that, about 4.30 P.M. on Whit Monday, May 26, 1828, a citizen,
unnamed, was loitering at his door, in the Unschlitt Plas, Nuremberg,
intending to sally out by the New Gate, when he saw a young peasant,
standing in an attitude suggestive of intoxication, and apparently
suffering from locomotor ataxia, 'unable to govern fully the movements
of his legs.' The citizen went to the boy, who showed him a letter
directed to the captain of a cavalry regiment. The gallant captain
lived near the New Gate (654 paces from the citizen's house), and
thither the young peasant walked with the citizen. So he _could_
'govern fully the movements of his legs.' At the house, the captain
being out, the boy said, 'I would be a horseman as my father was,'
also 'Don't know.' Later he was taken to the prison, up a steep hill,
and the ascent to his room was one of over ninety steps. Thus he could
certainly walk, and when he spoke of himself he said 'I' like other
people. Later he took to speaking of himself as 'Kaspar,' in the
manner of small children, and some hysterical patients under
hypnotism. But this was an after-thought, for Kaspar's line came to be
that he had only learned a few words, like a parrot, words which he
used to express all senses indifferently. His eye-sight, when he first
appeared, seems to have been normal, at the prison he wrote his own
name as 'Kaspar Hauser,' and covered a sheet of paper with writing.
Later he could see best in the dark.
So says Feuerbach, in 1832. What he does not say is whence he got his
information as to Kaspar's earliest exploits. Now our earliest
evidence, on oath, before a magistrate, is dated November 4, 1829.
George Weichmann, shoemaker (Feuerbach's anonymous 'citizen'), then
swore that, on May 26, 1828, he saw Kaspar, not making paralysed
efforts to walk, but trudging down a hilly street, shouting 'Hi!' ('or
any loud cry'), and presently asking, 'with tolerable distinctness,'
'New Gate Street?' He took the boy that way, and the boy gave him the
letter for the captain. Weichmann said that they had better ask for
him at the New Gate Guard House, and the boy said 'Guard House? Guard
House? New Gate no doubt just built?' He said he came from Ratisbon,
and was in Nuremberg for the first time, but clearly did not
understand what Weichmann meant when he inquired as to the chances of
war breaking out. In May 1834 Weichmann repeated his evidence as to
Kaspar's power of talking and walking, and was corroborated by one
Jacob Beck, not heard of in 1829. On December 20, 1829, Merk, the
captain's servant, spoke to Kaspar's fatigue, 'he reeled as he
walked,' and would answer no questions. In 1834 Merk expanded, and
said 'we had a long chat.' Kaspar averred that he could read and
write, and had crossed the frontier daily on his way to school. 'He
did not know where he came from.' Certainly Merk, in 1834, remembered
much more than in 1829. Whether he suppressed facts in 1829, or, in
1834, invented fables, we do not know. The cavalry captain (November
2, 1829) remembered several intelligent remarks made by Kaspar. His
dress was new and clean (denied by Feuerbach), he was tired and
footsore. The evidence of the police, taken in 1834, was remote in
time, but went to prove that Kaspar's eyesight and power of writing
were normal. Feuerbach absolutely discredits all the sworn evidence of
1829, without giving his own sources. The early evidence shows that
Kaspar could both walk and talk, and see normally, by artificial and
natural light, all of which is absolutely inconsistent with Kaspar's
later account of himself.
The personal property of Kaspar was a horn rosary, and several
Catholic tracts with prayers to the Guardian Angel, and so forth.
Feuerbach holds that these were furnished by 'devout villains'--a very
sound Protestant was Feuerbach--and that Kaspar was ignorant of the
being of a Deity, at least of a Protestant Deity. The letter carried
by the boy said that the writer first took charge of him, as an
infant, in 1812, and had never let him 'take a single step out of my
house.... I have already taught him to read and write, _and he writes
my handwriting exactly as I do_.' In the same hand was a letter in
Latin characters, purporting to come from Kaspar's mother, 'a poor
girl,' as the author of the German letter was 'a poor day-labourer.'
Humbug as I take Kaspar to have been, I am not sure that he wrote
these pieces. If not, somebody else was in the affair; somebody who
wanted to get rid of Kaspar. As that youth was an useless, false,
convulsionary, and hysterical patient, no one was likely to want to
keep him, if he could do better. No specified reward was offered at
the time for information about Kaspar; no portrait of him was then
published and circulated. The Burgomaster, Binder, had a portrait, and
a facsimile of Kaspar's signature engraved, but Feuerbach would not
allow them to be circulated, heaven knows why.
How Kaspar fell, as it were from the clouds, and unseen, into the
middle of Nuremberg, even on a holiday when almost every one was out
of town, is certainly a puzzle. The earliest witnesses took him for a
journeyman tailor lad (he was about sixteen), and perhaps nobody paid
any attention to a dusty travelling tradesman, or groom out of place.
Feuerbach (who did not see Kaspar till July) says that his feet were
covered with blisters, the gaoler says that they were merely swollen
by the tightness of his boots.
Once in prison, Kaspar, who asked to be taken home, adopted the _rôle_
of 'a semi-unconscious animal,' playing with toy horses, 'blind though
he saw,' yet, not long after, he wrote a minute account of all that he
had then observed. He could only eat bread and water: meat made him
shudder, and Lord Stanhope says that this peculiarity did occur in the
cases of some peasant soldiers. He had no sense of hearing, which
means, perhaps, that he did not think of pretending to be amazed by
the sound of church bells till he had been in prison for some days.
Till then he had been deaf to their noise. This is Feuerbach's story,
but we shall see that it is contradicted by Kaspar himself, in
writing. Thus the alleged facts may be explained without recourse even
to a theory of intermittent deafness. Kaspar was no more deaf than
blind. He 'was all there,' and though, ten days after his arrival, he
denied that he had ever seen Weichmann, in ten days more his memory
for faces was deemed extraordinary, and he minutely described all
that, on May 26 and later, he had observed. Kaspar was taught to write
by the gaoler's little boy, though he could write when he came--in the
same hand as the author of his mysterious letter. Though he had but
half a dozen words on May 26, according to Feuerbach, by July 7 he had
furnished Binder with his history--pretty quick work! Later in 1828 he
was able to write that history himself. In 1829 he completed a work of
autobiography.
Kaspar wrote that till the age of sixteen he was kept in 'a prison,'
'perhaps six or seven feet long, four broad, and five high.' There
were two small windows, with closed black wooden shutters. He lay on
straw, lived on bread and water, and played with toy horses, and blue
and red ribbons. That he could see colours in total darkness is a
proof of his inconsistent fables, or of his 'hyperæsthesia'--abnormal
acuteness of the senses. 'The man' who kept him was not less
hyperæsthetic, for he taught Kaspar to write in the dark. He never
heard any noise, but avers that, in prison, he was alarmed by the town
clock striking, on the first morning, though Feuerbach says that he
did not hear the bells for several days.
Such is Kaspar's written account (1829); the published account of July
1828, derived from 'the expressions of a half-dumb animal' (as
Feuerbach puts it), is much more prolix and minute in detail. The
animal said that he had sat on the ground, and never seen daylight,
till he came to Nuremberg. He used to be hocussed with water of an
evil taste, and wake in a clean shirt. 'The man' once hit him and hurt
him, for making too much noise. The man taught him his letters and the
Arabic numerals. Later he gave him instructions in the art of
standing. Next he took him out, and taught him about nine words. He
was made by the man to walk he knew not how far, or how long, the man
leading him. Nobody saw this extraordinary pair on the march.
Feuerbach, who maintains that Kaspar's feet were covered with cruel
blisters, from walking, also supposes that 'perhaps for the greater
part of the way' he was carried in a carriage or waggon! Whence then
the cruel blisters caused by walking? There is medical evidence that
his legs were distorted by confinement, but the medical _post-mortem_
evidence says that this was not the case. He told Binder that his
windows were shuttered: he told Hiltel, the gaoler, that from his
windows he saw 'a pile of wood and above it the top of a tree.'
Obviously Kaspar's legends about himself, whether spoken in June 1828,
or written in February 1829, are absurdly false. He was for three
weeks in the tower, and was daily visited by the curious. Yet in these
three weeks the half-conscious animal 'learned to read tolerably well,
to count, to write figures' (_that_ he could do when he arrived,
Feuerbach says), 'he made progress in writing a good hand, and learned
a simple tune on the harpsichord,' pretty well for a half-unconscious
animal.
In July 1828, after being adopted by the excited town of Nuremberg, he
was sent to be educated by and live with a schoolmaster named Daumer,
and was studied by Feuerbach. They found, in Kaspar, a splendid
example of the 'sensitive,' and a noble proof of the powers of 'animal
magnetism.' In Germany, at this time, much was talked and written
about 'somnambulism' (the hypnotic state), and about a kind of 'animal
magnetism' which, in accordance with Mesmer's theory, was supposed to
pass between stars, metals, magnets, and human beings. The effects
produced on the patient by the hypnotist (now ascribed to
'suggestion') were attributed to a 'magnetic efflux,' and
Reichenbach's subjects saw strange currents flowing from metals and
magnets. His experiments have never, perhaps, been successfully
repeated, though hysterical persons have pretended to feel the
traditional effects, even when non-magnetic objects were pointed at
them. Now Kaspar was really a 'sensitive,' or feigned to be one, with
hysterical cunning. Anything unusual would throw him into convulsions,
or reduce him to unconsciousness. He was addicted to the tears of
sensibility. Years later Meyer read to him an account of the Noachian
Deluge, and he wept bitterly. Meyer thought this rather too much, the
Deluge being so remote an event, and, after that, though Meyer read
pathetic things in his best manner, Kaspar remained unmoved. He wrote
a long account of his remarkable magnetic sensations during and before
the first thunderstorm after his arrival at Nuremberg. Yet, before his
appearance there, he must have heard plenty of thunderstorms, though
he pretended that this was his first. The sight of the moon produced
in him 'emotions of horror.' He had visions, like the Rev. Ansel
Bourne, later to be described, of a beautiful male figure in a white
garment, who gave him a garland. He was taken to a 'somnambulist,' and
felt 'magnetic' pulls and pushes, and a strong current of air. Indeed
the tutor, Daumer, shared these sensations, obviously by virtue of
'suggestion.' They are out of fashion, the doctrine of animal
magnetism being as good as exploded, and nobody feels pulled or pushed
or blown upon, when he consults Mrs. Piper or any other 'medium.'
From a letter of Feuerbach of September 20, 1828, we learn that
Kaspar, '_without being an albino_,' can see as well in utter darkness
as in daylight. Perhaps the man who taught Kaspar to write, in the
dark, _was_ an albino: Kaspar never saw his face. Kaspar's powers of
vision abated, as he took to beef, but he remained hyperæsthetic, and
could see better in a bad light than Daumer or Feuerbach. Some
'dowsers,' we know, can detect subterranean water, by the sensations
of their hands, without using a twig, or divining rod, and others can
'spot' gold hidden under the carpet, with the twig. Kaspar, merely
with the bare hand, detected (without touching it?) a needle under a
table cloth. He gradually lost these gifts, and the theory seems to
have been that they were the result of his imprisonment in the dark,
and a proof of it. The one thing certain is that Kaspar had the
sensitive or 'mediumistic' temperament, which usually--though not
always--is accompanied by hysteria, while hysteria means cunning and
fraud, whether conscious or not so conscious. Meanwhile the boy was in
the hands of men credulous, curious, and, in the case of Daumer,
capable of odd sensations induced by suggestion. From such a boy, in
such company, the truth could not be expected, above all if, like some
other persons of his class, he was subject to 'dissociation' and
obliviousness as to his own past.
Rather curiously we find in Feuerbach's own published collection of
Trials the case of a boy, Sörgel, who had 'paroxysms of second
consciousness ... of which he was ignorant upon returning to his
ordinary state of consciousness.' We have also the famous case of the
atheistic carpenter, Ansel Bourne, who was struck deaf, dumb, and
blind, and miraculously healed, in a dissenting chapel, to the great
comfort of 'a large and warm congregation.' Mr. Bourne then became a
preacher, but later forgot who he was, strolled to a distant part of
the States, called himself Browne, set up a 'notions store,' and, one
day, awoke among his notions to the consciousness that he was Bourne,
not Browne, a preacher, not a dealer in cheap futilities. Bourne was
examined, under hypnotism, by Professor William James and others.[12]
[Footnote 12: _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_,
vol. vii. pp. 221-257.]
Many such instances of 'ambulatory automatism' are given. In my view,
Kaspar was, to put it mildly, an ambulatory automatist, who had
strayed away, like the Rev. Mr. Bourne, from some place where nobody
desired his return: rather his lifelong absence was an object of hope.
The longer Kaspar lived, the more frequently was he detected in every
sort of imposture that could make him notorious, or enable him to
shirk work.
Kaspar had for months been the pet mystery of Nuremberg. People were
sure that, like the mysterious prisoner of Pignerol, Les Exiles, and
the Isle Sainte-Marguerite (1669-1703?), Kaspar was some great one,
'kept out of his own.' Now the prisoner of Pignerol was really a
valet, and Kaspar was a peasant. Some thought him a son of Napoleon:
others averred (as we saw) that he was the infant son of the Grand
Duke Karl of Baden, born in 1812, who had not died within a fortnight
of his birth, but been spirited away by a lady disguised as the
spectral 'White Lady of Baden,' an aristocratic _ban-shie_. The subtle
conspirators had bred the Grand Duke Kaspar in a dark den, the theory
ran, hoping that he would prove, by virtue of such education, an
acceptable recruit for the Bavarian cavalry, and that no questions
would be asked. Unluckily questions were now being asked, for a boy
who could only occasionally see and hear was not (though he could
smell a cemetery at a distance of five hundred yards), an useful man
on a patrol, at least the military authorities thought not. Had they
known that Kaspar could see in the dark, they might have kept him as a
guide in night attacks, but they did not know. The promising young
hussar (he rode well but clumsily) was thus left in the hands of
civilians: the Grand Ducal secret might be discovered, so an assassin
was sent to take off the young prince.
The wonder was not unnaturally expressed that Kaspar had not smelled
out the villain, especially as he was probably the educational
albino, who taught him to write in the dark. On hearing of this,
later, Kaspar told Lord Stanhope that he _had_ smelled the man:
however, he did not mention this at the time. To make a long story
short, on October 17, 1829, Kaspar did not come to midday eating, but
was found weltering in his gore, in the cellar of Daumer's house.
Being offered refreshment in a cup, he bit out a piece of the
porcelain and swallowed it. He had 'an inconsiderable wound' on the
forehead; to that extent the assassin had effected his purpose.
Feuerbach thinks that the murderer had made a shot at Kaspar's throat
with a razor, that Kaspar ducked cleverly, and got it on the brow, and
that the assassin believed his crime to be consummated, and fled,
after uttering words in which Kaspar recognised the voice of his
tutor, the possible albino. No albino or other suspicious character
was observed. Herr Daumer, before this cruel outrage, had remarked, in
Kaspar, 'a highly regrettable tendency to dissimulation and
untruthfulness,' and, just before the attack, had told the pupil that
he was a humbug. Lord Stanhope quoted a paper of Daumer's in the
_Universal Gazette_ of February 6, 1834 (_Allgemeine Zeitung_), in
which he says that 'lying and deceit were become to Kaspar a second
nature.' When did they begin to become a second nature? In any case
Daumer clove to the romantic theory of Kaspar's origin. Kaspar left
Daumer's house and stayed with various good people, being accompanied
by a policeman in his walks. He was sent to school, and Feuerbach
bitterly complains that he was compelled to study the Latin grammar,
'and finally even Cæsar's Commentaries!' Like other boys, Kaspar
protested that he 'did not see the use of Latin,' and indeed many of
our modern authors too obviously share Kaspar's indifference to the
dead languages. He laughed, in 1831, says Feuerbach, at the popish
superstition 'of his early attendants' (we only hear of one, and about
_his_ theological predilections we learn nothing), and he also laughed
at ghosts. In his new homes Kaspar lied terribly, was angry when
detected, and wounded himself--he said accidentally--with a pistol,
after being reproached for shirking the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar,
and for mendacity. He was very vain, very agreeable as long as no one
found fault with him, very lazy, and very sentimental.
In May 1831 Lord Stanhope, who, since the attack on Kaspar in 1829,
had been curious about him, came to Nuremberg, and 'took up' the hero,
with fantastic fondness. Though he recognised Kaspar's mythopoeic
tendencies, he believed him to be the victim of some nefarious
criminals, and offered a reward of 500 florins, anonymously, for
information. It never was claimed.
Already had arisen a new theory, that Kaspar was the son of an
Hungarian magnate. Later, Lord Stanhope averred, on oath, that
inquiries made in Hungary proved Kaspar to be an impostor. In 1830, a
man named Müller, who had been a Protestant preacher, and was now a
Catholic priest, denounced a preacher named Wirth, and a Miss Dalbonn,
a governess, as kidnappers of Kaspar from the family of a Countess,
living near Pesth. Müller was exposed, his motives were revealed, and
the newspapers told the story. Kaspar was therefore tried with
Hungarian words, and seemed to recognise some, especially Posonbya
(Pressburg). He thought that some one had said that his father was at
Pressburg: and thither Lord Stanhope sent him, with Lieutenant Hickel.
This was in 1831, but Kaspar recognised nothing: his companions,
however, found that he pretended to be asleep in the carriage, to hear
what was said about him. They ceased to speak of him, and Kaspar
ceased to slumber. A later expedition into Hungary, by Hickel, in
February 1832, on the strength of more Hungarian excitement on
Kaspar's part, discovered that there was nothing to discover, and
shook the credulity of Lord Stanhope. He could not believe Kaspar's
narrative, but still hoped that he had been terrorised into falsehood.
He could not believe both that the albino had never spoken to Kaspar
in his prison, and also that 'the man always taught me to do what I
was told.' To Lord Stanhope Kaspar averred that 'the man with whom he
had always lived said nothing to him till he was on his journey.' Yet,
during his imprisonment, the man had taught him, he declared, the
phrases which, by his account, were all the words that he knew when he
arrived at Nuremberg.
For these and other obvious reasons, Lord Stanhope, though he had
relieved Nuremberg of Kaspar (November 1831), and made ample provision
for him, was deeply sceptical about his narrative. The town of
Nuremberg had already tried to shift the load of Kaspar on to the
shoulders of the Bavarian Government. Lord Stanhope did not adopt him,
but undertook to pay for his maintenance, and left him, in January
1832, under the charge of a Dr. Meyer, at Anspach. He had a curator,
and a guardian, and escaped from the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar into
the genial society of Feuerbach. That jurist died in May 1833
(poisoned, say the Kasparites), a new guardian was appointed, and
Kaspar lived with Dr. Meyer. Finding him incurably untruthful, the
doctor ceased to provoke him by comments on his inaccuracies, and
Kaspar got a small clerkly place. With this he was much dissatisfied,
for he, like Feuerbach, had expected Lord Stanhope to take him to
England. Feuerbach, in the dedication to Lord Stanhope of his book
(1832), writes, 'Beyond the sea, in fair old England, you have
prepared for him a secure retreat, until the rising sun of Truth shall
have dispersed the darkness which still hangs over his mysterious
fate.' If Lord Stanhope ever made this promise, his growing scepticism
about Kaspar prevented him from fulfilling it. On December 9, 1833,
Meyer was much provoked by Kaspar's inveterate falseness, and said
that he did not know how to face Lord Stanhope, who was expected to
visit Anspach at Christmas. For some weeks Kaspar had been sulky, and
there had been questions about a journal which he was supposed to
keep, but would not show. He was now especially resentful. On two
earlier occasions, after a scene with his tutor, Kaspar had been
injured, once by the assassin who cut his forehead; once by a pistol
accident. On December 14, he rushed into Dr. Meyer's room, pointed to
his side, and led Meyer to a place distant about five hundred yards
from his house. So agitated was he that Meyer would go no further,
especially as Kaspar would answer no questions. On their return,
Kaspar said, 'Went Court Garden--Man--had a knife--gave a
bag--struck--I ran as I could--bag must lie there.' Kaspar was found
to have a narrow wound, 'two inches and a half under the centre of the
left breast,' clearly caused by a very sharp double-edged weapon. In
three or four days he died, the heart had been injured. He was able to
depose, but not on oath, that on the morning of the 14th a man in a
blouse (who had addressed him some days earlier) brought him a verbal
message from the Court gardener, asking him to come and view some clay
from a newly bored well, where, in fact, no work was being done at
this time. He found no one at the well, and went to the monument of
the rather forgotten poet Uz. Here a man came forward, gave him a
bag, stabbed him, and fled. Of the man he gave discrepant
descriptions. He became incoherent, and died.
There was snow lying, when Kaspar was stabbed, but there were no
footmarks near the well, and elsewhere, only one man's track was in
the Hofgarten. Was that track Kaspar's? We are not told. No knife was
found. Kaspar was left-handed, and Dr. Horlacher declared that the
blow must have been dealt by a left-handed man. Lord Stanhope
suggested that Kaspar himself had inflicted the wound by pressure, and
that, after he had squeezed the point of the knife through his wadded
coat, it had penetrated much deeper than he had intended, a very
probable hypothesis.
As for the bag which the assassin gave him, it was found, and Dr.
Meyer said that it was very like a bag which he had seen in Kaspar's
possession. It contained a note, folded, said Madame Meyer, as Kaspar
folded his own notes. The writing was in pencil, in _Spiegelschrift_,
that is, it had to be read in a mirror. Kaspar, on his deathbed, kept
muttering incoherences about 'what is written with lead, no one can
read.' The note contained vague phrases about coming from the Bavarian
frontier.