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 2: Today is also the release day.
Speaker 1: Of my brand new book, The Arcane Arts by SD Coverly.
Speaker 1: Sd Coverly is the pen name I use for me
Speaker 1: and my friend and co writer Dan Frye. It is
Speaker 1: a magical fantasy book about a grad student and her
Speaker 1: professor studying illegal, forbidden magic and solving a murder mystery
Speaker 1: while they do it. If that it all interests you,
Speaker 1: please pick up a copy of The Arcane Arts.
Speaker 2: We had a great time writing it.
Speaker 1: I really think if you like this podcast, I think
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 2: That said, let's get into the episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: 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 2: For ever?
Speaker 1: Childlike beyond the salaciousness of his alleged origin. From the
Speaker 1: moment Casper Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg, he
Speaker 1: became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that had
Speaker 1: been captivating Europe for a century, a living experiment. As
Speaker 1: Martin Kitchen wrote in his book, Casper Hauser Europe's child quote.
Speaker 1: Here was a blank screen on which could be projected
Speaker 1: the fantasies of those with whom he came into close contact.
Speaker 1: Here was another of those wild children who people ancient mythology,
Speaker 1: and who had appeared infrequently in Europe since the fourteenth century,
Speaker 1: and had excited philosophers and medical men to speculate on
Speaker 1: the nature of men. But of course, given just how
Speaker 1: salacious and mysterious this foundling child was, there was also
Speaker 1: going to be rumors. Why had this boy been hidden
Speaker 1: away for so long and under such extreme conditions, If
Speaker 1: not because those in power had a reason for doing it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something out of a fairy tale, that
Speaker 1: a lost, orphaned child might be something more than he
Speaker 1: first appears. But the rumors began swirling. Casper Hauser, they said,
Speaker 1: wasn't just a lost child.
Speaker 2: He was a lost prince.
Speaker 1: I'm Danish worts and this is noble blood. It's a fantasy.
Speaker 1: I think that everybody has probably had at least once,
Speaker 1: a fantasy popularized by Sigmund Freud, that your parents secretly
Speaker 1: adopted you, and that your real parents are wealthy, powerful royal.
Speaker 1: And so maybe it's inevitable that when a boy stumbled
Speaker 1: into Nuremberg under mysterious circumstances, the questions would begin swirling
Speaker 1: about who he really was and where he came from.
Speaker 1: When Casper Hauser first appeared, his walk unsteady and his
Speaker 1: language limited, he carried with him two letters. The first
Speaker 1: was purportedly written by his mother, announcing that his name
Speaker 1: was Casper, he was born on April thirtieth, eighteen twelve,
Speaker 1: and that his father, now deceased, had been a cavalryman
Speaker 1: of the sixth Regiment. The second letter was from Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser's mysterious case caretaker or jailer. The masked man that
Speaker 1: Casper recalled had brought him bread and water. The letter
Speaker 1: was addressed to Captain Vaughan Wessening, commander of the sixth
Speaker 1: Cavalry Regiment. It read quote, I am a poor laborer
Speaker 1: with ten children of my own. I have enough to
Speaker 1: do just to keep them alive. His mother asked me
Speaker 1: to bring up the boy. I raised him as a Christian,
Speaker 1: and since eighteen twelve I have never let him go
Speaker 1: a step away from the house. So no one knows
Speaker 1: where he has been brought up, and he himself does
Speaker 1: not 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.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: The letter continued, saying that Captain van Wessoning could take
Speaker 1: the boy into his regiment or quote hang him by
Speaker 1: the chimney, the sort of cruelty one might expect from
Speaker 1: a man who kept a child imprisoned in a cell
Speaker 1: his entire life. When the people of Nuremberg asked Casper
Speaker 1: more questions, trying to get any more information from him,
Speaker 1: he only repeated, I want to be a cavalryman as
Speaker 1: my father was.
Speaker 2: Or don't know. He could also say horse.
Speaker 1: Casper was delivered to von Wessening's stable, but the captain
Speaker 1: was understandably confused and put off. A servant offered Casper
Speaker 1: beer and meat, but he refused. He did, however, accept
Speaker 1: water and bread He was brought to the police station,
Speaker 1: where they determined that Casper was able to write his
Speaker 1: own name and had basic familiarity with Christian prayers. His
Speaker 1: clothing was awkwardly sown and ill fitting. His boots were
Speaker 1: too small. The initial K was sewn into his jacket
Speaker 1: and his handkerchief. Among his personal effects were a rosary,
Speaker 1: a worn out key, a prayer book, a few religious tracts, and,
Speaker 1: most odd of all, allegedly a folded envelope of paper
Speaker 1: containing a.
Speaker 2: Bit of gold dust.
Speaker 1: But Casper had no papers, and given that he couldn't
Speaker 1: reply meaningfully to any questions, it was assumed he was
Speaker 1: a vagrant and he was sent to prison, although it
Speaker 1: was specified that given his strange circumstances, he would be
Speaker 1: locked up with quote decent prisoners instead of the other
Speaker 1: random vagrants and beggars. Casper Hauser spent two months in
Speaker 1: prison in the castle in Nuremberg, during which time he
Speaker 1: became a tourist attraction, with visitors stopping by in order
Speaker 1: to see the intriguing foundling. Raised in isolation, Casper seemed
Speaker 1: to be making remarkable progress with regards to his physical condition,
Speaker 1: where he had been awkwardly lumbering. When he first appeared
Speaker 1: seemingly barely able to walk, he had been able to
Speaker 1: climb more than ninety steps up to his cell without
Speaker 1: a problem. Gradually, more details about Casper's life would come
Speaker 1: to light, although notably Casper had no ill will toward
Speaker 1: his captor nor anger about how he was raised. Apparently,
Speaker 1: every morning when he woke up, he would find a
Speaker 1: loaf of black bread and a pitcher of water. He
Speaker 1: had only two wooden horse toys and one wooden dog
Speaker 1: toy to play with, and a wooden lidded container that
Speaker 1: he used as a commode.
Speaker 2: His door was bolted.
Speaker 1: On the outside, and wood was piled against the room's
Speaker 1: small windows, so that he never saw sunlight, never learn
Speaker 1: the difference between night and day. One day, Casper had
Speaker 1: been given a sheet of paper and a pencil, and
Speaker 1: his anonymous captor reached into the dungeon room to teach
Speaker 1: Casper how to write.
Speaker 2: His own name.
Speaker 1: He also taught him how to walk a few steps,
Speaker 1: and taught him the simple phrases to repeat that he
Speaker 1: had said when he had first arrived in Nuremberg. And
Speaker 1: then Casper Hauser, approximately sixteen years old, was released into
Speaker 1: the wilds of human civilization. The people of Nuremberg could
Speaker 1: barely believe how cruel and strange this boy's saga had been.
Speaker 2: The president of the Bavarian.
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals, a man named Anselm von Feuerbach, took
Speaker 1: a particular interest in investigating the case, and the city
Speaker 1: of Nuremberg itself formally adopted Casper Hauser, with donations raised
Speaker 1: to pay for his care and schooling. Casper was placed
Speaker 1: in the household of a man named Friedrich Dahmer, a
Speaker 1: schoolmaster and philosopher. Dahmer, understandably fascinated by Casper, began to
Speaker 1: treat him like a science experiment. Casper Hauser's physical condition
Speaker 1: continued to improve. He allegedly grew two inches in a
Speaker 1: single month, and according to Dahmer, his senses were astonishingly acute.
Speaker 1: He had an animal like ability to see in the dark,
Speaker 1: to make out impossibly faint sounds, and to taste if
Speaker 1: his water had been diluted with even one drop of
Speaker 1: something else. Despite attempts to feed him a more varied diet,
Speaker 1: Casper only wanted bread and water, and only after a
Speaker 1: few months was he able to eat small amounts of
Speaker 1: meat occasionally he would suffer extreme convulsions. Casper continued to
Speaker 1: learn rom remarkably fast. Soon he was able to write
Speaker 1: and speak, identifying jokes even and Dahmer discovered he had
Speaker 1: a talent for drawing. Dahmer was also interested in using
Speaker 1: Casper for homeopathic experiments and experiments with animal magnetism, a
Speaker 1: popular idea in nineteenth century Germany. He was given homeopathic tinctures,
Speaker 1: some of which made him sick, and he was frequently
Speaker 1: waved over with magnets and fed magnetized water, although personally
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to accomplish
Speaker 1: with that. As Kitchen wrote, quote, he was used as
Speaker 1: a guinea pig by cranks and amateurs who gained nothing
Speaker 1: from their experiments. He was so frightened of these experiments
Speaker 1: that it was impossible to tell whether the often violent
Speaker 1: reactions were caused by the homeopathic medicines or by sheer terror.
Speaker 1: When he was ill, the medicines he was given made
Speaker 1: him feel worse, and it seemed to him that the
Speaker 1: medical profession devoted its efforts towards torturing their unfortunate subjects
Speaker 1: and making the healthy sick. End all the while the
Speaker 1: mystery of his origin and his true identity continued to
Speaker 1: be the center of conversations around Nuremberg and all across Europe.
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser, the abused, imprisoned child who escaped his mysterious
Speaker 1: confinement with an innocent, almost animal like naivete, and who
Speaker 1: now among humanity, was making enormous strides of progress. I mean,
Speaker 1: how could the writers resist?
Speaker 2: Was he really just.
Speaker 1: A random foundling? It seemed unlikely. Why had there been
Speaker 1: such an effort to keep him hidden if not for
Speaker 1: the fact that Casper, howse us was secretly someone important.
Speaker 1: Consider the fact that he had been confined and imprisoned,
Speaker 1: but otherwise kept in remarkably good health and in hygienic conditions.
Speaker 1: No masked man had been identified, and there were no
Speaker 1: leads as to where Casper Hauser had actually come from,
Speaker 1: despite large rewards from police for any information. Surely people
Speaker 1: whispered that was a sign that this was the work
Speaker 1: of rich and powerful people, able to cover their tracks
Speaker 1: so completely that they would never be caught. And despite
Speaker 1: the fact that he had barely been able to write
Speaker 1: his name, Casper Hauser was by this point fluent and
Speaker 1: quick to learn. There seemed to be something innately extraordinary
Speaker 1: about him. This was no ordinary boy.
Speaker 2: People believed.
Speaker 1: It seemed obvious that he was someone special, someone noble,
Speaker 1: someone royal even, But why had he been imprisoned and
Speaker 1: hidden away? And by who? And if he wasn't merely
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser, then who was he. Charles, the Grand Duke
Speaker 1: of Boden hadn't been happy about the fact that he
Speaker 1: had to marry Stephanie de Bornay, but Napoleon's France was
Speaker 1: becoming more powerful, and Stephanie was Napoleon's de facto adopted daughter,
Speaker 1: a relative of Napoleon's wife Josephine, and so the Grand
Speaker 1: Duke married her, and despite the fact that the two
Speaker 1: didn't really get along, they managed to have five children.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for them, none of their surviving children were male heirs,
Speaker 1: and so after Charles the Grand Duke died in eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the Duchy of Baden went to his uncle Louis the First.
Speaker 1: But maybe things were and quite as straightforward as they seemed.
Speaker 1: Charles and Stephanie had had a son, an infant prince,
Speaker 1: born on September twenty ninth, eighteen twelve, but the baby
Speaker 1: boy died after only a few weeks, but had he.
Speaker 1: When casper Hauser appeared on the European scene, rumors began
Speaker 1: to spread that the current Duke Louise's mother had schemed
Speaker 1: to put her son on the throne by stealing away
Speaker 1: the rightful prince and replacing him in his bassinet with
Speaker 1: a sickly commoner. Was casper Hauser the missing prince? With
Speaker 1: those rumors, In the words of Kitchen, casper Hauser quote
Speaker 1: wasn't just a symbol for primitive beauty and the purity
Speaker 1: of man's animal nature, but of the perfidity of the
Speaker 1: royal family, especially among the German radical of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: To those who had already hated the nobility that they
Speaker 1: saw as corrupt and indulgent, it seemed perfectly in line
Speaker 1: with their cruelty that they might steal away a baby
Speaker 1: and torture him in isolation for a decade so that
Speaker 1: their own son might inherit a throne. Supporting casper Hauser
Speaker 1: as a missing prince became a way to attack and
Speaker 1: delegitimize the current regime. There were other theories about who
Speaker 1: casper Hauser was. If he was a noble, maybe he
Speaker 1: was the son of a Hungarian countess or an English royal,
Speaker 1: but something about his appearance and the peculiarity of his
Speaker 1: case led many to believe that something nefarious was going on,
Speaker 1: especially after the attack on Casper Hauser's life. In October
Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty nine, while living with the teacher Dahmer,
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser and his guardian had gotten into some small disagreements.
Speaker 1: Casper was indulging in the dishonesties of a child skipping
Speaker 1: school and not telling the truth about it. Dahmer was
Speaker 1: also getting a little frustrated with his quote unquote scientific
Speaker 1: experiments on Casper, seeing that the more Casper adjusted to
Speaker 1: civilized society, the more he seemed to be losing whatever
Speaker 1: mystical quality he had had in the first place. One
Speaker 1: day in October of eighteen twenty nine, more than a
Speaker 1: year after Casper had first arrived in Nuremberg, Casper and
Speaker 1: Dahmer had quarreled after Casper had been caught playing hooky.
Speaker 1: The next day, Dahmer returned home to a startling scene.
Speaker 1: Casper had a large gash on his forehead. It had
Speaker 1: dripped blood all the way from the outhouse through the
Speaker 1: first first floor of the house. According to Casper, a
Speaker 1: hooded man had attacked him in the outhouse, shouting, you
Speaker 1: still have to die before you leave the city of Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: And though Casper wasn't able to see the man's face,
Speaker 1: he knew it was the man who had kept him
Speaker 1: captive all of those years, the mysterious man who had
Speaker 1: brought him bread and water and taught him how to
Speaker 1: write his own name. The incident garnered sympathy among Casper's
Speaker 1: supporters and renewed public interest in his case. One person
Speaker 1: who found himself fascinated by this strange story out of
Speaker 1: Germany was a British nobleman named Lord Stanhope. Stanhope was
Speaker 1: the nephew of Prime Minister William Pitt, but his immediate
Speaker 1: family was notably eccentric, and he himself was a much
Speaker 1: remark upon germanophile. Stanhope met Casperhauser in May eighteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: and he became obsessed the sort of flare of quick
Speaker 1: intimacy that sometimes happens among new friends. Stanhope declared that
Speaker 1: there was no doubt in his mind that Casper Hauser
Speaker 1: was in fact of noble birth, and he began to
Speaker 1: shower him with expensive presence. He gave Casper a life
Speaker 1: annuity of five hundred goldens and one hundred goldens as
Speaker 1: pocket money, which I'm sure was something of a weight
Speaker 1: off of the shoulders of the town administrators of Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: who had up until that point been paying for Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser's upkeep. Within no time at all, stan Hope and
Speaker 1: Hauser were calling each other by their first names, so
Speaker 1: close that some speculated that the relationship was sexual in nature.
Speaker 1: Stanhope got it into his mind that Casper Hauser's true
Speaker 1: mother was a Hungarian countess, and so he took Casper
Speaker 1: on a trip to Hungary to see if anything might
Speaker 1: jog his memory. Though Hauser's seemed to recognize a few
Speaker 1: Hungarian phrases, the trip itself did not prove anything, and
Speaker 1: ultimately it was a failure. And in failure, the eccentric,
Speaker 1: impatient Stanhope found that Hauser now left a bad taste.
Speaker 2: 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 Us. 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, eighteen.
Speaker 2: Thirty three, they had a fight.
Speaker 1: Less than a week later, Casper Hauser would have his
Speaker 1: final adventure, the last mysterious piece of the puzzle in
Speaker 1: his mysterious life. On December fourteenth, eighteen thirty three, Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser stumbled back into Johann Meyer's house, leading from a
Speaker 1: slash across his chest. While he gasped for air, he
Speaker 1: managed to explain what had happened to him. A stranger
Speaker 1: had found him in the end back court gardens, had
Speaker 1: handed him a purse, and then, when Casper accepted it,
Speaker 1: had stabbed him. As Casper bled in Meyer's house, he
Speaker 1: tried to explain that they needed to find the purse.
Speaker 1: He had dropped it somewhere in the gardens, but Casper
Speaker 1: was going pale. He managed to mutter a few more
Speaker 1: phrases that were impossible to make out, and then he fainted.
Speaker 1: Six days later, Casper Hauser died.
Speaker 2: He had been murdered.
Speaker 1: His exit from German society was as mysterious as his entrance.
Speaker 1: Policemen trawled the court gardens and found what they assumed
Speaker 1: to be the purse from Hauser's story with a penciled
Speaker 1: note written in backwards mirror writing. When translated, it read
Speaker 1: in German, Hauser will be able to tell you quite
Speaker 1: precisely how I look and from where I am. To
Speaker 1: save Hauser the effort, I want to tell you myself
Speaker 1: where I come. And then there's a blank space. I
Speaker 1: come from from blank space, the Bavarian border, blank space
Speaker 1: on the river, blank space. I will even tell you
Speaker 1: the name m l O. Who had written this note?
Speaker 1: And what did it mean? Was Casper Hauser secretly a
Speaker 1: noble that needed to be done away with before the
Speaker 1: truth about his origin was revealed? Was the man that
Speaker 1: murdered him the same man who had kept him prisoner?
Speaker 1: Surely his violent murder proved that he was someone that
Speaker 1: those in power were trying to quiet. There was no
Speaker 1: real consensus at the time. The alleged murderer was never
Speaker 1: found and no more details came to light. His headstone
Speaker 1: read here lies Casperuser. Riddle of his time, His birth
Speaker 1: was unknown, his death mysterious eighteen thirty three. But was
Speaker 1: he actually a missing prince? Even in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: plenty of people pointed out that it was unlikely. Otto
Speaker 1: Middelstad wrote in eighteen seventy six about how impossible it
Speaker 1: would have been to reasonably swap out the Royal Baden baby.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, the baby's father, grandmother, and aunt, with
Speaker 1: the ten Court physicians, the nurses and others would have
Speaker 1: seen a swap in death, and it is too absurd
Speaker 1: to suppose, on no authority that they were all parties
Speaker 1: to the plot end quote. There were enough inconsistencies in
Speaker 1: Hauser's story to wonder even if he had ever been
Speaker 1: captive at all.
Speaker 2: In the manner he described.
Speaker 1: Was Casper Hausers he was well developed physically and relatively
Speaker 1: capable cognitively in a way most people today would find
Speaker 1: implausible for someone who had been raised for years in
Speaker 1: a single room with no human interaction. As for his
Speaker 1: mysterious injuries, his stabbings by a mysterious man who was
Speaker 1: never caught, did Hauser actually do them to himself for sympathy,
Speaker 1: for attention, to bring people around to his side, to
Speaker 1: make himself feel important, for people to pay attention to
Speaker 1: his story again? Today, some historians believe that Casper Hauser's
Speaker 1: death was actually a tragic accident that he invented the
Speaker 1: story of the masked man and the purse in the garden,
Speaker 1: and that he had written and folded the mirror code
Speaker 1: letter and then stabbed himself, but made a mistake and
Speaker 1: accidentally went to deep with the knife. A twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three study indicated that Casper Hauser had the mark of
Speaker 1: having received a cowpox vaccination to prevent smallpox, which was
Speaker 1: mandatory in Bavaria since eighteen o seven. A mark from
Speaker 1: a vaccination indicated that he had in fact grown up
Speaker 1: not in isolation but in contact with other people. A
Speaker 1: much publicized DNA test of the mitochondrial DNA from Casperhauser's
Speaker 1: bloodstained undergarments by the German magazine Der Spiegel in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six proved once and for all that Casper Hauser
Speaker 1: was not, in fact a member of the Royal House
Speaker 1: of Baden, although of course those who still believe that
Speaker 1: he was a prince find ways to claim that the
Speaker 1: test was either mistaken or corrupted, will probably never discover
Speaker 1: the truth behind the strange story of Casper Hauser.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: His story acquired an importance which in no way belonged
Speaker 1: to it. Stanhope wrote after he was disillusioned, and yet
Speaker 1: Casper Hauser has captivated audiences for literal centuries. You might
Speaker 1: be familiar with the Werner Herzog film about him. The
Speaker 1: most likely version of the story, if you had to
Speaker 1: ask me, is something somewhere in the middle. Maybe Casper
Speaker 1: Hauser was a boy from the countryside who was treated
Speaker 1: very poorly.
Speaker 2: Even abused.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was the illegitimate son of a woman whose
Speaker 1: family hid him in shame. Maybe he was born with
Speaker 1: some disabilities that would have been treated with care and
Speaker 1: sympathy today. When he was sixteen, whoever had been feeding
Speaker 1: him had dropped him off to fend for himself. And
Speaker 1: from there this young man became came both victim and
Speaker 1: benefactor to the desires of a rapacious public, who saw
Speaker 1: in him whatever they wanted to see. He was a
Speaker 1: perfect innocent He was a science experiment. He was a
Speaker 1: philosophical riddle for gossiping about after dinner. He was a
Speaker 1: manipulative liar. He was an example of the systems depravity.
Speaker 1: He was a murder mystery. He was a prince. In
Speaker 1: the end, maybe he was just a person. That's the
Speaker 1: story of Casper Hauser. But keep listening. After a brief
Speaker 1: sponsor break to hear about another murder that led to
Speaker 1: even more questions in this mysterious case. I briefly mentioned
Speaker 1: Anselm Rider von Fuerbach in this episode. He was a
Speaker 1: German administrator and legal scholar who was particularly interested in
Speaker 1: the Casper Hauser case. From a legal perspective, he was
Speaker 1: a reformer of the Bavarian penal code, and he was
Speaker 1: a staunch defender early on of Hauser. He wrote a
Speaker 1: book about Hauser in which he used him to argue
Speaker 1: the point that the isolation and abuse he endured was
Speaker 1: tantamount to a quote crime against the human soul. On
Speaker 1: May twenty ninth, eighteen thirty three, Furbach died on a
Speaker 1: journey to Frankfurt. He was only fifty seven years old,
Speaker 1: and the circumstances of his death made it ripe for
Speaker 1: gossip and theories. After all, he was a prominent and
Speaker 1: public advocate for Casper Hauser.
Speaker 2: Maybe someone had poisoned him.
Speaker 1: There is no proof that he was poisoned, and a
Speaker 1: little ironically, he had actually come to the conclusion before
Speaker 1: his death that Casper Hauser was in fact a scheming fraud.
Speaker 1: But his death still became fodder for those connecting the
Speaker 1: dots in a vast conspiracy. Casper Hauser himself was killed
Speaker 1: only later that year. Noble Blood is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble
Speaker 1: Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble
Speaker 1: Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffey, Natasha Laski,
Speaker 1: and me Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced
Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk and Nomes Griffin, with supervising producerrima Ill
Speaker 1: Kali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.