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 --> 0:00:09.040 Today is also the release day. 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:13.320 Of my brand new book, The Arcane Arts by SD Coverly. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.680 Sd Coverly is the pen name I use for me 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.000 and my friend and co writer Dan Frye. It is 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.720 a magical fantasy book about a grad student and her 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.080 professor studying illegal, forbidden magic and solving a murder mystery 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.720 while they do it. If that it all interests you, 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.880 please pick up a copy of The Arcane Arts. 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:35.479 We had a great time writing it. 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.199 I really think if you like this podcast, I think 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:39.000 you'll enjoy it. 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:43.120 That said, let's get into the episode. 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:49.040 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. 0:00:53.960 --> 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 --> 0:03:51.360 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? 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:19.440 For ever? 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:26.159 Childlike beyond the salaciousness of his alleged origin. From the 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:30.800 moment Casper Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg, he 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:35.280 became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that had 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:40.880 been captivating Europe for a century, a living experiment. As 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:45.680 Martin Kitchen wrote in his book, Casper Hauser Europe's child quote. 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.919 Here was a blank screen on which could be projected 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:54.120 the fantasies of those with whom he came into close contact. 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:59.480 Here was another of those wild children who people ancient mythology, 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:04.040 and who had appeared infrequently in Europe since the fourteenth century, 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:08.520 and had excited philosophers and medical men to speculate on 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:12.719 the nature of men. But of course, given just how 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:18.200 salacious and mysterious this foundling child was, there was also 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:23.040 going to be rumors. Why had this boy been hidden 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:27.839 away for so long and under such extreme conditions, If 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:32.919 not because those in power had a reason for doing it. 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.440 It sounds like something out of a fairy tale, that 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:41.080 a lost, orphaned child might be something more than he 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:47.520 first appears. But the rumors began swirling. Casper Hauser, they said, 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:50.640 wasn't just a lost child. 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.040 He was a lost prince. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:06:01.440 I'm Danish worts and this is noble blood. It's a fantasy. 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.040 I think that everybody has probably had at least once, 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.640 a fantasy popularized by Sigmund Freud, that your parents secretly 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:15.719 adopted you, and that your real parents are wealthy, powerful royal. 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.160 And so maybe it's inevitable that when a boy stumbled 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:26.040 into Nuremberg under mysterious circumstances, the questions would begin swirling 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:30.960 about who he really was and where he came from. 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.720 When Casper Hauser first appeared, his walk unsteady and his 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:40.960 language limited, he carried with him two letters. The first 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.960 was purportedly written by his mother, announcing that his name 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:49.000 was Casper, he was born on April thirtieth, eighteen twelve, 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.200 and that his father, now deceased, had been a cavalryman 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:58.040 of the sixth Regiment. The second letter was from Casper 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:03.640 Hauser's mysterious case caretaker or jailer. The masked man that 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:08.560 Casper recalled had brought him bread and water. The letter 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:13.520 was addressed to Captain Vaughan Wessening, commander of the sixth 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:18.240 Cavalry Regiment. It read quote, I am a poor laborer 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.760 with ten children of my own. I have enough to 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.680 do just to keep them alive. His mother asked me 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.920 to bring up the boy. I raised him as a Christian, 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.520 and since eighteen twelve I have never let him go 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.160 a step away from the house. So no one knows 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:39.400 where he has been brought up, and he himself does 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.520 not 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 --> 0:07:52.320 from would be hitting a dead end. 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:52.680 There. 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.600 The letter continued, saying that Captain van Wessoning could take 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.560 the boy into his regiment or quote hang him by 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.360 the chimney, the sort of cruelty one might expect from 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.480 a man who kept a child imprisoned in a cell 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.920 his entire life. When the people of Nuremberg asked Casper 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:16.760 more questions, trying to get any more information from him, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.520 he only repeated, I want to be a cavalryman as 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:21.400 my father was. 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.480 Or don't know. He could also say horse. 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:31.040 Casper was delivered to von Wessening's stable, but the captain 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:36.160 was understandably confused and put off. A servant offered Casper 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:40.040 beer and meat, but he refused. He did, however, accept 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:44.080 water and bread He was brought to the police station, 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:47.720 where they determined that Casper was able to write his 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:52.760 own name and had basic familiarity with Christian prayers. His 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:57.400 clothing was awkwardly sown and ill fitting. His boots were 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:02.360 too small. The initial K was sewn into his jacket 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:07.560 and his handkerchief. Among his personal effects were a rosary, 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:13.120 a worn out key, a prayer book, a few religious tracts, and, 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:18.120 most odd of all, allegedly a folded envelope of paper 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:19.480 containing a. 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:21.040 Bit of gold dust. 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:26.440 But Casper had no papers, and given that he couldn't 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:31.000 reply meaningfully to any questions, it was assumed he was 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.880 a vagrant and he was sent to prison, although it 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:39.280 was specified that given his strange circumstances, he would be 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.680 locked up with quote decent prisoners instead of the other 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:49.760 random vagrants and beggars. Casper Hauser spent two months in 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.120 prison in the castle in Nuremberg, during which time he 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.760 became a tourist attraction, with visitors stopping by in order 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:03.680 to see the intriguing foundling. Raised in isolation, Casper seemed 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.800 to be making remarkable progress with regards to his physical condition, 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:12.000 where he had been awkwardly lumbering. When he first appeared 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:15.720 seemingly barely able to walk, he had been able to 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.920 climb more than ninety steps up to his cell without 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:25.760 a problem. Gradually, more details about Casper's life would come 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.960 to light, although notably Casper had no ill will toward 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:34.120 his captor nor anger about how he was raised. Apparently, 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.080 every morning when he woke up, he would find a 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.520 loaf of black bread and a pitcher of water. He 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.880 had only two wooden horse toys and one wooden dog 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.440 toy to play with, and a wooden lidded container that 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.360 he used as a commode. 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:52.160 His door was bolted. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:55.920 On the outside, and wood was piled against the room's 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.920 small windows, so that he never saw sunlight, never learn 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.880 the difference between night and day. One day, Casper had 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.880 been given a sheet of paper and a pencil, and 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.240 his anonymous captor reached into the dungeon room to teach 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:13.840 Casper how to write. 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:14.200 His own name. 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.680 He also taught him how to walk a few steps, 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.400 and taught him the simple phrases to repeat that he 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.719 had said when he had first arrived in Nuremberg. And 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.720 then Casper Hauser, approximately sixteen years old, was released into 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:35.000 the wilds of human civilization. The people of Nuremberg could 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.240 barely believe how cruel and strange this boy's saga had been. 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.160 The president of the Bavarian. 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:46.679 Court of Appeals, a man named Anselm von Feuerbach, took 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:51.120 a particular interest in investigating the case, and the city 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:56.959 of Nuremberg itself formally adopted Casper Hauser, with donations raised 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.560 to pay for his care and schooling. Casper was placed 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:05.280 in the household of a man named Friedrich Dahmer, a 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:11.680 schoolmaster and philosopher. Dahmer, understandably fascinated by Casper, began to 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:17.160 treat him like a science experiment. Casper Hauser's physical condition 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:22.320 continued to improve. He allegedly grew two inches in a 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:28.240 single month, and according to Dahmer, his senses were astonishingly acute. 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.240 He had an animal like ability to see in the dark, 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.800 to make out impossibly faint sounds, and to taste if 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:40.640 his water had been diluted with even one drop of 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:45.520 something else. Despite attempts to feed him a more varied diet, 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:50.080 Casper only wanted bread and water, and only after a 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:52.800 few months was he able to eat small amounts of 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:59.240 meat occasionally he would suffer extreme convulsions. Casper continued to 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:03.360 learn rom remarkably fast. Soon he was able to write 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:08.800 and speak, identifying jokes even and Dahmer discovered he had 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:14.360 a talent for drawing. Dahmer was also interested in using 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:21.240 Casper for homeopathic experiments and experiments with animal magnetism, a 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:27.560 popular idea in nineteenth century Germany. He was given homeopathic tinctures, 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.120 some of which made him sick, and he was frequently 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.960 waved over with magnets and fed magnetized water, although personally 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.959 I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to accomplish 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.680 with that. As Kitchen wrote, quote, he was used as 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:47.240 a guinea pig by cranks and amateurs who gained nothing 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.080 from their experiments. He was so frightened of these experiments 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.480 that it was impossible to tell whether the often violent 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.960 reactions were caused by the homeopathic medicines or by sheer terror. 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:03.400 When he was ill, the medicines he was given made 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.760 him feel worse, and it seemed to him that the 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:12.920 medical profession devoted its efforts towards torturing their unfortunate subjects 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:18.280 and making the healthy sick. End all the while the 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:22.760 mystery of his origin and his true identity continued to 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:28.360 be the center of conversations around Nuremberg and all across Europe. 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:34.280 Casper Hauser, the abused, imprisoned child who escaped his mysterious 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:39.960 confinement with an innocent, almost animal like naivete, and who 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:45.760 now among humanity, was making enormous strides of progress. I mean, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:47.480 how could the writers resist? 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:49.560 Was he really just. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:54.640 A random foundling? It seemed unlikely. Why had there been 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:58.040 such an effort to keep him hidden if not for 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:03.080 the fact that Casper, howse us was secretly someone important. 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.920 Consider the fact that he had been confined and imprisoned, 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:13.760 but otherwise kept in remarkably good health and in hygienic conditions. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.840 No masked man had been identified, and there were no 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.720 leads as to where Casper Hauser had actually come from, 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:27.720 despite large rewards from police for any information. Surely people 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.960 whispered that was a sign that this was the work 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:35.000 of rich and powerful people, able to cover their tracks 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:39.440 so completely that they would never be caught. And despite 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.080 the fact that he had barely been able to write 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.680 his name, Casper Hauser was by this point fluent and 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:50.400 quick to learn. There seemed to be something innately extraordinary 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:54.400 about him. This was no ordinary boy. 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:55.400 People believed. 0:15:55.880 --> 0:16:00.760 It seemed obvious that he was someone special, someone noble, 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.720 someone royal even, But why had he been imprisoned and 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:10.480 hidden away? And by who? And if he wasn't merely 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:16.800 Casper Hauser, then who was he. Charles, the Grand Duke 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:20.000 of Boden hadn't been happy about the fact that he 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:24.520 had to marry Stephanie de Bornay, but Napoleon's France was 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:29.960 becoming more powerful, and Stephanie was Napoleon's de facto adopted daughter, 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.880 a relative of Napoleon's wife Josephine, and so the Grand 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:38.400 Duke married her, and despite the fact that the two 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.880 didn't really get along, they managed to have five children. 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:48.200 Unfortunately for them, none of their surviving children were male heirs, 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:52.920 and so after Charles the Grand Duke died in eighteen eighteen, 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:57.680 the Duchy of Baden went to his uncle Louis the First. 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:03.520 But maybe things were and quite as straightforward as they seemed. 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:08.919 Charles and Stephanie had had a son, an infant prince, 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:13.760 born on September twenty ninth, eighteen twelve, but the baby 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:18.359 boy died after only a few weeks, but had he. 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:24.280 When casper Hauser appeared on the European scene, rumors began 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:29.359 to spread that the current Duke Louise's mother had schemed 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.480 to put her son on the throne by stealing away 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:38.000 the rightful prince and replacing him in his bassinet with 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:43.560 a sickly commoner. Was casper Hauser the missing prince? With 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:48.320 those rumors, In the words of Kitchen, casper Hauser quote 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.600 wasn't just a symbol for primitive beauty and the purity 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.399 of man's animal nature, but of the perfidity of the 0:17:56.480 --> 0:18:01.680 royal family, especially among the German radical of the nineteenth century. 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:06.240 To those who had already hated the nobility that they 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:10.960 saw as corrupt and indulgent, it seemed perfectly in line 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.560 with their cruelty that they might steal away a baby 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.680 and torture him in isolation for a decade so that 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:24.000 their own son might inherit a throne. Supporting casper Hauser 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.320 as a missing prince became a way to attack and 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:33.360 delegitimize the current regime. There were other theories about who 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:37.000 casper Hauser was. If he was a noble, maybe he 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:41.040 was the son of a Hungarian countess or an English royal, 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.840 but something about his appearance and the peculiarity of his 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:51.040 case led many to believe that something nefarious was going on, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:57.520 especially after the attack on Casper Hauser's life. In October 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:03.440 of eighteen twenty nine, while living with the teacher Dahmer, 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.160 Casper Hauser and his guardian had gotten into some small disagreements. 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:13.600 Casper was indulging in the dishonesties of a child skipping 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.199 school and not telling the truth about it. Dahmer was 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:21.359 also getting a little frustrated with his quote unquote scientific 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:26.399 experiments on Casper, seeing that the more Casper adjusted to 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:31.000 civilized society, the more he seemed to be losing whatever 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:35.240 mystical quality he had had in the first place. One 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.560 day in October of eighteen twenty nine, more than a 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:42.520 year after Casper had first arrived in Nuremberg, Casper and 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:46.920 Dahmer had quarreled after Casper had been caught playing hooky. 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:52.200 The next day, Dahmer returned home to a startling scene. 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.920 Casper had a large gash on his forehead. It had 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.680 dripped blood all the way from the outhouse through the 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.960 first first floor of the house. According to Casper, a 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.800 hooded man had attacked him in the outhouse, shouting, you 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.320 still have to die before you leave the city of Nuremberg, 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.200 And though Casper wasn't able to see the man's face, 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.480 he knew it was the man who had kept him 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:22.400 captive all of those years, the mysterious man who had 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:25.239 brought him bread and water and taught him how to 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:30.240 write his own name. The incident garnered sympathy among Casper's 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:35.160 supporters and renewed public interest in his case. One person 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:38.480 who found himself fascinated by this strange story out of 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:44.600 Germany was a British nobleman named Lord Stanhope. Stanhope was 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:49.040 the nephew of Prime Minister William Pitt, but his immediate 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:53.520 family was notably eccentric, and he himself was a much 0:20:53.600 --> 0:21:00.920 remark upon germanophile. Stanhope met Casperhauser in May eighteen thirty one, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.919 and he became obsessed the sort of flare of quick 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:10.240 intimacy that sometimes happens among new friends. Stanhope declared that 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:13.000 there was no doubt in his mind that Casper Hauser 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.240 was in fact of noble birth, and he began to 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.240 shower him with expensive presence. He gave Casper a life 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.600 annuity of five hundred goldens and one hundred goldens as 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:26.720 pocket money, which I'm sure was something of a weight 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.240 off of the shoulders of the town administrators of Nuremberg, 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.680 who had up until that point been paying for Casper 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.760 Hauser's upkeep. Within no time at all, stan Hope and 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.080 Hauser were calling each other by their first names, so 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:46.199 close that some speculated that the relationship was sexual in nature. 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:51.000 Stanhope got it into his mind that Casper Hauser's true 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:55.000 mother was a Hungarian countess, and so he took Casper 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.600 on a trip to Hungary to see if anything might 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.520 jog his memory. Though Hauser's seemed to recognize a few 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:06.119 Hungarian phrases, the trip itself did not prove anything, and 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:11.680 ultimately it was a failure. And in failure, the eccentric, 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:17.720 impatient Stanhope found that Hauser now left a bad taste. 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:18.040 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 Us. There 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.919 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 0:24:17.280 --> 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 --> 0:25:38.400 and Casper Hauser didn't get along, and on December ninth, eighteen. 0:25:38.119 --> 0:25:40.120 Thirty three, they had a fight. 0:25:40.960 --> 0:25:44.439 Less than a week later, Casper Hauser would have his 0:25:44.640 --> 0:25:49.439 final adventure, the last mysterious piece of the puzzle in 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:56.520 his mysterious life. On December fourteenth, eighteen thirty three, Casper 0:25:56.600 --> 0:26:00.960 Hauser stumbled back into Johann Meyer's house, leading from a 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:05.240 slash across his chest. While he gasped for air, he 0:26:05.320 --> 0:26:08.520 managed to explain what had happened to him. A stranger 0:26:08.560 --> 0:26:11.440 had found him in the end back court gardens, had 0:26:11.480 --> 0:26:15.040 handed him a purse, and then, when Casper accepted it, 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:19.359 had stabbed him. As Casper bled in Meyer's house, he 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:22.200 tried to explain that they needed to find the purse. 0:26:22.440 --> 0:26:25.560 He had dropped it somewhere in the gardens, but Casper 0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:29.040 was going pale. He managed to mutter a few more 0:26:29.119 --> 0:26:33.000 phrases that were impossible to make out, and then he fainted. 0:26:33.880 --> 0:26:36.560 Six days later, Casper Hauser died. 0:26:37.440 --> 0:26:38.920 He had been murdered. 0:26:40.160 --> 0:26:44.679 His exit from German society was as mysterious as his entrance. 0:26:45.240 --> 0:26:49.600 Policemen trawled the court gardens and found what they assumed 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:53.359 to be the purse from Hauser's story with a penciled 0:26:53.560 --> 0:26:59.080 note written in backwards mirror writing. When translated, it read 0:26:59.160 --> 0:27:02.480 in German, Hauser will be able to tell you quite 0:27:02.560 --> 0:27:06.159 precisely how I look and from where I am. To 0:27:06.320 --> 0:27:09.560 save Hauser the effort, I want to tell you myself 0:27:09.680 --> 0:27:12.879 where I come. And then there's a blank space. I 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:17.560 come from from blank space, the Bavarian border, blank space 0:27:17.960 --> 0:27:21.359 on the river, blank space. I will even tell you 0:27:21.560 --> 0:27:26.840 the name m l O. Who had written this note? 0:27:27.000 --> 0:27:31.440 And what did it mean? Was Casper Hauser secretly a 0:27:31.560 --> 0:27:34.480 noble that needed to be done away with before the 0:27:34.520 --> 0:27:37.919 truth about his origin was revealed? Was the man that 0:27:38.119 --> 0:27:40.880 murdered him the same man who had kept him prisoner? 0:27:41.480 --> 0:27:44.600 Surely his violent murder proved that he was someone that 0:27:44.640 --> 0:27:48.439 those in power were trying to quiet. There was no 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:53.120 real consensus at the time. The alleged murderer was never 0:27:53.240 --> 0:27:57.560 found and no more details came to light. His headstone 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:03.800 read here lies Casperuser. Riddle of his time, His birth 0:28:03.960 --> 0:28:10.879 was unknown, his death mysterious eighteen thirty three. But was 0:28:10.920 --> 0:28:15.120 he actually a missing prince? Even in the nineteenth century, 0:28:15.240 --> 0:28:19.159 plenty of people pointed out that it was unlikely. Otto 0:28:19.200 --> 0:28:23.879 Middelstad wrote in eighteen seventy six about how impossible it 0:28:23.920 --> 0:28:28.880 would have been to reasonably swap out the Royal Baden baby. 0:28:29.400 --> 0:28:33.679 He wrote, quote, the baby's father, grandmother, and aunt, with 0:28:33.840 --> 0:28:37.560 the ten Court physicians, the nurses and others would have 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:41.280 seen a swap in death, and it is too absurd 0:28:41.360 --> 0:28:45.440 to suppose, on no authority that they were all parties 0:28:45.480 --> 0:28:50.800 to the plot end quote. There were enough inconsistencies in 0:28:50.840 --> 0:28:54.920 Hauser's story to wonder even if he had ever been 0:28:55.000 --> 0:28:55.800 captive at all. 0:28:55.920 --> 0:28:57.920 In the manner he described. 0:28:57.960 --> 0:29:04.160 Was Casper Hausers he was well developed physically and relatively 0:29:04.280 --> 0:29:07.920