shuffled his way into the city of noremberg which at the time was part of the kingdom of bavaria the boy slowly made his way to the town square but when he arrived he just stood there awkwardly holding an envelope out in front of him as if to hand it to someone only he could see after some time a local shoemaker took pity on the boy asking him if he needed any help instead of answering the boy simply pressed the envelope he was carrying into the shoemaker's hands the letter was addressed to captain friedrich von wessenick of the local cavalry regiment and so no doubt a little confused at this point the shoemaker led the way to the cavalry headquarters captain von vesinig was tracked down without too much trouble and the boy handed over his letter without speaking a word a deepening crease appeared between the cavalryman's brows as he began to read the letter was from someone claiming to be the boy's guardian and it explained how the boy wished to be trained as a cavalryman all reasonable enough so far but the note ended with an ultimatum captain von wessenick was invited to either hire the boy or hang him i enjoy cooking and i have a little confession to make i love to drink wine whilst i'm doing it i honestly think there are a few small pleasures in life that are better than cracking open a new bottle of a deep hearty red whilst making dinner so that's why i love bright cellars a wine box experience that pairs you with the wine you'll love delivered straight to your door you start by taking their quick online quiz to determine your taste preferences with fun questions like what's your go-to alcoholic drink your favorite juice and your favorite kind of chocolate then they match you with a selection of top wines that you are most likely to enjoy from around the world brightsellers actually uses an algorithm to compare your preferences with 18 different attributes so you'll have full confidence that you'll absolutely love every single wine you receive and they'll ship them right to your doorstep via courier i also really like that brightsellers educates you about the wine you're drinking it feels so much more intimate than store-bought wine and it makes each and every bottle a unique experience you can try bright cellars today by clicking the link in the description box below they are giving my viewers an amazing 60 off their first four bottle box it seems the captain wasn't a fan of either of those options because instead of giving the boy a job or murdering him on the spot he promptly marched him directly to the local police station the police began to question the boy trying to find out who he was and what the hell he was up to but they were unable to get anything out of him at least nothing intelligible the boy showed no sign he understood anything that was being said to him and he didn't seem to be able to talk beyond the few odd phrases he would blurt house at random intervals including i want to be a cavalryman like my father was and horse horse in the end he was given a pencil and paper and there he was able to write just two words his name casper hauser from what i've told you about casper so far i expect you'd assume there was really something quite wrong with him and you're probably right but this was 1828 and people didn't tend to have much time for the kinds of illnesses you can't actually see so instead of trying to help him in some way the authority's labelled casper a vagabond and threw him in jail it was standard practice at the time to lock people up for the heinous crime of being homeless not that casper seemed to begrudge this punishment and if anything he thrived in prison though for reasons nobody could quite understand he refused to eat or drink anything other than bread and water extreme dietary requirements aside the more cuspar interacted with his guards and the string of curious city officials who came to visit him the more he came out of his shell in fact it isn't an exaggeration to say that kasper hauser underwent something of a transformation in the two months he spent behind bars during that time his language skills almost non-existent when he arrived in norenburg improved at an incredible rate and before long he was able to tell his captors his remarkable life story up until that point it had been assumed casper was a foundling a child abandoned by his parents and left to fend for himself somewhere out there in the vast forests of central europe that would have been quite the tale in itself but as it turned out casper's upbringing was far far weirder than that for as long as he could remember casper had been kept against his will in a tiny windowless room just two meters long one meter wide and one and a half meters tall the room well cell had been kept almost pitch black at all times and had contained nothing more than a single straw bed and the small carved wooden horse to play with casper had absolutely no idea who he was or why he was being kept in this way and for almost his entire life he'd had no contact with the outside world whatsoever in fact his only sign there was an outside world beyond the walls of his tiny cell was the occasional distant noise that reached his ears and the tray of bread and water that appeared by his bed each morning which explained why he refused to eat anything else upon finding himself in prison in nuremberg this brutally limited existence was all casper had known from infancy until the age of 15 or 16. when a hooded man began to visit his tiny world out of the blue the stranger who took care never to reveal his face taught casper his name and the few phrases he'd known when he arrived in norenburg the stranger had also taught casper how to write a few words and even how to walk getting around isn't all that important when your entire known universe is two meters long casper's story was so shocking that it soon spread gaining him a certain kind of celebrity status across the city and as we all know celebrities are above the law and never have to actually suffer the consequences of their crimes so casper despite still technically being a vagabond was soon released from prison over the next few years he would be taken into the care of a string of important people who took an interest in his case under the patronage of these new benefactors casper was clothed fed and given a roof over his head he was also educated and taught how to behave all proper-like but just when it seemed that things were finally going well for him after the trauma of his upbringing casper's past caught up with him in a dramatic fashion about a year after he first turned up in nuremberg casper was ambushed and attacked in his home by a hooded figure he was found shortly afterwards carrying in the cellar with blood gushing from a wound on his forehead and the assailant long gone it seemed that somebody wanted casper hauser dead the attack caused the 19th century equivalent of a media storm and before long half of europe was talking about this particular foundling with an even more peculiar past it was feared another attempt on casper's life might be imminent and so he was put under armed guard by the king of bavaria himself ludwig the first but this increased scrutiny brought with it new questions just who the hell was this boy and why had he been hidden away in a tiny cell for most of his life was someone trying to silence him and if so what secrets did he know it wasn't long before someone made an interesting connection that seemed to provide a neat little answer to all these questions you see casper had been born in 1812 around the same time as the infant prince of a noble family known as the house of barden tragically the young prince of baden had passed away when he was just a few weeks old or had he according to some the prince was very much alive but he'd been snatched away soon after he was born and disposed of not killed but locked away in a very small very sparse cell and forgotten about for 16 long years the motive for this baby napping was clear the prince had been the only son and heir of the grand duke of house barden and eliminating him caused the line of succession to divert to a different part of the family tree when the duke passed away in 1818 it was a pretty wild theory but even before possible prince caspar showed up in 1828 there had been some strange rumors swirling around the house of barden including that the prince's mother never saw her son's body before he was buried it was enough to get people wondering and it really did seem that somebody wanted casper out of the picture because just two years after the first attempt on his life unknown forces came for him once again when he was attacked after being lord into a secluded spot by a stranger casper was stabbed in the chest and this time the wound proved fatal he died five days later just before christmas in 1833 he was 21 years old at the time to heap another spoonful of mystery onto casper's life story a note its word scrawled in mirror writing was found near where the fatal stabbing took place this is what it said 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 e it's almost 200 years since that letter was written but as yet nobody has been able to figure out exactly what it means although we do have a pretty good idea who wrote it perhaps you have your suspicions too if not let's take a quick look back through casper's story a tale so outlandish it's almost unbelievable in fact let's face it it is unbelievable according to casper himself he was raised in little more than a well-appointed coffin where he never learned to walk talk or even stand and only ate bread and water if caspar really had been brought up under these conditions for almost his entire childhood the boy who eventually emerged into the sunlight in 1828 would have been irrevocably damaged both physically and mentally casper certainly displayed real signs of mental impairment when he first showed up in nuremberg but within the space of a few weeks he went from hardly being able to speak a word to telling his entire life story in minute detail to put that into perspective in the relatively small number of documented cases where children have been deprived of language until their teenage years few if any were able to master the complexities of a language to the level of a native speaker even after decades of living a normal life most modern retellings of casper's story have him down as near enough crippled when he arrived in norenburg with a pained shuffling gate soft feet that appeared to never have been walked on and eyes so sensitive to light he was almost blind when the sun was up in reality most of these details have been added retrospectively by people looking to add a bit more credibility to the story hauser may have been a little grubby when he turned up in nuremberg but he could work just fine and while some sources suggest he had keen night vision he wasn't blinded by sunlight as for that diet of his anyone who ate only bread and water would be dead from scurvy in a matter of months let alone 16 years so yeah it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that most people who spent serious time researching casper house's life have come to the obvious conclusion he was a fraud a con man who told tall tales to gain the attention of important people as for all the window dressing that came with the story the cryptic notes and mysterious attacks casper just made it up the various letters involved also strong evidence of having been written by casper himself and the attacks never really happened casper simply wounded himself in order to get attention it's generally accepted that casper's death was a weird case of accidental suicide he tried to stab himself up a little bit for effect and ended up stabbing himself to death it's beyond doubt that casper wasn't all he claimed to be but that doesn't make his story any less interesting we're talking about some utterly random unremarkable guy from the 19th century who managed to turn himself into an international celebrity just by chatting absolute the mystery of casper hauser has fascinated generation after generation in the last 200 years or so during that time his story has cropped up in the work of such literary legends as herman melville hans christian anderson leo tolstoy and robert a heinlein to name just a few he's been the subject of songs at least one film several plays and countless documentaries casper may not have been a tragic figure raised in unspeakably terrible conditions he claimed to be but he was undoubtedly one of the most successful attention seekers ever to have lived and despite all we know about him today plenty of people still believe he was the dirty secret of one of europe's ruling families if not the house of baden then possibly hungarian nobility or british royalty over the years people have made various attempts to prove these connections in 2002 samples of casper's dna were analyzed by scientists from the institute for forensic medicine at the university of munster in germany six samples were tested in all gathered from strands of casper's hair and from his possessions the samples were compared with a known descendant of the house of baden and whilst the results were inconclusive they were similar enough that a familial relationship couldn't be ruled out just another unexpected twist in the strange tale of casper hauser thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 921,064

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Id: mVasrlkqMCg

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021

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[u/Nelbo76]

Is this Thoughty2s video ??