35 Facts About Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar Hauser was a German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell.

Kaspar Hauser carried a letter with him addressed to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment, Captain von Wessenig.

Kaspar Hauser showed that he was familiar with money, could say some prayers and read a little, but he answered few questions and his vocabulary appeared to be rather limited.

Kaspar Hauser spent the following two months in Luginsland Tower in Nuremberg Castle in the care of a jailer named Andreas Hiltel.

Kaspar Hauser was of a "healthy facial complexion" and approximately 16 years old, but appeared to be intellectually impaired.

At first, it was assumed that Kaspar Hauser was a half-wild child from the forests.

Kaspar Hauser gave the cell's dimensions as approximately two metres long, one metre wide and one and a half high, with only a straw bed to sleep on, and four toys, two horses and a dog carved out of wood.

Kaspar Hauser claimed that he found rye bread and water next to his bed each morning.

Kaspar Hauser claimed that the first human being he had ever met was a man who visited him not long before his release.

The stranger allegedly taught him to say the phrase "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was", but Kaspar Hauser claimed that he did not understand what the words meant.

Kaspar Hauser was formally adopted by the town of Nuremberg and money was donated for his upkeep and education.

Kaspar Hauser was given into the care of Friedrich Daumer, a schoolmaster and speculative philosopher, who taught him various subjects and who thereby discovered his talent for drawing.

On 17 October 1829, Kaspar Hauser was found in the cellar of Daumer's house bleeding from a newly cut wound on the forehead.

The alleged attack on Kaspar Hauser fueled rumours about his possible ancestry from Hungary, England or the House of Baden.

Doubters of Kaspar Hauser's story are of the opinion that he had self-inflicted the wound with a razor, which he then took back to his room before going to the cellar.

Kaspar Hauser might have done so to arouse pity and thus escape chiding for a recent quarrel with Daumer, who had come to believe that the boy had a tendency to lie.

Kaspar Hauser soon revived and stated that he climbed on a chair to get some books, the chair had fallen, and then, while trying to find a handhold, he had by mistake torn down the pistol hanging on the wall and caused the shot to go off.

Some authors associate the incident with a preceding quarrel in which, again, Kaspar Hauser had been reproached for lying.

Kaspar Hauser spent a great deal of money attempting to clarify Hauser's origin.

Kaspar Hauser failed to recognise any buildings or monuments in Hungary.

Stanhope continued to pay for Kaspar Hauser's living expenses but never made good on his promise that he would take him to England.

In late 1832, Kaspar Hauser was employed as a copyist in the local law office.

Still hoping that Stanhope would take him to England, Kaspar Hauser was dissatisfied with his situation, which deteriorated further when his patron, Anselm von Feuerbach, died in May 1833.

On 9 December 1833, Kaspar Hauser had a serious argument with Meyer.

Five days later, on 14 December 1833, Kaspar Hauser came home with a deep wound in his left breast.

Inconsistencies in Kaspar Hauser's account led the Ansbach court of enquiry to suspect that he had stabbed himself and then invented a tale about being attacked.

The note itself was folded into a specific triangular form, in the way in which Kaspar Hauser would fold his letters, according to Mrs Meyer.

Dr Heidenreich, a physician present at the autopsy, claimed that the brain of Kaspar Hauser was notable for small cortical size and its few non-distinct cortical gyri, indicative to some that he suffered from cortical atrophy or, as G Hesse argued, from epilepsy.

Kaspar Hauser's tale is so full of absurdities that it is astonishing that it was ever believed and is even today still believed by many people.

Since Kaspar Hauser was unmarried and childless when he was stabbed to death in 1833, this heavily disputed claim joined with the actual succession laws of male-only primogeniture, as practiced in the Grand Duchy.

The new DNA samples were compared to a mitochondrial DNA segment from Astrid von Medinger nee von Zallinger zu Stillendorf, a female line descendant of Kaspar Hauser's supposed younger sister Princess Josephine of Baden through her granddaughter Princess Josephine Caroline of Belgium.

Kaspar Hauser inspired the French poet Paul Verlaine to write the poem "Gaspard Hauser chante", in which he sees himself as Gaspard, published in his book Sagesse.

La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser is a surreal drama based on "the legend" of Kaspar Hauser.

Kaspar Hauser was the first to publish a critical summary of the ascertained facts, under the title of Kaspar Hauser, ein Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben.

Kaspar Hauser's analysis delves into the occult significance of the individuality he sees as incarnated in Kaspar Hauser.