WEBVTT - Kaspar Hauser Came to Town 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:03.640 Hey, this is Danish sports. Just one quick note of 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:06.560 housekeeping if you are listening to this on release day. 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:10.600 Today is also the release day of my brand new book, 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:15.040 The Arcane Arts by SD Coverly. Sd Coverly is the 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:17.959 pen name I use for me and my friend and 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:22.080 co writer Dan Frye. It is a magical fantasy book 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.160 about a grad student and her professor studying illegal, forbidden 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:28.840 magic and solving a murder mystery while they do it. 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.080 If that it all interests you, please pick up a 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:34.960 copy of The Arcane Arts. We had a great time 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.880 writing it. I really think if you like this podcast, 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.360 I think you'll enjoy it. That said, let's get into 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:48.120 the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:52.160 and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:58.560 On May twenty sixth, eighteen twenty six, a cobbler named 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.840 Georg Leonard Weike was walking through the town of Nuremberg. 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.560 Even though it was the afternoon, the city was sparse, 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.240 almost abandoned. It was a holiday, and many of the 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.600 town's residents were off in the countryside enjoying the nice 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:20.080 spring weather. But something caught Vicman's eye as he walked 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.959 a young man, maybe a teenager of sixteen or seventeen, 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:30.440 stumbling awkwardly down a nearby hill. The boy was stocky, 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.560 with an unusual lumbering gait and blue eyes that seemed 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:40.280 to Vicman almost vacant. The boy shouted a phrase that 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:45.399 can be translated to hey lad, a casual greeting that 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:51.080 masters would use to greet their apprentices. Oddly casual for 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.120 a teenager to use toward an adult man in his fifties, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:59.400 which Bekman was. The boy also called out the name 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:04.160 of a shrew, and generously Vicmann agreed to help the 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:09.720 strange vagrant boy to his destination. It soon became apparent 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.960 that this boy only knew a few phrases, which he 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:18.400 repeated over and over. One of those phrases was I 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.320 want to be a cavalry man like my father was. 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:26.720 But where had this boy come from? A wandering stranger 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:31.320 who stumbled out of the forest and into Nuremberg. Eventually 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.079 Vickman brought him to the police station and more of 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:41.079 the boy's story would emerge. The boy's name was Casper Hauser, 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.919 and according to him and the letters he had been 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.360 carrying on his person, he had lived his entire life 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:55.000 up until this point in a solitary cell, raised entirely 0:02:55.160 --> 0:03:00.320 alone in isolation, A man wearing a mask had given 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.720 him water and bread every day. On occasion, the water 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.919 would be more bitter than normal, and casper Hauser would 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.400 awaken the next day to find that his hair and 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:16.040 nails had been cut and his straw had been changed. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.679 That was the extent of his human interaction. He didn't 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:26.480 know the difference between night and day. The story was astonishing, 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:33.080 and almost immediately casper Hauser became famous around Europe, a strange, 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:39.200 savage boy raised in conditions of such enthralling cruelty, under 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:45.960 such mysterious conditions. Philosophers from the seventeenth century on had 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:51.400 become fascinated by legends and stories of enph savages or 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:56.160 children who were raised by animals. For what those stories 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:00.920 might reveal about humanity? What was it that made us human? 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:05.200 Was it something inherent inside of man? Or was it 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:10.240 something learned? There were also religious implications to these stories. 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:15.400 Would a child raised by animals understand or know God? 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.719 Would he be innocent of all of the sins of man? 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:25.240 For ever? Childlike beyond the salaciousness of his alleged origin. 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:30.240 From the moment Casper Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg, 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:35.040 he became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:39.880 had been captivating Europe for a century, a living experiment. 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.520 As Martin Kitchen wrote in his book, Casper Hauser Europe's 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:49.080 child quote. Here was a blank screen on which could 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.880 be projected the fantasies of those with whom he came 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:57.600 into close contact. Here was another of those wild children 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.880 who people ancient mythology, and who had appeared infrequently in 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:06.279 Europe since the fourteenth century, and had excited philosophers and 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.479 medical men to speculate on the nature of men. But 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:15.760 of course, given just how salacious and mysterious this foundling 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.120 child was, there was also going to be rumors. Why 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:24.640 had this boy been hidden away for so long and 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.640 under such extreme conditions, If not because those in power 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:34.239 had a reason for doing it. It sounds like something 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.160 out of a fairy tale, that a lost, orphaned child 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.039 might be something more than he first appears. But the 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:49.440 rumors began swirling. Casper Hauser, they said, wasn't just a 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:55.120 lost child. He was a lost prince. I'm Danish worts 0:05:55.400 --> 0:06:02.000 and this is noble blood. It's a fantasy. I think 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:06.240 that everybody has probably had at least once, a fantasy 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:11.440 popularized by Sigmund Freud, that your parents secretly adopted you, 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:16.600 and that your real parents are wealthy, powerful royal. And 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.440 so maybe it's inevitable that when a boy stumbled into 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:26.839 Nuremberg under mysterious circumstances, the questions would begin swirling about 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:31.520 who he really was and where he came from. When 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:37.080 Casper Hauser first appeared, his walk unsteady and his language limited, 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:42.080 he carried with him two letters. The first was purportedly 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.640 written by his mother, announcing that his name was Casper, 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.599 he was born on April thirtieth, eighteen twelve, and that 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.640 his father, now deceased, had been a cavalryman of the 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:59.680 sixth Regiment. The second letter was from Casper Hauser's mysterious 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.799 case caretaker or jailer. The masked man that Casper recalled 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:09.600 had brought him bread and water. The letter was addressed 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:14.760 to Captain Vaughan Wessening, commander of the sixth Cavalry Regiment. 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.880 It read quote, I am a poor laborer with ten 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.440 children of my own. I have enough to do just 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.240 to keep them alive. His mother asked me to bring 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:29.200 up the boy. I raised him as a Christian, and 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.800 since eighteen twelve I have never let him go a 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.600 step away from the house. So no one knows where 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.520 he has been brought up, and he himself does not 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.520 know the name of my house nor of the place. 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.960 You might ask him, but he can't tell you. Ah, 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.160 So anyone trying to figure out where Casper had come 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:54.600 from would be hitting a dead end. There. The letter continued, 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:58.400 saying that Captain van Wessoning could take the boy into 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:02.880 his regiment or quote hang him by the chimney, the 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.040 sort of cruelty one might expect from a man who 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.640 kept a child imprisoned in a cell his entire life. 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.640 When the people of Nuremberg asked Casper more questions, trying 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.240 to get any more information from him, he only repeated, 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.400 I want to be a cavalryman as my father was. 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:27.280 Or don't know. He could also say horse. Casper was 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:32.480 delivered to von Wessening's stable, but the captain was understandably 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:37.160 confused and put off. A servant offered Casper beer and meat, 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.520 but he refused. He did, however, accept water and bread 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.319 He was brought to the police station, where they determined 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.960 that Casper was able to write his own name and 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:54.520 had basic familiarity with Christian prayers. His clothing was awkwardly 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:58.800 sown and ill fitting. His boots were too small. The 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:03.720 initial K was sewn into his jacket and his handkerchief. 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:09.320 Among his personal effects were a rosary, a worn out key, 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:14.240 a prayer book, a few religious tracts, and, most odd 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:19.400 of all, allegedly a folded envelope of paper containing a 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:25.040 bit of gold dust. But Casper had no papers, and 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:29.880 given that he couldn't reply meaningfully to any questions, it 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.000 was assumed he was a vagrant and he was sent 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:38.440 to prison, although it was specified that given his strange circumstances, 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:43.199 he would be locked up with quote decent prisoners instead 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:48.640 of the other random vagrants and beggars. Casper Hauser spent 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.400 two months in prison in the castle in Nuremberg, during 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:56.920 which time he became a tourist attraction, with visitors stopping 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:01.679 by in order to see the intriguing foundling. Raised in isolation, 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.640 Casper seemed to be making remarkable progress with regards to 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:11.040 his physical condition, where he had been awkwardly lumbering. When 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.960 he first appeared seemingly barely able to walk, he had 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.760 been able to climb more than ninety steps up to 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:24.839 his cell without a problem. Gradually, more details about Casper's 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.600 life would come to light, although notably Casper had no 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.320 ill will toward his captor nor anger about how he 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:36.400 was raised. Apparently, every morning when he woke up, he 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.240 would find a loaf of black bread and a pitcher 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:43.520 of water. He had only two wooden horse toys and 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:47.040 one wooden dog toy to play with, and a wooden 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.920 lidded container that he used as a commode. His door 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:55.280 was bolted on the outside, and wood was piled against 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.000 the room's small windows, so that he never saw sunlight, 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:04.160 never learn the difference between night and day. One day, 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.400 Casper had been given a sheet of paper and a pencil, 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.800 and his anonymous captor reached into the dungeon room to 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.240 teach Casper how to write his own name. He also 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.520 taught him how to walk a few steps, and taught 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:21.920 him the simple phrases to repeat that he had said 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:26.040 when he had first arrived in Nuremberg. And then Casper Hauser, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.560 approximately sixteen years old, was released into the wilds of 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:36.320 human civilization. The people of Nuremberg could barely believe how 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.559 cruel and strange this boy's saga had been. The president 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.760 of the Bavarian Court of Appeals, a man named Anselm 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:49.960 von Feuerbach, took a particular interest in investigating the case, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.800 and the city of Nuremberg itself formally adopted Casper Hauser, 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:59.520 with donations raised to pay for his care and schooling. 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.520 Casper was placed in the household of a man named 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:10.640 Friedrich Dahmer, a schoolmaster and philosopher. Dahmer, understandably fascinated by Casper, 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:16.120 began to treat him like a science experiment. Casper Hauser's 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:21.840 physical condition continued to improve. He allegedly grew two inches 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:26.400 in a single month, and according to Dahmer, his senses 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:31.240 were astonishingly acute. He had an animal like ability to 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:35.120 see in the dark, to make out impossibly faint sounds, 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.920 and to taste if his water had been diluted with 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.640 even one drop of something else. Despite attempts to feed 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:48.680 him a more varied diet, Casper only wanted bread and water, 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.640 and only after a few months was he able to 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:57.240 eat small amounts of meat occasionally he would suffer extreme convulsions. 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:02.280 Casper continued to learn rom remarkably fast. Soon he was 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:07.720 able to write and speak, identifying jokes even and Dahmer 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:13.079 discovered he had a talent for drawing. Dahmer was also 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:19.200 interested in using Casper for homeopathic experiments and experiments with 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:25.160 animal magnetism, a popular idea in nineteenth century Germany. He 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:29.520 was given homeopathic tinctures, some of which made him sick, 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.480 and he was frequently waved over with magnets and fed 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.679 magnetized water, although personally I'm not sure exactly what they 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:42.360 were trying to accomplish with that. As Kitchen wrote, quote, 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.520 he was used as a guinea pig by cranks and 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.320 amateurs who gained nothing from their experiments. He was so 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.680 frightened of these experiments that it was impossible to tell 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:57.680 whether the often violent reactions were caused by the homeopathic 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.920 medicines or by sheer terror. When he was ill, the 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:05.080 medicines he was given made him feel worse, and it 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:10.080 seemed to him that the medical profession devoted its efforts 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:15.120 towards torturing their unfortunate subjects and making the healthy sick, 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.200 all the while the mystery of his origin and his 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:25.120 true identity continued to be the center of conversations around 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:31.880 Nuremberg and all across Europe. Casper Hauser, the abused, imprisoned 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:37.240 child who escaped his mysterious confinement with an innocent, almost 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:42.520 animal like naivete, and who now among humanity, was making 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:47.480 enormous strides of progress. I mean, how could the writers resist? 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.960 Was he really just a random foundling? It seemed unlikely. 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.520 Why had there been such an effort to keep him 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:00.160 hidden if not for the fact that Casper house Us 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:05.840 was secretly someone important, Consider the fact that he had 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:10.960 been confined and imprisoned, but otherwise kept in remarkably good 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:18.280 health and in hygienic conditions. No masked man had been identified, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.200 and there were no leads as to where Casper Hauser 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:25.160 had actually come from, despite large rewards from police for 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:30.000 any information. Surely people whispered that was a sign that 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.720 this was the work of rich and powerful people, able 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:37.200 to cover their tracks so completely that they would never 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:41.080 be caught. And despite the fact that he had barely 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.440 been able to write his name, Casper Hauser was by 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.280 this point fluent and quick to learn. There seemed to 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:54.400 be something innately extraordinary about him. This was no ordinary boy. 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.920 People believed. It seemed obvious that he was someone special, 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:04.840 someone noble, someone royal even, But why had he been 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.400 imprisoned and hidden away? And by who? And if he 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:16.000 wasn't merely Casper Hauser, then who was he. Charles, the 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.600 Grand Duke of Boden hadn't been happy about the fact 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.800 that he had to marry Stephanie de Bornay, but Napoleon's 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:28.240 France was becoming more powerful, and Stephanie was Napoleon's de 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:33.920 facto adopted daughter, a relative of Napoleon's wife Josephine, and 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.760 so the Grand Duke married her, and despite the fact 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:41.360 that the two didn't really get along, they managed to 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:46.240 have five children. Unfortunately for them, none of their surviving 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.680 children were male heirs, and so after Charles the Grand 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:55.200 Duke died in eighteen eighteen, the Duchy of Baden went 0:16:55.320 --> 0:17:00.280 to his uncle Louis the First. But maybe things weren't 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:06.399 quite as straightforward as they seemed. Charles and Stephanie had 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:11.320 had a son, an infant prince, born on September twenty ninth, 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.719 eighteen twelve, but the baby boy died after only a 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:21.359 few weeks, but had he. When casper Hauser appeared on 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:26.240 the European scene, rumors began to spread that the current 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.919 Duke Louise's mother had schemed to put her son on 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:36.159 the throne by stealing away the rightful prince and replacing 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:40.920 him in his bassinet with a sickly commoner. Was casper 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:45.760 Hauser the missing prince? With those rumors, In the words 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:50.439 of Kitchen, casper Hauser quote wasn't just a symbol for 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:54.800 primitive beauty and the purity of man's animal nature, but 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:59.000 of the perfidity of the royal family, especially among the 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:03.840 German radical of the nineteenth century. To those who had 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.480 already hated the nobility that they saw as corrupt and indulgent, 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.719 it seemed perfectly in line with their cruelty that they 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.879 might steal away a baby and torture him in isolation 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:20.720 for a decade so that their own son might inherit 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:26.840 a throne. Supporting casper Hauser as a missing prince became 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.800 a way to attack and delegitimize the current regime. There 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.239 were other theories about who casper Hauser was. If he 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.000 was a noble, maybe he was the son of a 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.959 Hungarian countess or an English royal, but something about his 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:47.679 appearance and the peculiarity of his case led many to 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:53.639 believe that something nefarious was going on, especially after the 0:18:53.720 --> 0:19:01.320 attack on Casper Hauser's life. In October of eighteen twenty nine, 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.960 while living with the teacher Dahmer, Casper Hauser and his 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:10.240 guardian had gotten into some small disagreements. Casper was indulging 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.640 in the dishonesties of a child skipping school and not 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.879 telling the truth about it. Dahmer was also getting a 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:23.080 little frustrated with his quote unquote scientific experiments on Casper, 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:28.560 seeing that the more Casper adjusted to civilized society, the 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.840 more he seemed to be losing whatever mystical quality he 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.480 had had in the first place. One day in October 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.600 of eighteen twenty nine, more than a year after Casper 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:44.080 had first arrived in Nuremberg, Casper and Dahmer had quarreled 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.280 after Casper had been caught playing hooky. The next day, 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:53.040 Dahmer returned home to a startling scene. Casper had a 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.320 large gash on his forehead. It had dripped blood all 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.720 the way from the outhouse through the first first floor 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:05.080 of the house. According to Casper, a hooded man had 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.720 attacked him in the outhouse, shouting, you still have to 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.480 die before you leave the city of Nuremberg, And though 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.320 Casper wasn't able to see the man's face, he knew 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:19.280 it was the man who had kept him captive all 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.920 of those years, the mysterious man who had brought him 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:25.760 bread and water and taught him how to write his 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:31.320 own name. The incident garnered sympathy among Casper's supporters and 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.680 renewed public interest in his case. One person who found 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.560 himself fascinated by this strange story out of Germany was 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:45.400 a British nobleman named Lord Stanhope. Stanhope was the nephew 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.800 of Prime Minister William Pitt, but his immediate family was 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:55.480 notably eccentric, and he himself was a much remark upon germanophile. 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:01.520 Stanhope met Casperhauser in May eighteen thirty one, and he 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.800 became obsessed the sort of flare of quick intimacy that 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:10.600 sometimes happens among new friends. Stanhope declared that there was 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.560 no doubt in his mind that Casper Hauser was in 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:16.960 fact of noble birth, and he began to shower him 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.959 with expensive presence. He gave Casper a life annuity of 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:24.399 five hundred goldens and one hundred goldens as pocket money, 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.119 which I'm sure was something of a weight off of 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:31.080 the shoulders of the town administrators of Nuremberg, who had 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.760 up until that point been paying for Casper Hauser's upkeep. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.400 Within no time at all, stan Hope and Hauser were 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.960 calling each other by their first names, so close that 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:47.640 some speculated that the relationship was sexual in nature. Stanhope 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:51.280 got it into his mind that Casper Hauser's true mother 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:55.159 was a Hungarian countess, and so he took Casper on 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:57.920 a trip to Hungary to see if anything might jog 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:02.879 his memory. Though Hauser's seemed to recognize a few Hungarian phrases, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.119 the trip itself did not prove anything, and ultimately it 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:13.520 was a failure. And in failure, the eccentric, impatient Stanhope 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:18.040 found that Hauser now left a bad taste in his mouth. 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.720 With the same speed that had characterized the beginning of 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:28.639 their friendship, now Stanhope turned against Casper Hauser. This wholesome, 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:33.640 wide eyed, innocent was now clingy and annoying, and though 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:36.840 Stanhope had promised that he would take Hauser with him 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:41.360 back to England. He changed his mind and instead deposited 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:45.240 the young man in Unsbach with a schoolmaster and under 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:50.320 the patronage of Anselm von Furbeck, that legal scholar and 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:54.360 president of the Bavarian Court of Appeals I had mentioned earlier. 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:01.000 Stanhope wasn't alone in souring on Casper house Er. There 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.959 were plenty of people who saw him as a sideshow, distraction, 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:10.000 or else an abject fraud to quote Kitchen again quote. 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:16.000 Many resented his fame, found his character unattractive, commented bitterly 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:21.600 on his arrogance, his mendacity, and his absurd pretensions to gentility. 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:26.000 It was grotesque to people of a conservative event that 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:30.840 this somewhat ridiculous figure should be the darling of assorted radicals, 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:37.960 devotees of alternative medicine, and practitioners of experimental pedagogy. The 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:42.600 anti Hussarians saw the whole fuss as further evidence of 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:48.080 the absurdity of radical pretensions and as an underhand attack 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:52.840 on the established order end quote. But was it possible 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:58.000 he wasn't just pretentious and absurd. Was it possible he 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:03.359 was a complete fraud? Had he stabbed himself shallowly in 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:07.720 the outhouse in order to garner sympathy. Was it possible 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:13.320 Casper Hauser had never been imprisoned at all, never raised 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:17.200 in his strange isolation. After all, there was no proof 0:24:17.240 --> 0:24:21.280 of it, No criminal had been caught. It seemed that 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:25.880 Casper Hauser was simple minded and innocent to some degree, 0:24:26.440 --> 0:24:29.960 but he also had a mean edge, and he could 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:35.840 be vain and prone to small, self aggrandizing lies, although 0:24:35.880 --> 0:24:39.480 even his sins could be explained away by his most 0:24:39.600 --> 0:24:45.359 ardent supporters. See see how even a short time among 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:50.400 the so called civilized society corrupts the pure and innocent 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:54.879 among us. The schoolmaster that Casper Hauser was living with 0:24:55.000 --> 0:25:00.239 in Ansbach was named Johann Meyer. Meyer seemed uninterested and 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:04.399 unwilling to indulge Hauser's behavior when he acted out, and 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:06.760 he found the young man a job at a local 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:11.000 law office, doing menial work as a copyist. As a 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:14.600 side note, it is extraordinary to imagine, just from a 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:19.680 psychological development perspective, that if Casper Hauser did in fact 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:23.920 live his entire life in isolation, that five years after 0:25:24.000 --> 0:25:27.560 re entering society he would be capable of working a 0:25:27.840 --> 0:25:33.760 standard administrative job. But he was even so Johann Meyer 0:25:33.800 --> 0:25:37.600 and Casper Hauser didn't get along, and on December ninth, 0:25:37.680 --> 0:25:41.639 eighteen thirty three, they had a fight. Less than a 0:25:41.720 --> 0:25:46.439 week later, Casper Hauser would have his final adventure, the 0:25:46.560 --> 0:25:51.840 last mysterious piece of the puzzle in his mysterious life. 0:25:53.320 --> 0:25:58.040 On December fourteenth, eighteen thirty three, Casper Hauser stumbled back 0:25:58.119 --> 0:26:02.520 into Johann Meyer's house, leading from a slash across his chest. 0:26:03.160 --> 0:26:06.560 While he gasped for air, he managed to explain what 0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:09.320 had happened to him. A stranger had found him in 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:12.560 the end back court gardens, had handed him a purse, 0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:17.240 and then, when Casper accepted it, had stabbed him. As 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:20.439 Casper bled in Meyer's house, he tried to explain that 0:26:20.480 --> 0:26:23.239 they needed to find the purse. He had dropped it 0:26:23.280 --> 0:26:27.080 somewhere in the gardens, but Casper was going pale. He 0:26:27.200 --> 0:26:30.720 managed to mutter a few more phrases that were impossible 0:26:30.760 --> 0:26:34.840 to make out, and then he fainted. Six days later, 0:26:35.080 --> 0:26:41.160 Casper Hauser died. He had been murdered. His exit from 0:26:41.240 --> 0:26:46.600 German society was as mysterious as his entrance. Policemen trawled 0:26:46.720 --> 0:26:49.919 the court gardens and found what they assumed to be 0:26:50.000 --> 0:26:54.760 the purse from Hauser's story with a penciled note written 0:26:54.840 --> 0:26:59.719 in backwards mirror writing. When translated, it read in German, 0:27:00.400 --> 0:27:03.560 Hauser will be able to tell you quite precisely how 0:27:03.600 --> 0:27:07.160 I look and from where I am. To save Hauser 0:27:07.200 --> 0:27:10.560 the effort, I want to tell you myself where I come. 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:14.080 And then there's a blank space. I come from from 0:27:14.600 --> 0:27:18.520 blank space, the Bavarian border, blank space on the river, 0:27:19.080 --> 0:27:22.640 blank space. I will even tell you the name m 0:27:23.200 --> 0:27:27.719 l O. Who had written this note? And what did 0:27:27.800 --> 0:27:32.560 it mean? Was Casper Hauser secretly a noble that needed 0:27:32.560 --> 0:27:35.280 to be done away with before the truth about his 0:27:35.400 --> 0:27:38.840 origin was revealed? Was the man that murdered him the 0:27:38.920 --> 0:27:42.600 same man who had kept him prisoner? Surely his violent 0:27:42.760 --> 0:27:45.560 murder proved that he was someone that those in power 0:27:45.640 --> 0:27:50.040 were trying to quiet. There was no real consensus at 0:27:50.080 --> 0:27:54.280 the time. The alleged murderer was never found and no 0:27:54.400 --> 0:28:00.639 more details came to light. His headstone read here lies Casperuser. 0:28:01.160 --> 0:28:05.680 Riddle of his time, His birth was unknown, his death 0:28:05.880 --> 0:28:12.920 mysterious eighteen thirty three. But was he actually a missing prince? 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:16.760 Even in the nineteenth century, plenty of people pointed out 0:28:16.800 --> 0:28:21.680 that it was unlikely. Otto Middelstad wrote in eighteen seventy 0:28:21.720 --> 0:28:25.840 six about how impossible it would have been to reasonably 0:28:26.000 --> 0:28:30.760 swap out the Royal Baden baby. He wrote, quote, the 0:28:30.800 --> 0:28:35.360 baby's father, grandmother, and aunt, with the ten Court physicians, 0:28:35.400 --> 0:28:39.520 the nurses and others would have seen a swap in death, 0:28:39.640 --> 0:28:43.560 and it is too absurd to suppose, on no authority 0:28:43.960 --> 0:28:47.440 that they were all parties to the plot end quote. 0:28:48.280 --> 0:28:53.200 There were enough inconsistencies in Hauser's story to wonder even 0:28:53.720 --> 0:28:56.120 if he had ever been captive at all. In the 0:28:56.160 --> 0:29:02.520 manner he described was Casper Hausers he was well developed 0:29:02.520 --> 0:29:07.080 physically and relatively capable cognitively in a way most people 0:29:07.080 --> 0:29:10.840 today would find implausible for someone who had been raised 0:29:10.960 --> 0:29:15.280 for years in a single room with no human interaction. 0:29:16.240 --> 0:29:21.080 As for his mysterious injuries, his stabbings by a mysterious 0:29:21.080 --> 0:29:24.720 man who was never caught, did Hauser actually do them 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:30.040 to himself for sympathy, for attention, to bring people around 0:29:30.120 --> 0:29:34.280 to his side, to make himself feel important, for people 0:29:34.320 --> 0:29:39.440 to pay attention to his story again? Today, some historians 0:29:39.480 --> 0:29:44.280 believe that Casper Hauser's death was actually a tragic accident 0:29:44.880 --> 0:29:48.239 that he invented the story of the masked man and 0:29:48.280 --> 0:29:51.280 the purse in the garden, and that he had written 0:29:51.360 --> 0:29:55.920 and folded the mirror code letter and then stabbed himself, 0:29:56.480 --> 0:30:00.680 but made a mistake and accidentally went to deep with 0:30:00.760 --> 0:30:05.720 the knife. A twenty twenty three study indicated that Casper 0:30:05.800 --> 0:30:09.840 Hauser had the mark of having received a cowpox vaccination 0:30:10.000 --> 0:30:14.400