Speaker 1: Hey, this is Danish sports. Just one quick note of
Speaker 1: housekeeping if you are listening to this on release day.
Speaker 1: Today is also the release day of my brand new book,
Speaker 1: The Arcane Arts by SD Coverly. Sd Coverly is the
Speaker 1: pen name I use for me and my friend and
Speaker 1: co writer Dan Frye. It is a magical fantasy book
Speaker 1: about a grad student and her professor studying illegal, forbidden
Speaker 1: magic and solving a murder mystery while they do it.
Speaker 1: If that it all interests you, please pick up a
Speaker 1: copy of The Arcane Arts. We had a great time
Speaker 1: writing it. I really think if you like this podcast,
Speaker 1: I think you'll enjoy it. That said, let's get into
Speaker 1: the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 1: On May twenty sixth, eighteen twenty six, a cobbler named
Speaker 1: Georg Leonard Weike was walking through the town of Nuremberg.
Speaker 1: Even though it was the afternoon, the city was sparse,
Speaker 1: almost abandoned. It was a holiday, and many of the
Speaker 1: town's residents were off in the countryside enjoying the nice
Speaker 1: spring weather. But something caught Vicman's eye as he walked
Speaker 1: a young man, maybe a teenager of sixteen or seventeen,
Speaker 1: stumbling awkwardly down a nearby hill. The boy was stocky,
Speaker 1: with an unusual lumbering gait and blue eyes that seemed
Speaker 1: to Vicman almost vacant. The boy shouted a phrase that
Speaker 1: can be translated to hey lad, a casual greeting that
Speaker 1: masters would use to greet their apprentices. Oddly casual for
Speaker 1: a teenager to use toward an adult man in his fifties,
Speaker 1: which Bekman was. The boy also called out the name
Speaker 1: of a shrew, and generously Vicmann agreed to help the
Speaker 1: strange vagrant boy to his destination. It soon became apparent
Speaker 1: that this boy only knew a few phrases, which he
Speaker 1: repeated over and over. One of those phrases was I
Speaker 1: want to be a cavalry man like my father was.
Speaker 1: But where had this boy come from? A wandering stranger
Speaker 1: who stumbled out of the forest and into Nuremberg. Eventually
Speaker 1: Vickman brought him to the police station and more of
Speaker 1: the boy's story would emerge. The boy's name was Casper Hauser,
Speaker 1: and according to him and the letters he had been
Speaker 1: carrying on his person, he had lived his entire life
Speaker 1: up until this point in a solitary cell, raised entirely
Speaker 1: alone in isolation, A man wearing a mask had given
Speaker 1: him water and bread every day. On occasion, the water
Speaker 1: would be more bitter than normal, and casper Hauser would
Speaker 1: awaken the next day to find that his hair and
Speaker 1: nails had been cut and his straw had been changed.
Speaker 1: That was the extent of his human interaction. He didn't
Speaker 1: know the difference between night and day. The story was astonishing,
Speaker 1: and almost immediately casper Hauser became famous around Europe, a strange,
Speaker 1: savage boy raised in conditions of such enthralling cruelty, under
Speaker 1: such mysterious conditions. Philosophers from the seventeenth century on had
Speaker 1: become fascinated by legends and stories of enph savages or
Speaker 1: children who were raised by animals. For what those stories
Speaker 1: might reveal about humanity? What was it that made us human?
Speaker 1: Was it something inherent inside of man? Or was it
Speaker 1: something learned? There were also religious implications to these stories.
Speaker 1: Would a child raised by animals understand or know God?
Speaker 1: Would he be innocent of all of the sins of man?
Speaker 1: For ever? Childlike beyond the salaciousness of his alleged origin.
Speaker 1: From the moment Casper Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: he became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that
Speaker 1: had been captivating Europe for a century, a living experiment.
Speaker 1: As Martin Kitchen wrote in his book, Casper Hauser Europe's
Speaker 1: child quote. Here was a blank screen on which could
Speaker 1: be projected the fantasies of those with whom he came
Speaker 1: into close contact. Here was another of those wild children
Speaker 1: who people ancient mythology, and who had appeared infrequently in
Speaker 1: Europe since the fourteenth century, and had excited philosophers and
Speaker 1: medical men to speculate on the nature of men. But
Speaker 1: of course, given just how salacious and mysterious this foundling
Speaker 1: child was, there was also going to be rumors. Why
Speaker 1: had this boy been hidden away for so long and
Speaker 1: under such extreme conditions, If not because those in power
Speaker 1: had a reason for doing it. It sounds like something
Speaker 1: out of a fairy tale, that a lost, orphaned child
Speaker 1: might be something more than he first appears. But the
Speaker 1: rumors began swirling. Casper Hauser, they said, wasn't just a
Speaker 1: lost child. He was a lost prince. I'm Danish worts
Speaker 1: and this is noble blood. It's a fantasy. I think
Speaker 1: that everybody has probably had at least once, a fantasy
Speaker 1: popularized by Sigmund Freud, that your parents secretly adopted you,
Speaker 1: and that your real parents are wealthy, powerful royal. And
Speaker 1: so maybe it's inevitable that when a boy stumbled into
Speaker 1: Nuremberg under mysterious circumstances, the questions would begin swirling about
Speaker 1: who he really was and where he came from. When
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser first appeared, his walk unsteady and his language limited,
Speaker 1: he carried with him two letters. The first was purportedly
Speaker 1: written by his mother, announcing that his name was Casper,
Speaker 1: he was born on April thirtieth, eighteen twelve, and that
Speaker 1: his father, now deceased, had been a cavalryman of the
Speaker 1: sixth Regiment. The second letter was from Casper Hauser's mysterious
Speaker 1: case caretaker or jailer. The masked man that Casper recalled
Speaker 1: had brought him bread and water. The letter was addressed
Speaker 1: to Captain Vaughan Wessening, commander of the sixth Cavalry Regiment.
Speaker 1: It read quote, I am a poor laborer with ten
Speaker 1: children of my own. I have enough to do just
Speaker 1: to keep them alive. His mother asked me to bring
Speaker 1: up the boy. I raised him as a Christian, and
Speaker 1: since eighteen twelve I have never let him go a
Speaker 1: step away from the house. So no one knows where
Speaker 1: he has been brought up, and he himself does not
Speaker 1: know the name of my house nor of the place.
Speaker 1: You might ask him, but he can't tell you. Ah,
Speaker 1: So anyone trying to figure out where Casper had come
Speaker 1: from would be hitting a dead end. There. The letter continued,
Speaker 1: saying that Captain van Wessoning could take the boy into
Speaker 1: his regiment or quote hang him by the chimney, the
Speaker 1: sort of cruelty one might expect from a man who
Speaker 1: kept a child imprisoned in a cell his entire life.
Speaker 1: When the people of Nuremberg asked Casper more questions, trying
Speaker 1: to get any more information from him, he only repeated,
Speaker 1: I want to be a cavalryman as my father was.
Speaker 1: Or don't know. He could also say horse. Casper was
Speaker 1: delivered to von Wessening's stable, but the captain was understandably
Speaker 1: confused and put off. A servant offered Casper beer and meat,
Speaker 1: but he refused. He did, however, accept water and bread
Speaker 1: He was brought to the police station, where they determined
Speaker 1: that Casper was able to write his own name and
Speaker 1: had basic familiarity with Christian prayers. His clothing was awkwardly
Speaker 1: sown and ill fitting. His boots were too small. The
Speaker 1: initial K was sewn into his jacket and his handkerchief.
Speaker 1: Among his personal effects were a rosary, a worn out key,
Speaker 1: a prayer book, a few religious tracts, and, most odd
Speaker 1: of all, allegedly a folded envelope of paper containing a
Speaker 1: bit of gold dust. But Casper had no papers, and
Speaker 1: given that he couldn't reply meaningfully to any questions, it
Speaker 1: was assumed he was a vagrant and he was sent
Speaker 1: to prison, although it was specified that given his strange circumstances,
Speaker 1: he would be locked up with quote decent prisoners instead
Speaker 1: of the other random vagrants and beggars. Casper Hauser spent
Speaker 1: two months in prison in the castle in Nuremberg, during
Speaker 1: which time he became a tourist attraction, with visitors stopping
Speaker 1: by in order to see the intriguing foundling. Raised in isolation,
Speaker 1: Casper seemed to be making remarkable progress with regards to
Speaker 1: his physical condition, where he had been awkwardly lumbering. When
Speaker 1: he first appeared seemingly barely able to walk, he had
Speaker 1: been able to climb more than ninety steps up to
Speaker 1: his cell without a problem. Gradually, more details about Casper's
Speaker 1: life would come to light, although notably Casper had no
Speaker 1: ill will toward his captor nor anger about how he
Speaker 1: was raised. Apparently, every morning when he woke up, he
Speaker 1: would find a loaf of black bread and a pitcher
Speaker 1: of water. He had only two wooden horse toys and
Speaker 1: one wooden dog toy to play with, and a wooden
Speaker 1: lidded container that he used as a commode. His door
Speaker 1: was bolted on the outside, and wood was piled against
Speaker 1: the room's small windows, so that he never saw sunlight,
Speaker 1: never learn the difference between night and day. One day,
Speaker 1: Casper had been given a sheet of paper and a pencil,
Speaker 1: and his anonymous captor reached into the dungeon room to
Speaker 1: teach Casper how to write his own name. He also
Speaker 1: taught him how to walk a few steps, and taught
Speaker 1: him the simple phrases to repeat that he had said
Speaker 1: when he had first arrived in Nuremberg. And then Casper Hauser,
Speaker 1: approximately sixteen years old, was released into the wilds of
Speaker 1: human civilization. The people of Nuremberg could barely believe how
Speaker 1: cruel and strange this boy's saga had been. The president
Speaker 1: of the Bavarian Court of Appeals, a man named Anselm
Speaker 1: von Feuerbach, took a particular interest in investigating the case,
Speaker 1: and the city of Nuremberg itself formally adopted Casper Hauser,
Speaker 1: with donations raised to pay for his care and schooling.
Speaker 1: Casper was placed in the household of a man named
Speaker 1: Friedrich Dahmer, a schoolmaster and philosopher. Dahmer, understandably fascinated by Casper,
Speaker 1: began to treat him like a science experiment. Casper Hauser's
Speaker 1: physical condition continued to improve. He allegedly grew two inches
Speaker 1: in a single month, and according to Dahmer, his senses
Speaker 1: were astonishingly acute. He had an animal like ability to
Speaker 1: see in the dark, to make out impossibly faint sounds,
Speaker 1: and to taste if his water had been diluted with
Speaker 1: even one drop of something else. Despite attempts to feed
Speaker 1: him a more varied diet, Casper only wanted bread and water,
Speaker 1: and only after a few months was he able to
Speaker 1: eat small amounts of meat occasionally he would suffer extreme convulsions.
Speaker 1: Casper continued to learn rom remarkably fast. Soon he was
Speaker 1: able to write and speak, identifying jokes even and Dahmer
Speaker 1: discovered he had a talent for drawing. Dahmer was also
Speaker 1: interested in using Casper for homeopathic experiments and experiments with
Speaker 1: animal magnetism, a popular idea in nineteenth century Germany. He
Speaker 1: was given homeopathic tinctures, some of which made him sick,
Speaker 1: and he was frequently waved over with magnets and fed
Speaker 1: magnetized water, although personally I'm not sure exactly what they
Speaker 1: were trying to accomplish with that. As Kitchen wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: he was used as a guinea pig by cranks and
Speaker 1: amateurs who gained nothing from their experiments. He was so
Speaker 1: frightened of these experiments that it was impossible to tell
Speaker 1: whether the often violent reactions were caused by the homeopathic
Speaker 1: medicines or by sheer terror. When he was ill, the
Speaker 1: medicines he was given made him feel worse, and it
Speaker 1: seemed to him that the medical profession devoted its efforts
Speaker 1: towards torturing their unfortunate subjects and making the healthy sick,
Speaker 1: all the while the mystery of his origin and his
Speaker 1: true identity continued to be the center of conversations around
Speaker 1: Nuremberg and all across Europe. Casper Hauser, the abused, imprisoned
Speaker 1: child who escaped his mysterious confinement with an innocent, almost
Speaker 1: animal like naivete, and who now among humanity, was making
Speaker 1: enormous strides of progress. I mean, how could the writers resist?
Speaker 1: Was he really just a random foundling? It seemed unlikely.
Speaker 1: Why had there been such an effort to keep him
Speaker 1: hidden if not for the fact that Casper house Us
Speaker 1: was secretly someone important, Consider the fact that he had
Speaker 1: been confined and imprisoned, but otherwise kept in remarkably good
Speaker 1: health and in hygienic conditions. No masked man had been identified,
Speaker 1: and there were no leads as to where Casper Hauser
Speaker 1: had actually come from, despite large rewards from police for
Speaker 1: any information. Surely people whispered that was a sign that
Speaker 1: this was the work of rich and powerful people, able
Speaker 1: to cover their tracks so completely that they would never
Speaker 1: be caught. And despite the fact that he had barely
Speaker 1: been able to write his name, Casper Hauser was by
Speaker 1: this point fluent and quick to learn. There seemed to
Speaker 1: be something innately extraordinary about him. This was no ordinary boy.
Speaker 1: People believed. It seemed obvious that he was someone special,
Speaker 1: someone noble, someone royal even, But why had he been
Speaker 1: imprisoned and hidden away? And by who? And if he
Speaker 1: wasn't merely Casper Hauser, then who was he. Charles, the
Speaker 1: Grand Duke of Boden hadn't been happy about the fact
Speaker 1: that he had to marry Stephanie de Bornay, but Napoleon's
Speaker 1: France was becoming more powerful, and Stephanie was Napoleon's de
Speaker 1: facto adopted daughter, a relative of Napoleon's wife Josephine, and
Speaker 1: so the Grand Duke married her, and despite the fact
Speaker 1: that the two didn't really get along, they managed to
Speaker 1: have five children. Unfortunately for them, none of their surviving
Speaker 1: children were male heirs, and so after Charles the Grand
Speaker 1: Duke died in eighteen eighteen, the Duchy of Baden went
Speaker 1: to his uncle Louis the First. But maybe things weren't
Speaker 1: quite as straightforward as they seemed. Charles and Stephanie had
Speaker 1: had a son, an infant prince, born on September twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve, but the baby boy died after only a
Speaker 1: few weeks, but had he. When casper Hauser appeared on
Speaker 1: the European scene, rumors began to spread that the current
Speaker 1: Duke Louise's mother had schemed to put her son on
Speaker 1: the throne by stealing away the rightful prince and replacing
Speaker 1: him in his bassinet with a sickly commoner. Was casper
Speaker 1: Hauser the missing prince? With those rumors, In the words
Speaker 1: of Kitchen, casper Hauser quote wasn't just a symbol for
Speaker 1: primitive beauty and the purity of man's animal nature, but
Speaker 1: of the perfidity of the royal family, especially among the
Speaker 1: German radical of the nineteenth century. To those who had
Speaker 1: already hated the nobility that they saw as corrupt and indulgent,
Speaker 1: it seemed perfectly in line with their cruelty that they
Speaker 1: might steal away a baby and torture him in isolation
Speaker 1: for a decade so that their own son might inherit
Speaker 1: a throne. Supporting casper Hauser as a missing prince became
Speaker 1: a way to attack and delegitimize the current regime. There
Speaker 1: were other theories about who casper Hauser was. If he
Speaker 1: was a noble, maybe he was the son of a
Speaker 1: Hungarian countess or an English royal, but something about his
Speaker 1: appearance and the peculiarity of his case led many to
Speaker 1: believe that something nefarious was going on, especially after the
Speaker 1: attack on Casper Hauser's life. In October of eighteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: while living with the teacher Dahmer, Casper Hauser and his
Speaker 1: guardian had gotten into some small disagreements. Casper was indulging
Speaker 1: in the dishonesties of a child skipping school and not
Speaker 1: telling the truth about it. Dahmer was also getting a
Speaker 1: little frustrated with his quote unquote scientific experiments on Casper,
Speaker 1: seeing that the more Casper adjusted to civilized society, the
Speaker 1: more he seemed to be losing whatever mystical quality he
Speaker 1: had had in the first place. One day in October
Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty nine, more than a year after Casper
Speaker 1: had first arrived in Nuremberg, Casper and Dahmer had quarreled
Speaker 1: after Casper had been caught playing hooky. The next day,
Speaker 1: Dahmer returned home to a startling scene. Casper had a
Speaker 1: large gash on his forehead. It had dripped blood all
Speaker 1: the way from the outhouse through the first first floor
Speaker 1: of the house. According to Casper, a hooded man had
Speaker 1: attacked him in the outhouse, shouting, you still have to
Speaker 1: die before you leave the city of Nuremberg, And though
Speaker 1: Casper wasn't able to see the man's face, he knew
Speaker 1: it was the man who had kept him captive all
Speaker 1: of those years, the mysterious man who had brought him
Speaker 1: bread and water and taught him how to write his
Speaker 1: own name. The incident garnered sympathy among Casper's supporters and
Speaker 1: renewed public interest in his case. One person who found
Speaker 1: himself fascinated by this strange story out of Germany was
Speaker 1: a British nobleman named Lord Stanhope. Stanhope was the nephew
Speaker 1: of Prime Minister William Pitt, but his immediate family was
Speaker 1: notably eccentric, and he himself was a much remark upon germanophile.
Speaker 1: Stanhope met Casperhauser in May eighteen thirty one, and he
Speaker 1: became obsessed the sort of flare of quick intimacy that
Speaker 1: sometimes happens among new friends. Stanhope declared that there was
Speaker 1: no doubt in his mind that Casper Hauser was in
Speaker 1: fact of noble birth, and he began to shower him
Speaker 1: with expensive presence. He gave Casper a life annuity of
Speaker 1: five hundred goldens and one hundred goldens as pocket money,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure was something of a weight off of
Speaker 1: the shoulders of the town administrators of Nuremberg, who had
Speaker 1: up until that point been paying for Casper Hauser's upkeep.
Speaker 1: Within no time at all, stan Hope and Hauser were
Speaker 1: calling each other by their first names, so close that
Speaker 1: some speculated that the relationship was sexual in nature. Stanhope
Speaker 1: got it into his mind that Casper Hauser's true mother
Speaker 1: was a Hungarian countess, and so he took Casper on
Speaker 1: a trip to Hungary to see if anything might jog
Speaker 1: his memory. Though Hauser's seemed to recognize a few Hungarian phrases,
Speaker 1: the trip itself did not prove anything, and ultimately it
Speaker 1: was a failure. And in failure, the eccentric, impatient Stanhope
Speaker 1: found that Hauser now left a bad taste in his mouth.
Speaker 1: With the same speed that had characterized the beginning of
Speaker 1: their friendship, now Stanhope turned against Casper Hauser. This wholesome,
Speaker 1: wide eyed, innocent was now clingy and annoying, and though
Speaker 1: Stanhope had promised that he would take Hauser with him
Speaker 1: back to England. He changed his mind and instead deposited
Speaker 1: the young man in Unsbach with a schoolmaster and under
Speaker 1: the patronage of Anselm von Furbeck, that legal scholar and
Speaker 1: president of the Bavarian Court of Appeals I had mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Stanhope wasn't alone in souring on Casper house Er. There
Speaker 1: were plenty of people who saw him as a sideshow, distraction,
Speaker 1: or else an abject fraud to quote Kitchen again quote.
Speaker 1: Many resented his fame, found his character unattractive, commented bitterly
Speaker 1: on his arrogance, his mendacity, and his absurd pretensions to gentility.
Speaker 1: It was grotesque to people of a conservative event that
Speaker 1: this somewhat ridiculous figure should be the darling of assorted radicals,
Speaker 1: devotees of alternative medicine, and practitioners of experimental pedagogy. The
Speaker 1: anti Hussarians saw the whole fuss as further evidence of
Speaker 1: the absurdity of radical pretensions and as an underhand attack
Speaker 1: on the established order end quote. But was it possible
Speaker 1: he wasn't just pretentious and absurd. Was it possible he
Speaker 1: was a complete fraud? Had he stabbed himself shallowly in
Speaker 1: the outhouse in order to garner sympathy. Was it possible
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser had never been imprisoned at all, never raised
Speaker 1: in his strange isolation. After all, there was no proof
Speaker 1: of it, No criminal had been caught. It seemed that
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser was simple minded and innocent to some degree,
Speaker 1: but he also had a mean edge, and he could
Speaker 1: be vain and prone to small, self aggrandizing lies, although
Speaker 1: even his sins could be explained away by his most
Speaker 1: ardent supporters. See see how even a short time among
Speaker 1: the so called civilized society corrupts the pure and innocent
Speaker 1: among us. The schoolmaster that Casper Hauser was living with
Speaker 1: in Ansbach was named Johann Meyer. Meyer seemed uninterested and
Speaker 1: unwilling to indulge Hauser's behavior when he acted out, and
Speaker 1: he found the young man a job at a local
Speaker 1: law office, doing menial work as a copyist. As a
Speaker 1: side note, it is extraordinary to imagine, just from a
Speaker 1: psychological development perspective, that if Casper Hauser did in fact
Speaker 1: live his entire life in isolation, that five years after
Speaker 1: re entering society he would be capable of working a
Speaker 1: standard administrative job. But he was even so Johann Meyer
Speaker 1: and Casper Hauser didn't get along, and on December ninth,
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three, they had a fight. Less than a
Speaker 1: week later, Casper Hauser would have his final adventure, the
Speaker 1: last mysterious piece of the puzzle in his mysterious life.
Speaker 1: On December fourteenth, eighteen thirty three, Casper Hauser stumbled back
Speaker 1: into Johann Meyer's house, leading from a slash across his chest.
Speaker 1: While he gasped for air, he managed to explain what
Speaker 1: had happened to him. A stranger had found him in
Speaker 1: the end back court gardens, had handed him a purse,
Speaker 1: and then, when Casper accepted it, had stabbed him. As
Speaker 1: Casper bled in Meyer's house, he tried to explain that
Speaker 1: they needed to find the purse. He had dropped it
Speaker 1: somewhere in the gardens, but Casper was going pale. He
Speaker 1: managed to mutter a few more phrases that were impossible
Speaker 1: to make out, and then he fainted. Six days later,
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser died. He had been murdered. His exit from
Speaker 1: German society was as mysterious as his entrance. Policemen trawled
Speaker 1: the court gardens and found what they assumed to be
Speaker 1: the purse from Hauser's story with a penciled note written
Speaker 1: in backwards mirror writing. When translated, it read in German,
Speaker 1: Hauser will be able to tell you quite precisely how
Speaker 1: I look and from where I am. To save Hauser
Speaker 1: the effort, I want to tell you myself where I come.
Speaker 1: And then there's a blank space. I come from from
Speaker 1: blank space, the Bavarian border, blank space on the river,
Speaker 1: blank space. I will even tell you the name m
Speaker 1: l O. Who had written this note? And what did
Speaker 1: it mean? Was Casper Hauser secretly a noble that needed
Speaker 1: to be done away with before the truth about his
Speaker 1: origin was revealed? Was the man that murdered him the
Speaker 1: same man who had kept him prisoner? Surely his violent
Speaker 1: murder proved that he was someone that those in power
Speaker 1: were trying to quiet. There was no real consensus at
Speaker 1: the time. The alleged murderer was never found and no
Speaker 1: more details came to light. His headstone read here lies Casperuser.
Speaker 1: Riddle of his time, His birth was unknown, his death
Speaker 1: mysterious eighteen thirty three. But was he actually a missing prince?
Speaker 1: Even in the nineteenth century, plenty of people pointed out
Speaker 1: that it was unlikely. Otto Middelstad wrote in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: six about how impossible it would have been to reasonably
Speaker 1: swap out the Royal Baden baby. He wrote, quote, the
Speaker 1: baby's father, grandmother, and aunt, with the ten Court physicians,
Speaker 1: the nurses and others would have seen a swap in death,
Speaker 1: and it is too absurd to suppose, on no authority
Speaker 1: that they were all parties to the plot end quote.
Speaker 1: There were enough inconsistencies in Hauser's story to wonder even
Speaker 1: if he had ever been captive at all. In the
Speaker 1: manner he described was Casper Hausers he was well developed
Speaker 1: physically and relatively capable cognitively in a way most people
Speaker 1: today would find implausible for someone who had been raised
Speaker 1: for years in a single room with no human interaction.
Speaker 1: As for his mysterious injuries, his stabbings by a mysterious
Speaker 1: man who was never caught, did Hauser actually do them
Speaker 1: to himself for sympathy, for attention, to bring people around
Speaker 1: to his side, to make himself feel important, for people
Speaker 1: to pay attention to his story again? Today, some historians
Speaker 1: believe that Casper Hauser's death was actually a tragic accident
Speaker 1: that he invented the story of the masked man and
Speaker 1: the purse in the garden, and that he had written
Speaker 1: and folded the mirror code letter and then stabbed himself,
Speaker 1: but made a mistake and accidentally went to deep with
Speaker 1: the knife. A twenty twenty three study indicated that Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser had the mark of having received a cowpox vaccination
Speaker 1: to prevent smallpox, which was mandatory in Bavaria since eighteen
Speaker 1: o seven. A mark from a vaccination indicated that he
Speaker 1: had in fact grown up not in isolation but in
Speaker 1: contact with other people. A much publicized DNA test of
Speaker 1: the mitochondrial DNA from Casperhauser's bloodstained undergarments by the German
Speaker 1: magazine Der Spiegel in nineteen ninety six proved once and
Speaker 1: for all that Casper Hauser was not, in fact a
Speaker 1: member of the Royal House of Baden, although of course
Speaker 1: those who still believe that he was a prince find
Speaker 1: ways to claim that the test was either mistaken or corrupted,
Speaker 1: will probably never discover the truth behind the strange story
Speaker 1: of Casper Hauser. Quote. His story acquired an importance which
Speaker 1: in no way belonged to it. Stanhope wrote after he
Speaker 1: was disillusioned, and yet Casper Hauser has captivated audiences for
Speaker 1: literal centuries. You might be familiar with the Werner Herzog
Speaker 1: film about him. The most likely version of the story,
Speaker 1: if you had to ask me, is something somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle. Maybe Casper Hauser was a boy from the
Speaker 1: countryside who was treated very poorly, even abused. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was the illegitimate son of a woman whose family hid
Speaker 1: him in shame. Maybe he was born with some disabilities
Speaker 1: that would have been treated with care and sympathy today.
Speaker 1: When he was sixteen, whoever had been feeding him had
Speaker 1: dropped him off to fend for himself. And from there
Speaker 1: this young man became came both victim and benefactor to
Speaker 1: the desires of a rapacious public, who saw in him
Speaker 1: whatever they wanted to see. He was a perfect innocent
Speaker 1: He was a science experiment. He was a philosophical riddle
Speaker 1: for gossiping about after dinner. He was a manipulative liar.
Speaker 1: He was an example of the systems depravity. He was
Speaker 1: a murder mystery. He was a prince. In the end,
Speaker 1: maybe he was just a person. That's the story of
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser. But keep listening. After a brief sponsor break
Speaker 1: to hear about another murder that led to even more
Speaker 1: questions in this mysterious case. I briefly mentioned Anselm Rider
Speaker 1: von Fuerbach in this episode. He was a German administrator
Speaker 1: and legal scholar who was particularly interested in the Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser case. From a legal perspective, he was a reformer
Speaker 1: of the Bavarian penal code, and he was a staunch
Speaker 1: defender early on of Hauser. He wrote a book about
Speaker 1: Hauser in which he used him to argue the point
Speaker 1: that the isolation and abuse he endured was tantamount to
Speaker 1: a quote crime against the human soul. On May twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three, Furbach died on a journey to Frankfurt.
Speaker 1: He was only fifty seven years old, and the circumstances
Speaker 1: of his death made it ripe for gossip and theories.
Speaker 1: After all, he was a prominent and public advocate for
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser. Maybe someone had poisoned him. There is no
Speaker 1: proof that he was poisoned, and a little ironically, he
Speaker 1: had actually come to the conclusion before his death that
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser was in fact a scheming fraud. But his
Speaker 1: death still became fodder for those connecting the dots in
Speaker 1: a vast conspiracy. Casper Hauser himself was killed only later
Speaker 1: that year. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: hosted by me Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are
Speaker 1: Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffey, Natasha Laski, and me
Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse
Speaker 1: Funk and Nomes Griffin, with supervising producerrima Ill Kali and
Speaker 1: executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.