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KASPAR HAUSER 
 
THE TRUE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 jfrom ^Official 2Docwrant# 
 
 BY 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND 
 
 Pontoon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1893 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 THE story of Kaspar Hauser is both curious and 
 instructive. It shows on how commonplace and 
 unpromising a foundation a myth of European 
 celebrity may rest. o ' 'V\ 
 
 One afternoon in May 1828 (it was an 
 Easter Monday), two men, standing talking 
 together in the Unschlittsplatz, outside the Neue 
 Thor (New Gate) of Nuremberg, were hailed 
 by a country lad, who asked his way to the 
 Neue Thor Strasse (New Gate Street). He was 
 a fresh-complexioned boy of seventeen or there- 
 abouts, dressed like a countryman, and decidedly 
 short of his age ; his clothes were dusty, as from 
 a long tramp, and he looked jaded, but he came 
 up to them with a quick, firm step. He then 
 pulled a letter out of his pocket addressed, with 
 all the usual German formalities, to " the Cap- 
 tain of the 4th Squadron of the Schmolischer 
 
2 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Regiment, Neue Thor Strasse, Nuremberg." 
 One of the men, a shoemaker named Weich- 
 mann, offered to take him part of the way, as 
 he was himself going in that direction, and they 
 had a little talk together as they went. He 
 wanted to know whether the Neue Thor had 
 been only just built. He was asked where 
 he came from. " From Ratisbon." Had he 
 ever been in Nuremberg before ? " No, it was 
 the first time." He spoke the Low Bavarian 
 dialect, and from his appearance Weichmann 
 judged him to be a groom or stable boy. As 
 they passed through the Neue Thor, he pulled off 
 his hat to the corporal on guard, again produced 
 his letter, and received directions where to take 
 it. Here Weichmann and he parted company. 
 
 When he reached the Captain's house, the 
 Captain was not at home. He either gave or 
 wrote down his name, " Kaspar Hauser," and 
 the groom who opened the door allowed him 
 to await his master's return. They sat down 
 together on a stone bench in the stables. The 
 groom remarked he looked tired and dusty, and 
 asked where he came from. He replied, "I 
 must not say," then burst into tears, and said 
 he had been forced to travel day and night, and 
 had to be carried when he could no longer walk. 
 The groom compassionately offered him meat 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 3 
 
 and beer, but he would touch nothing but bread 
 and water. When shown the horses, he fondled 
 and stroked them, saying, " There were five like 
 those where I came from." He also mentioned 
 that he had to cross the frontier every day in 
 going to school. At last, thoroughly tired out, 
 he coiled himself up in the straw and fell fast 
 asleep. 
 
 The Captain in due time came home, 
 opened the letter he had brought, and read as 
 follows : 
 
 " Honoured Sir I send you a lad who wishes 
 to serve his King truly ; this lad was brought to 
 me on October 7, 1812. I am a poor day- 
 labourer with ten children of my own ; I have 
 enough to do to get on at all. His mother 
 asked me to bring up the boy. I asked her no 
 questions, nor have I given notice to the county 
 police that I had taken the boy. I thought I 
 ought to take him as my son. I have brought 
 him up as a good Christian ; and since 1812! 
 have never let him go a step away from the 
 house, so no one knows where he has been 
 brought up, and he himself does not know the 
 name of my house, nor of the place ; you may 
 ask him, but he can't tell you. I have taught 
 him to read and to write ; he can write as well 
 
4 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 as myself. 1 When we ask him what he would 
 like to be, he says a soldier, like his father. If 
 he had parents (which he has not), he would 
 have been a scholar ; only show him a thing, 
 and he can do it. 
 
 " I have only taken him as far as Neumarkt ; 
 from there he went on by himself. I have told 
 him that when he is a soldier I may come and 
 see him, otherwise he is off my hands. 
 
 " Honoured Sir, you may question him, but 
 he don't know where I live. I brought him 
 away in the middle of the night ; he can't find 
 his way back. 
 
 " I respectfully take my leave. I don't give 
 my name, as I might be punished. 
 
 "And he has not a single kreuzer" (the 
 smallest German coin) "by him, for I have 
 nothing myself. If you won't keep him, you 
 must knock him on the head or hang him up." 
 
 Dated, " From the Bavarian frontier ; place 
 not named." 
 
 Enclosed was another letter, written in Latin 
 characters, but apparently with the same ink : 
 
 " The boy is baptized ; his name is Kaspar ; 
 
 1 The handwriting of this letter was almost exactly 
 similar to Kaspar's. 
 
KASPAR MAUSER 5 
 
 his other name you must give him. I ask you 
 to bring him up. His father was a Schmolischer 
 (trooper). When he is seventeen, send him to 
 Nuremberg to the 6th Schmolische Regiment : 
 that is where his father was. I beg you to 
 bring him up till he is seventeen. He was born 
 on April 30, 1812. I am a poor girl ; I can't 
 keep the boy ; his father is dead." 
 
 The Captain then questioned the boy, who 
 only answered, " My foster-father bade me say, 
 I don't know, your honour " ; then pulling off 
 his hat, he added, " He told me I was always to 
 say your honour, and take off my hat." He 
 repeated over and over again that he wanted to 
 be a trooper as his father had been, but would 
 give no further account of himself, nor tell 
 where he came from. The Captain evidently 
 did not fancy this mysterious and diminutive 
 recruit. He did not like the tone of the letter, 
 and sent him to the police-station as a runaway. 
 From thence he was, after three hours' deten- 
 tion, transferred to the Castle, and lodged in a 
 prison cell surely a very harsh measure. Had 
 he been in England, he would never have been 
 locked up, or probably heard of again. I may 
 note that, though evidently very tired, he was 
 able to walk from one place to the other alto- 
 
6 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 gether a considerable distance and climb the 
 steep Castlehill, as well as a flight of ninety-two 
 steps to his cell in the Vestner Thurm. 1 Yet 
 President von Feuerbach, in his History of a 
 Crime against a Human Soul, the eloquent 
 treatise that set all Germany ablaze with indig- 
 nation, declares he was found in the street totter- 
 ing and reeling like a drunken man, and scarcely 
 able to stand upright. 
 
 By this time the lad was heartily frightened, 
 and would hardly open his lips, though he wrote 
 down his name when desired to do so. His 
 pockets were searched, but they contained only 
 a rosary, a worn-out key, a prayer-book, and 
 some religious tracts and leaflets. He pretended 
 not to understand the questions put to him, 
 and appeared so impenetrably dense and stupid 
 that Feuerbach described his condition as little 
 different from that of an animal. But he kept 
 his eyes and ears well open, and the warder in 
 charge was not long in discovering that he was 
 
 1 This account is derived from the official depositions 
 taken by the police, which were suppressed by Feuerbach 
 as wholly misleading. He more than once said to my 
 father, "Any one who reads the Nuremberg archives 
 would take Kaspar Hauser to be an impostor ! " and once 
 added emphatically, " They ought to be burnt." Strange 
 to say, they actually had disappeared in 1883, nor was 
 their disappearance ever accounted for. (See Appendix, 
 p. 91.) 
 
KASPAR MAUSER 7 
 
 remarkably sharp-witted. Meanwhile his story 
 spread like wildfire in the town, and, embellished 
 with some additions and improvements, speedily 
 developed into a popular romance. 
 
 A wild, or half-wild, man was said to be im- 
 prisoned in the Castle. People flocked to see 
 him in his cell till, as one of the officers of the 
 local gendarmerie, Major Hickel, writes on 
 June 1 8, "it resembled a miracle-working 
 shrine," and no place of pilgrimage was ever 
 more zealously frequented. Not only the idle 
 and curious, but men of science and men of 
 letters, grave doctors and learned professors 
 not to speak of crowds of ladies bringing him 
 toys came, often from a great distance, to 
 examine and talk him over. They discussed 
 him in his presence with perfect unreserve, as he 
 was not supposed to comprehend what passed ; 
 and he heard all kinds of fanciful surmises and 
 theories as to his origin and past life. No 
 doubt the strange story he told was in part 
 suggested to him. 
 
 His first paroxysm of fear (when he came to 
 the Castle he shrank back in terror even from 
 the warder's little two-year-old boy) soon sub- 
 sided, though he always remained excessively 
 timid. By degrees his shyness wore off; he 
 began to talk ; to answer questions ; and at last 
 
8 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 to unfold the marvellous tale that made so 
 extraordinary a sensation. 
 
 All his life, he said, had been spent in a cell 
 6 or 7 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 5 feet high ; 
 and always in a sitting posture : the only change 
 in which was that when awake he sat upright, 
 but leant back on a truss of straw when he slept. 
 There were two small windows, but they were 
 both boarded up ; and, as it was always twilight, 
 he never knew the difference between day and 
 night. Nor did he ever feel either hot or cold. 
 He saw no one, and no sound of any kind ever 
 reached his ear. Each morning, when he woke, 
 he found a pitcher of water and a loaf of rye 
 bread by his side. He was often thirsty, and 
 when he had emptied his pitcher, used to watch 
 to see whether the water would come again, as 
 he had no idea how it was brought there. 
 Sometimes it tasted strangely, and made him 
 feel sleepy. He had toys to play with two 
 wooden horses and a wooden dog and spent 
 his time in rolling them about, and dressing 
 them up with ribbons. 
 
 One day, a stool was placed across his knees, 
 with a piece of paper upon it ; an arm was 
 stretched out over his shoulder, a pencil put 
 into his hand, and it was taken hold of, and 
 guided over the paper. " I never looked round 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 9 
 
 to see whom the arm belonged to. Why should 
 I ? I had no conception of any other creature 
 beside myself/' This was repeated seven or 
 eight times ; the arm was then withdrawn, but 
 the stool, pencil, and paper left behind. He 
 tried to copy the letters he had been made to 
 trace, and, pleased with this new occupation, 
 persevered till he had succeeded. Thus it was 
 that he learned to write his name. 
 
 About three days afterwards (as far as he 
 could judge) the man came again, and brought 
 a little book the same prayer-book that was 
 found in his pocket. This was placed on his 
 knees, and his hand laid upon it ; then, pointing 
 to one of the wooden horses, the man kept on 
 repeating the word " Ross " (horse) till he had 
 learned to say it after him. I should observe 
 that, according to his own account, this was 
 the first time in his life he had ever heard a 
 sound of any kind, as the man came and went 
 noiselessly. Then, in the same fashion, he was 
 taught two sentences 
 
 " In the big village, where my father is, I 
 shall get a fine horse." 
 
 " I want to be a trooper, as my father was " 
 which he repeated by rote, of course without 
 understanding them. When his lesson was 
 learnt, the man went away, and he began 
 
io KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 playing with his toys, making so much noise 
 that the man returned, and gave him a smart 
 blow with a stick, which hurt him very much. 
 " After that, I was always quiet." 
 
 The last time the man came, it was to take 
 him away. His clothes had been changed while 
 he slept ; a pair of boots were now brought and 
 put on ; he was hoisted up on the man's 
 shoulders, and carried up a steep incline (stair- 
 case) into the open air. It was night-time, 
 and quite dark. He was laid down on the 
 ground, and fell asleep at once. When he 
 awoke, he was lifted up on his feet, and placed 
 in front of the man, who, holding him under 
 the arms, pushed forwards his legs with his own, 
 and showed him how to walk. But the pain 
 and fatigue were very great, and he cried bitterly. 
 The man said impatiently, " Leave off crying at 
 once, or you shall not get that horse " ; and he 
 thereupon obeyed. (Query : How, not know- 
 ing any language, and only able to repeat a few 
 words by rote, like a parrot, did he understand 
 what the man said to him?) Then he was 
 again lifted up and carried ; again dropped 
 asleep, and again awoke to find himself lying on 
 the ground. This was repeated over and over 
 again. There were the same painful attempts 
 to walk, the same floods of tears, checked by 
 
KASPAR HAUSER n 
 
 the same threat ; and then the same rest on the 
 ground, with " something soft " under his cheek. 
 This pillow was evidently a comfort, as its 
 mention is never omitted. By degrees he began 
 to walk alone, supported by the man's arm, 
 though at first only six steps at a time. The 
 sunshine and fresh air together dazzled and 
 bewildered him, and he scarcely took note where 
 they went. They never travelled on a beaten 
 track, but generally on soft sand ; never went 
 up or down hill, or crossed a stream. Some- 
 times he attempted to look about him ; then 
 the man instantly desired him to hold his head 
 down. His clothes were once more changed ; 
 but the man, even while dressing him, stood 
 behind him, so that he might not see his face. 
 The two sentences he had learned were again 
 and again impressed on his memory as he went 
 along, the man always adding impressively, 
 " Mind this well." He also said, " When you 
 are a trooper, like your father, I will come and 
 fetch you again." The journey cannot have 
 been a long one, as he only took food once ; he 
 himself computed it had lasted a day and a 
 night. Finally, the letter was put into his 
 hands, with the words, " Go there where the 
 letter belongs " ; and the man suddenly vanished 
 from his side. He found himself alone in the 
 
12 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 street at Nuremberg having never, till then, 
 perceived that he had entered the town, or, in 
 fact, seen it at all. He was quite dazed and 
 helpless ; but some one kindly came and took 
 charge of him and his letter. 
 
 This is, word for word, the narrative that 
 was written down by Kaspar Hauser, and 
 repeated by him before a specially appointed 
 Commission of the magistrates of Nuremberg, 
 in November 1828 ; though I must premise 
 that he was never once examined on oath. It 
 is, in every sense of the word, a marvellous 
 story ; and yet, to my mind, the chief marvel of 
 it is how any one should have been found able to 
 believe it. That a lad who had spent his life 
 sitting on the floor could have been able to 
 stand on his feet at all, still less to have learned 
 to walk within twenty-four hours, is not more 
 impossible than that he could have been taught 
 to write and speak, if only a few words, in two 
 lessons. Even those who gave him full credit 
 for honesty and integrity must have believed 
 that his undeveloped mind had confused times 
 and dates. Again, is it credible that no sound 
 should ever have reached him in his cell, not 
 even thunder? yet he expressed great terror at 
 the first thunderstorm he witnessed in the Castle. 
 Feuerbach attempted to explain this by sup- 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 13 
 
 posing him to be so taken up with his toys that 
 he could attend to nothing else. This was, as 
 my father said, comparing him to Archimedes, 
 absorbed in the solution of a problem. Kaspar 
 himself, when pressed, even by partial friends, 
 to explain any discrepancies or improbabilities 
 in his statements, used to declare such cross- 
 questioning made his head ache ; or else boldly 
 asserted, " I never said it." 
 
 One fact, however, remains undoubted that 
 the story, such as it was, was very generally 
 accepted, and produced an almost unprecedented 
 impression. It appealed irresistibly to the imagi- 
 nation and the feelings of the hearers ; and, 
 spreading far and wide through the country, 
 aroused a perfect fever of sympathy and indigna- 
 tion. Many corroborative circumstances were 
 discovered and announced. Kaspar's eyes could 
 not bear the light ; l he had to be led up and 
 down stairs ; the soles of his feet were as soft 
 and tender as a child's palm (this the warder con- 
 tradicted, declaring he suffered only from tight 
 boots) (see p. 101), etc. All adverse evidence 
 
 1 This was certainly not the case on his first arrival ; 
 (see the evidence of Police -Corporal Wust, p. 99) nor 
 does it agree with that of the warder, who states that, on 
 the second day of his imprisonment, he, in his childish 
 wonder and ignorance, thrust his finger into the flame of a 
 splinter of burning wood. 
 
i 4 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 was discarded ; the men to whom Kaspar had 
 spoken at his first coming were bullied and dis- 
 believed ; the guide who had led him to the 
 Neue Thor, he declined to recognise when 
 brought face to face with him. Doctors were 
 sent to examine him, and pronounced him a 
 psychological curiosity an " animal-man," who 
 had been evidently shut out from all communion 
 with his kind, whose faculties were dormant, 
 but whose senses were morbidly acute. His 
 ears were so sensitive that every sound pained 
 them ; though fond of music, he suffered 
 greatly from pianoforte-playing; and he could 
 not hear the regimental band without being 
 ill for two days afterwards. A trumpet-call 
 threw him into a violent perspiration. He 
 could see in the dark as well as by day, but 
 could not endure the light of the sun, and had 
 to wear a shade out of doors, and keep the 
 window -curtains always drawn in his room. 
 His sense of smell was extraordinary ; the scent 
 of the leaves of a walnut tree in a neighbouring 
 garden gave him the headache, and that of all 
 flowers, especially roses, was particularly dis- 
 agreeable to him. Once, when approaching 
 the cemetery at Nuremberg, he perceived, even 
 at the distance of several hundred yards, a smell 
 so overpowering, that it almost threw him into 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 15 
 
 convulsions ! Then there was a malconfor- 
 mation of the knees * by no means peculiar to 
 himself which was adduced as a proof that he 
 must always have sat with his legs stretched out 
 before him. Yet, on his arrival, he had coiled 
 himself up in the straw (see p. 3), and, accord- 
 ing to the Castle warder, was in the habit not 
 only of sleeping with his feet drawn up, but 
 of tucking them under him, like a tailor, when 
 he sat (see p. 101). They found old scars 
 on his head and legs, proving that the poor boy 
 had, at some time or other, been cruelly mal- 
 treated ; but these are not commented upon in 
 their report. One more recent hurt in the arm 
 had, Kaspar explained, been caused by "the 
 smart blow with the stick " he had received in 
 his cell. His body was well nourished, but it 
 is clear he had lived on bread and water ; for 
 many weeks any other kind of food made him 
 sick, and it was not till the following October 
 that he was able to touch meat. 2 He never 
 learned to like either wine or beer. 
 
 1 The patella, or knee-pan, which, in most cases, when 
 the leg is extended shows a slight projection, in his case lay 
 in a hollow ; so that, when he sat on the ground with his leg 
 stretched out before him, the knee-joint rested on the floor. 
 Not even a card, it was said, could be inserted under it. 
 
 2 According to Dr. Eckart, an army surgeon, this is a 
 not altogether uncommon experience with recruits from 
 the poorer districts of Bavaria. 
 
1 6 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 All this time the police had been very busy 
 searching and inquiring in every direction for any 
 boy answering Kaspar's description that had been 
 missing from his home. But they scoured the 
 country in vain for any trace of one. No such 
 boy was lost or known of. No one came for- 
 ward to claim him ; and in July 1828 he was 
 formally adopted by the town of Nuremberg ; 
 an annual sum of 300 florins was voted for his 
 maintenance and education, and he was placed 
 under the charge of Professor Daumer. 
 
 His education had already been undertaken 
 in the Castle, and he learned whatever he was 
 taught well and quickly, though never after- 
 wards with quite the same marvellous and rather 
 suspicious facility he had shown in reading and 
 writing. But Professor Daumer found that 
 the constant influx of visitors seriously inter- 
 fered with his lessons ; and it was decreed that 
 none should be admitted in future. He was, 
 however, freely allowed to go out and see his 
 friends ; to drive with ladies on the summer 
 afternoons, and attend assemblies in the even- 
 ings. He became the idol of Nuremberg 
 society. Wherever he went, he was surrounded 
 by a circle of admirers, while the genealogy of 
 every reigning house in Germany was discussed 
 and dissected in his presence, with the view of 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 17 
 
 affiliating him to one of them. Nor were the 
 great nobles of the land neglected. " Every 
 door was knocked at " where it was hoped he 
 might gain admittance. An accidental resem- 
 blance he bore to a daughter of the Grand 
 Duchess Stephanie of Baden led to the per- 
 sistent belief that he was one of the two sons 
 she had lost in their infancy, and, as it was now 
 alleged, under suspicious circumstances. (See 
 pp. 45, 71, etc.) 
 
 One cannot wonder that, flattered and 
 caressed as he was, the boy's head should have 
 been turned. He accepted the part assigned to 
 him, and enacted the prince in disguise with 
 success and complacency. He had the facile 
 gift of readily adapting himself to his surround- 
 ings, knew how to conciliate and please them, 
 and never seemed at a loss under any circum- 
 stances. His tutor, too, was delighted with 
 him. The Professor was a zealous disciple of 
 Hahnemann, and tried various homoeopathic ex- 
 periments on Kaspar, who proved an admirable 
 subject. Some of the results he published are 
 very amusing. The millionth part of the 
 slightest infusion of medicine, dissolved in a 
 glass of water, was plainly perceptible to Kas- 
 par even at some distance, by its smell ; and not 
 one smell only, but three "well-defined and 
 
1 8 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 genuine" smells the first sweet, the second 
 spirituous, the third " indescribable." The mere 
 touch of a closed medicine glass cured any 
 external hurt, and affected him for months 
 together ; while he became intoxicated from 
 swallowing a single grape! Then he had 
 magnetic qualities. Iron attracted him ; he 
 declared that in riding (among other accom- 
 plishments, he was being taught to ride), the 
 iron in the saddle kept him in his seat, while 
 his feet were held fast by the stirrups. But 
 when he wore spurs, his feet were distinctly 
 dragged in an opposite direction. Silver spurs 
 acted more powerfully than brass ones ; and 
 the use of a silver spoon brought on such 
 violent tremblings that he was scarcely able to 
 raise it to his mouth, and Daumer compas- 
 sionately bought him a wooden one. On one 
 occasion, when a man carrying a bag of money 
 came into the room in which he was, he had to 
 leave it in great perturbation, and wipe the 
 sweat off his brow in an adjoining one. Gold, 
 platina, diamonds, quicksilver, and magnets had 
 all a surprising effect upon him, creating a 
 variety of cold blasts. He discerned a pocket 
 mirror, of which the back was turned towards 
 him, at the distance of nine paces ; felt the 
 sulphur on a match at the distance of two, and 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 19 
 
 distinguished metals hidden beneath a sheet of 
 paper by merely holding his finger over them. 
 A needle forgotten under the tablecover was 
 brought to light by the sensation of chill it 
 caused him. I may note that it was chiefly on 
 Daumer's publication that President von Feuer- 
 bach relied in writing his book. 
 
 Notwithstanding these marvellous experi- 
 ences, the interest felt in Kaspar Hauser began 
 to flag in the course of the ensuing year. As 
 time went on, the flood of popular enthusiasm 
 visibly subsided ; faults hitherto unsuspected 
 began to be discerned in him ; and it leaked 
 out that he was cunning and untruthful. The 
 sceptics, hitherto in a forlorn minority, and 
 regarded rather in the light of black sheep, 
 began to hold up their heads. Then suddenly, 
 on October 17, the town was electrified by 
 the news that Kaspar Hauser 's life had been 
 attempted, in broad daylight, and actually under 
 his tutor's roof. At the usual dinner hour (12 
 o'clock) he had not made his appearance, and 
 when searched for was found crouching in a 
 corner of the cellar, bleeding from a cut across 
 the forehead. Happily the wound proved very 
 slight ; but he was delirious for forty -eight 
 hours, and had to be held down in his bed. 
 
 His evidence could consequently only be 
 
20 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 taken on the I9th. He deposed that he had 
 been oppressed by forebodings for several pre- 
 vious days. On the morning of the iyth he 
 had gone first to the market with Fraulein 
 Kathi (Daumer) and then to Dr. Preu, who 
 gave him a walnut to eat ; but, though he 
 scarcely took as much as a fourth part of it, 
 this made him so unwell (there spoke Daumer's 
 disciple) that he went home at once. It was 
 there, between n and 12 o'clock, that, while 
 in the closet, he was suddenly confronted by a 
 man with a black handkerchief drawn across his 
 face, who aimed a blow at him with a heavy 
 woodman's knife, crying, " After all, you will 
 have to die before you leave Nuremberg ! " 
 The words gave him a shock which he felt in 
 all his limbs, for he recognised the voice of the 
 man who had brought him to the town. He 
 then lost consciousness. When he came to him- 
 self his first thought was to go to " Mother " 
 (as he used to call Frau Daumer), but in his 
 hurry and terror he mistook the way, turned 
 down instead of upstairs, and hid himself in the 
 cellar. He described the man accurately ; his 
 height, his broad shoulders, his dark clothes, his 
 bran new shiny boots, and lemon-coloured kid 
 gloves. 
 
 How had this man made his way into the 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 21 
 
 house? There could be no question of the 
 complicity of servants, for the Daumers kept 
 none. The house door, generally fastened, 
 might by chance have been left ajar. Kaspar 
 (but no one else) heard the door-bell ring, very 
 slightly, and called out to Kathi to go to the 
 door. 
 
 Such an audacious attempt had never before 
 been heard of, and the consternation was very 
 great. Every imaginable effort was made to 
 trace the murderer, but he had disappeared as 
 if by magic. No such person had been seen 
 either entering or leaving the town by the 
 soldiers on duty at any of the gates, nor, though 
 he must have passed through the streets at mid- 
 day, had any one met him. One woman had 
 seen a man leave the house at a quarter past 
 eleven ; but this proved to be a beggar, to whom 
 a charitable washerwoman had given a penny. 
 Another saw a man washing his hands in a 
 street trough hard by, but his appearance in no 
 wise corresponded with that of the well-dressed 
 individual in shiny black boots and lemon kid 
 gloves. 
 
 The matter was vigorously taken up by the 
 authorities, and nothing that it was possible to 
 do was left undone, either in Nuremberg or in 
 the neighbourhood. The town was subjected 
 
22 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 to the most rigid scrutiny and vigilant super- 
 vision ; and Major Hickel tells us that within 
 a circuit of twenty-five miles round he caused 
 every inn, mill, outlying building, barn, stable, 
 or possible hiding-place to be searched, the 
 roads to be strictly patrolled, and notices to be 
 posted up at every police-station in the king- 
 dom. Yet nothing whatever was brought to 
 light. 
 
 When all his efforts proved fruitless, the 
 baffled Major began to ask himself whether such 
 a person as this invisible criminal really existed ? 
 Was it likely that any man, not altogether out 
 of his senses, would choose such a time and place 
 for an assassination? would come into an in- 
 habited house, shortly before the dinner hour, 
 when all the inmates would assemble, and ring 
 at the door for admission? Was it possible 
 that, seen only for one brief and agonised 
 moment, his appearance could have been so 
 exactly noted, even to his shiny boots and lemon 
 kid gloves ? l Would such a formidable weapon 
 as Kaspar described have inflicted only so insigni- 
 ficant a wound ? and would the murderer, when he 
 saw his victim fall fainting at his feet, have for- 
 
 1 Kaspar actually told my father that he had perceived 
 a ring on the man's hand, from the bulging of the fore- 
 finger of his glove ! 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 23 
 
 borne to deal a second more decisive blow ? 
 Might not Kaspar, bitterly feeling his position 
 as a dethroned hero, have sought to stimulate 
 the flagging interest of the public by a new and 
 romantic incident? This theory gained con- 
 siderable credence in the town ; and when viewed 
 by the light of after events, must certainly be 
 accepted as the true one. The only difficulty 
 lies in believing that a timorous youth, who 
 "trembled like a leaf" on the slightest pro- 
 vocation, should have mustered courage to cut 
 himself with a knife. But he may not have 
 been as timid as he appeared. He certainly was 
 no coward on horseback. 
 
 From that time forward he was watched and 
 guarded by two police soldiers ; and till May 
 1831 a period of seventeen months never 
 once left the house without their attendance. 
 
 Professor Daumer now asked to be relieved 
 of his charge. He had discovered that his pupil 
 was a confirmed liar ; or, as he himself expressed 
 it in a subsequent letter, " that Kaspar Hauser's 
 nature had lost much of its original purity, and 
 that a highly regrettable tendency to untruthful- 
 ness and dissimulation had manifested itself." 
 On the very morning of the day that Kaspar 
 received his wound, they had had a very bitter 
 quarrel. A friend had informed the Professor 
 
24 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 that he had seen the lad gallivanting outside the 
 town, when he ought to have been busy with a 
 lesson he had been sent out to take. He was 
 taxed with this, and obstinately denied it, even 
 boldly declaring that the Professor might inquire 
 whether he did not speak the truth. The 
 Professor did inquire, and discovered that not 
 only on that day, but during the whole of the 
 week, Kaspar had absented himself from his 
 lesson. Daumer was excessively angry, for it 
 was by no means the first time he had found 
 himself deceived. He lectured his pupil most 
 severely, represented to him in the strongest 
 language all the evil consequences of deceit ; 
 then turned his back upon him, and sent him 
 word through Frau Daumer that a liar must be 
 treated with contempt and never noticed, and 
 that he himself should take measures to get rid 
 of him. Shortly after this he left the house, and 
 on his return found Kaspar wounded and 
 bleeding. 
 
 Freiherr von Tucher, who had always taken 
 a warm interest in the youth, was now appointed 
 his guardian, and he was placed in the house of 
 a Nuremberg trader named Biberbach, whose 
 sympathy took the practical form of receiving 
 him without payment. But here he only re- 
 mained a few months. Biberbach and his wife 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 25 
 
 were soon disgusted with their charge. " How 
 many bitter hours," writes Frau Biberbach, 
 "what anguish and annoyance, Hauser caused 
 us by his terrible untruthfulness, no official report 
 has ever made known. After each painful scene 
 of exposure, he used to promise amendment, and 
 was always forgiven and taken back to our hearts 
 as before : but the lying spirit could not be 
 exorcised, and Hauser became more and more 
 deceitful." Nor did he always profess penitence. 
 Once, when taxed with " a cunningly contrived 
 lie," he suddenly became violent, struck the table 
 with his clenched fists, and passionately cried, 
 " Then I would rather not live ! " This time 
 he had shirked his Latin lesson, and been over- 
 whelmingly and completely convicted of false- 
 hood. Herr Biberbach, for his part, was full of 
 indignation. He told Kaspar, that after such mis- 
 conduct he would not be allowed to go and dine 
 at the Burgomaster's, as he generally did on that 
 day every week, and that he was not to leave 
 his room until further notice. But scarcely had 
 Biberbach himself gone away, than the two 
 police soldiers appointed to guard Kaspar heard 
 a shot fired in his room, and, rushing in, found 
 him lying on the floor senseless and bleeding, 
 with the discharged pistol by his side. One of 
 them hurried off to the police station, and 
 
26 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 breathlessly announced that Kaspar had at- 
 tempted to destroy himself. Meanwhile, how- 
 ever, Kaspar had recovered his consciousness, 
 and explained that it was only an accident. 
 Some shelves had been fixed high up on the wall 
 of his room, and under them hung a brace of 
 pistols, kept loaded " for his better security." 
 On the topmost shelf were some books ; and 
 Kaspar had mounted a chair to reach down one 
 of them, when the chair suddenly slipped from 
 under him. He stretched out his hands to save 
 himself, and inadvertently clutched hold of one 
 of the pistols, detached it from the wall, and 
 accidentally discharged it as he fell. The bullet 
 had fortunately only grazed his temple. He 
 had been practising at a mark with these pistols 
 during the autumn, but now begged they might 
 be taken away, and never brought back to his 
 room. 
 
 After this scene, it is not surprising to hear 
 that Herr Biberbach's " urgent private affairs 
 prevented him from retaining Kaspar Hauser 
 any longer under his roof." 
 
 Freiherr von Tucher now took him into his 
 own house, where he remained for eighteen 
 months. His guardian's report is on the whole 
 a favourable, and, from the point of view taken, 
 a very sensible one. He found Kaspar amiable, 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 27 
 
 tractable, anxious to learn, and extremely in- 
 telligent. He instances the power he had of 
 insinuating himself with those he wished to 
 please, and his " wonderful " skill and adroitness 
 in discerning and making use of their foibles. 
 He believed that the evil germ of a " most 
 regrettable moral corruption " had been implanted 
 by the foolish adulation and attention he had 
 received during the first few months, and that 
 his inordinate vanity, duplicity, and dissimula- 
 tion were quite foreign to the simplicity of his 
 original character. He was firmly persuaded 
 that Kaspar had come to Nuremberg the " half- 
 animal" child of nature described, and con- 
 scientiously set to work to cure him of the faults 
 he had unhappily acquired. 
 
 It was at this time (in 1830) that the first 
 of the twenty -five pamphlets treating of the 
 " remarkable Nuremberg foundling " made its 
 appearance ; and the rest followed in rapid 
 succession. One writer advocated a general 
 subscription on his behalf, and proposed to 
 appeal to every country in Europe. Another 
 (a Berlin police director) suggested that he 
 might be a truant school-boy, who had read 
 sensational stories, and run away from his friends 
 to become a cavalry soldier. This called forth 
 a host of controversial champions ; but it was 
 
28 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 not till 1832 that President von Feuerbach 
 published his History of a Crime against a Human 
 Soul that moved all hearts by its pathos and 
 eloquence. 1 To some of the later pamphlets I 
 shall have occasion presently to refer (see pp. 66- 
 
 My father (Lord Stanhope) first made 
 Kaspar Hauser's acquaintance in the spring of 
 the preceding year. Shortly after the attempt 
 of October 17, 1829, he had been detained for 
 some days at Nuremberg, by an accident to his 
 carriage, and found every tongue busy with the 
 mysterious foundling who had so narrowly 
 escaped assassination. He heard the story with 
 the greatest interest, and expressed a wish to see 
 Kaspar : but at that time all visitors were rigidly 
 excluded. When, in May 1831, he was again 
 at Nuremberg, he renewed his request, met the 
 lad at the house of the Burgomaster, and was 
 singularly attracted by his manner and conver- 
 sation. No one could be more winning than 
 Kaspar when he exerted himself to please ; and 
 he completely won my father's heart. He saw 
 him constantly ; used to take him out driving, 
 
 1 Yet, even before his death in 1833, tne author was 
 troubled with doubts as to Kaspar's credibility, and said to 
 a friend, "After all, who knows but Feuerbach may have 
 written a romance in his old age ? " 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 29 
 
 and became more and more interested in him. 
 Here, again, Kaspar instinctively found and 
 touched the right chord my father's quickly 
 aroused sympathy and tender compassion. His 
 heart yearned towards any fellow-creature who 
 had suffered either oppression or injustice ; and 
 he fully believed that a great wrong had been 
 done in this case. Of course he did not credit 
 the story exactly as it had been told ; he himself 
 pointed out some of its inconsistencies and 
 improbabilities ; but he accepted the doctors' 
 dictum that, the lad's faculties being dormant, 
 his mind then resembled that of a very young 
 child, who could scarcely be held accountable for 
 an incoherent and incomplete narrative. Of the 
 truth of its main facts, he was, however, entirely 
 convinced. He believed that Kaspar had been 
 kept for years in confinement, and grossly 
 neglected and misused, and that this, most 
 probably, had been the work of some one whose 
 interest it was to get rid of him. In fact, he 
 persuaded himself that Kaspar was a despoiled 
 and defrauded heir. He was surprised that no 
 reward had been offered to obtain information, 
 and generously presented a sum of 500 florins 
 for this purpose, characteristically requesting 
 that his name might not appear. The magis- 
 trates who issued the proclamation worded it, 
 
30 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 however, more in the form of a demand for the 
 denunciation of some unknown criminals than 
 an inquiry; and he always believed that this 
 caused people to hang back who might else have 
 given information. They were naturally afraid 
 of appearing connected with a crime. Other- 
 wise, it would have been extraordinary that no 
 neighbour or school-fellow should ever have 
 come forward to claim this money, even though 
 he had lived, as my father conjectured, in some 
 secluded and out-of-the-way village beyond the 
 Austrian frontier. At all events, it never was 
 claimed, and at the end of two years, according 
 to my father's directions, reverted to Kaspar 
 Hauser himself. 
 
 In addition to this gift, my father defrayed 
 the expenses of a journey to Hungary, which it 
 was thought desirable that Kaspar should under- 
 take. It seems that a statement made the year 
 before by a Roman Catholic priest l had led to 
 
 1 In 1830, one Miiller, who had been a Protestant 
 clergyman, and was then a Roman Catholic priest, 
 denounced a Protestant clergyman named Wirth, resident 
 in Upper Austria, and Anna Dalbonn, a governess resident 
 at Pressburg, as cognisant of the incarceration of Kaspar 
 Hauser. He stated that four or five years before, when he 
 was tutor in the family of Countess Maytheny, at Pesth, 
 these two persons, having discovered that he knew their 
 secret, threatened him, and offered him money not to 
 divulge it ; but that he had declared, in the presence of the 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 31 
 
 the inference that he was a Hungarian, and he 
 was accordingly tested with some Polish and 
 Hungarian words, several of which he recognised. 
 Some, he said, he had heard from his nurse ; 
 others these were generally oaths from the 
 man who had brought him to Nuremberg. 
 Above all, the name Posonbya (Pressburg) threw 
 him almost into convulsions ; he declared, with 
 floods of tears, that he remembered it well, and 
 even thought he had heard some one say that 
 his father was at Posonbya. He earnestly 
 implored to be allowed to go there ; and it was 
 fondly hoped that his memory might reawaken 
 among the scenes in which his childhood had 
 been spent. He was accordingly conducted to 
 
 Countess, that he would have nothing to do with them. 
 The Countess and the governess, summoned before a 
 Hungarian tribunal, both indignantly denied this story, and 
 declared they had never even heard the name of Wirth. It 
 came out that Miiller had sought to revenge himself on the 
 governess, to whom he attributed his dismissal by the 
 Countess, and bitterly hated his former clerical brother. 
 But a calumny, once spread, dies very hard. Poor Anna 
 Dalbonn had fallen under suspicion, and found her occupa- 
 tion gone. She petitioned the Emperor for an official 
 recognition of her innocence, which she obtained, but, 
 nevertheless, sank into such deep poverty that she was 
 nearly crazed before her former employer, Countess Palffy, 
 succeeded in finding her a home. Nor did the matter end 
 there as regarded the Countess herself ; for in the following 
 year Kaspar Hauser actually recognised her name as that 
 of his long-lost mother ! (See p. 38.) 
 
32 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Pressburg by Von Tucher and Major Hickel ; 
 but he recognised nothing and nobody, and 
 could not make out a single word of the 
 language. The sudden appearance of the cholera 
 cut short their stay. On his way back, he was 
 shown the Esterhazy picture gallery at Vienna, 
 and announced he had seen the original of one 
 of the portraits. But, on referring to the 
 catalogue, it was found that the Esterhazy in 
 question had died in 1646. 
 
 The Major relates one ridiculous incident of 
 this journey. Von Tucher had noted Kaspar's 
 singular habit of dropping off asleep quite 
 suddenly ; and his sleep, often accompanied by 
 painful distortions and grimaces, was so profound 
 as to resemble a trance, from which it was 
 impossible to rouse him. This would, it was 
 felt, be most inconvenient on a journey under- 
 taken for purposes of observation, and his 
 thoughtful guardian provided a box filled with 
 coriander, fennel, and aniseed, that were to be 
 eaten as a preventative. But, even with this, it 
 was only by persistent tickling that his com- 
 panions managed to keep him awake. At last 
 Hickel had a brilliant idea. He and Von 
 Tucher agreed never to mention his name to 
 each other while he was asleep. After a time 
 the bad habit left him, and it was observed that 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 33 
 
 he never once dropped asleep during the journey 
 home, though he was once detected listening at 
 the door. 
 
 My father's great interest in Kaspar was 
 strange to say nowise lessened by this inaus- 
 picious journey. He was again at Nuremberg in 
 September, as full of sympathy and kindness as 
 ever, and Kaspar, on his part, professed the 
 most unbounded gratitude and devotion. Herr 
 von Tucher complained probably not without 
 reason that his pupil was being spoiled, and 
 had become fractious, unsettled, and discontented. 
 He wrote a very explicit letter to my father, 
 telling him that his kindness had fostered 
 Kaspar's extraordinary vanity and self-conceit, 
 and done much harm, and that he had been 
 highly injudicious in treating him as a grown-up 
 person, whereas, though a man in years (Kaspar 
 was twenty), he was a boy of ten or twelve in 
 understanding. Further, that Kaspar deceived 
 him, and had been twice kicked out of respect- 
 able houses (Daumer's and Biberbach's), on 
 account of his lies. He ended by declaring 
 that my father must either take charge of 
 Kaspar altogether, or else cease to see him ; in 
 which latter case only would he consent to re- 
 main his guardian. This letter, though full of 
 praises of his " rare goodness of heart," " wonder- 
 
 D 
 
34 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 ful kindness " and " noble liberality," annoyed 
 my father very much. Kaspar, too, complained 
 bitterly of his guardian, who " wanted to make 
 a bookbinder of him against his will." Finally, 
 the Nuremberg authorities, taking up the cue, 
 announced that they would no longer pay the 
 300 florins they had allowed him. 1 
 
 I think that all, by general consent, now 
 looked forward with hope to seeing their un- 
 welcome charge taken off their hands. Had not 
 an English noble a rich English noble taken 
 a fancy to him ? They had, it appears, an ex- 
 alted idea of the wealth of our aristocracy. 
 u This Earl," writes Von Tucher, " is reported 
 to possess an income of ^20,000 a year, but 
 that is by no means a large fortune for a peer 
 of Great Britain." 
 
 My father was made to feel himself the 
 best, if not the last friend left to Kaspar in his 
 pressing need ; most certainly the only friend 
 able and willing to take charge of him ; and, 
 
 1 They had already made an attempt to rid themselves 
 of this obligation. In January 1830, when Von Tucher 
 was appointed guardian, they requested him to appeal to 
 the generosity of the king on their behalf, and have the 
 payment transferred to the State. The Government 
 refused, and expressed surprise at this petition, as the 
 municipality had, in July 1828, voluntarily undertaken to 
 provide for the education and maintenance of Kaspar 
 Hauser. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 35 
 
 moved to compassion by his forlorn condition, 
 he in an evil hour consented. He did not, as 
 has been sometimes averred, formally adopt 
 Kaspar Hauser, but he made himself answerable 
 for his personal safety, education, and mainten- 
 ance as long as he himself lived, and engaged to 
 furnish him with the means of subsistence by 
 his will. He was to appoint any guardian or 
 tutor he might select, and report, at least once 
 a year, upon Kaspar' s education to the appointed 
 authorities. It was understood that the latter 
 was to follow some profession, hereafter to be 
 determined. In one of his subsequent letters to 
 Dr. Meyer, my father says, "You well know 
 that I did not wish to have Kaspar Hauser made 
 over to me as a c curiosity/ but I found his 
 guardian unwilling to keep him, the town of 
 Nuremberg disinclined to continue his allow- 
 ance, and heard he was to be apprenticed to an 
 artisan in the spring. I therefore took him 
 under my protection, as a young man needing 
 help, for whom I had a sincere liking, and 
 who had always shown himself affectionate, 
 teachable, and grateful to me. I did not then 
 believe him to be as untrustworthy as various 
 circumstances have since convinced me that 
 he was ; nor had he, up to that time, ever 
 shown himself in an unfavourable light." Un- 
 
36 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 fortunately, believing him to be strongly pre- 
 judiced, my father had never taken Von 
 Tucher's report into account. It must be 
 admitted that he made a great mistake, and that 
 it was heavily visited upon him ; for never, 
 surely, did an act of disinterested kindness bear 
 more bitter fruit. 
 
 Kaspar Hauser was formally handed over to 
 his new protector on November 26, 1831. All 
 was now jubilation and congratulation. The 
 King of Bavaria in person wrote to thank my 
 father for his " noble action." Troubles and 
 worries were set at rest, and every one was 
 pleased, for every one's object had been gained. 
 The one exception to the general satisfaction 
 was Freiherr von Tucher. He had rigidly and 
 conscientiously endeavoured to do his duty, and 
 was naturally aggrieved by the angry complaints 
 of his pupil, and the opinion expressed both by 
 my father and Von Feuerbach, that he had 
 misunderstood and mismanaged him. He had 
 previously thrown up his guardianship, and in 
 the following month Kaspar was placed under 
 the care of Dr. Meyer, a school-teacher at Ans- 
 bach, where my father left him when he returned 
 to England in January 1832. Major, now 
 Lieutenant - Colonel Hickel, was appointed 
 curator, and the Burgomaster of Nuremberg 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 37 
 
 guardian, but the latter was replaced for the 
 time by President von Feuerbach. 
 
 Kaspar, emancipated from Von Tucher and 
 the Latin grammar, thoroughly enjoyed his new 
 position. He half fancied himself an English 
 nobleman by adoption, and in fact was called 
 "My Lord" by some of his friends. He 
 anxiously looked forward to joining the family 
 circle in England, anticipated the brilliant 
 position he would occupy in London society, 
 and even took an intelligent interest in English 
 politics. Nevertheless, he had not discarded 
 his favourite role of a Hungarian magnate. 
 
 I should have mentioned that among the 
 tests applied to him in 1830 was a catalogue 
 of Hungarian Christian names, and he had at 
 once picked out Istan (Stephen) as his own. 
 He frequently told my father that he remem- 
 bered being called Istan when he was a child. 
 " Another name," he added, " ought to follow, 
 but, try as I will, for the life of me I cannot re- 
 call it ! " He had likewise some recollection of 
 his father's castle. Once, indeed, he saw it in a 
 dream, and was able to describe it minutely, 
 even to the furniture of the rooms. 
 
 During the preceding month of October, 
 Ladislaus von Merey, a Hungarian noble, pass- 
 ing through Nuremberg with his son and his 
 
3 8 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 son's tutor, asked to speak to Kaspar alone. 
 He wanted to find out whether he understood 
 Slavonic, a language spoken in a part of the 
 country with which he himself was well ac- 
 quainted, and where the governess Dalbonn had 
 at one time lived. Kaspar was taken to see 
 him, and knew no Slavonic. But when he said 
 in Hungarian, " Istan goes to Szalakusz " (the 
 castle of Countess Maytheny), Kaspar appeared 
 to receive an electric shock ; he became fright- 
 fully agitated, and, gesticulating more wildly 
 than he had ever done before, cried, " Yes ! 
 yes ! that's it ! That's what I have been search- 
 ing for so long ! " The name of Bartakowich 
 (Countess Maytheny's maiden name) was then 
 mentioned, and he screamed aloud, as if panic- 
 struck, " That is my mother ! J> His excite- 
 ment and agitation almost amounted to frenzy, 
 and became so uncontrollable that the Hun- 
 garian, alarmed for the consequences, hurriedly 
 sent him home. Yet when my father, shortly 
 afterwards, questioned him as to the name 
 that had caused such violent emotion, he had 
 already forgotten it ; and this strange lapse of 
 memory was set down to the fearful shock his 
 system had undergone ! 1 
 
 1 My father confessed to having been surprised, and also 
 to having wondered that a very young child, such as 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 39 
 
 The two names had, however, been carefully 
 noted, and it was thought that the key to the 
 enigma had at last been found. My father de- 
 cided that an investigation should be carried on 
 in the district indicated ; and he asked Colonel 
 Hickel to accept this delicate mission. He was 
 to inquire into Miiller's allegations on the spot, 
 and, if possible, see both him and Dalbonn. 
 Accordingly, in February 1832, he obtained a 
 three months' leave of absence, "in order to 
 travel, at Earl Stanhope's expense, in Hungary." 
 He traced Miiller with great difficulty, and 
 heard a bad account of him. Madame Dalbonn 
 
 he met at the house of the Countess P 
 
 (evidently Palffy). The castle of Szalakusz 
 and the Countess Maytheny were easily found, 
 but after the most searching inquiries and a 
 careful investigation of the family history in all 
 its circumstances, he came to the conclusion that 
 nothing whatever was to be done for Kaspar in 
 Hungary. For one thing, there was no in- 
 heritance to dispute. The report which he 
 forwarded to my father in May definitively 
 closed all prospects in that quarter. 
 
 My father was not only disappointed, but dis- 
 mayed. If the whole story was false, how was 
 
 Kaspar must then have been, should have known its 
 mother only by her maiden name. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
4 o KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 he to account for the thrilling and dramatic 
 scene with the Hungarian gentleman 1 at 
 Nuremberg ? What could it be but a consum- 
 mate piece of acting on Kaspar's part? For 
 the first time, as he tells us, the question crossed 
 his mind Was this plausible, docile, affectionate 
 young man to be depended upon ? The doubt, 
 once entertained, developed with alarming 
 rapidity as various trifling and hitherto un- 
 heeded incidents and little fibs recurred to his 
 memory. He was, besides, greatly distressed 
 on hearing, soon after, that Hickel's mission 
 and its object had become known in the locality, 
 and that the family in question were justly 
 offended at the imputations on their character 
 these inquiries had implied. 
 
 Nor were Meyer's reports eminently satis- 
 factory. He found Kaspar more backward 
 than he had expected, and certainly not so 
 willing to learn. His application was only by 
 fits and starts, never continuous ; and he was 
 too fond of asking, " What good is this to do 
 me ? " He showed no aptitude for any profes- 
 sion, and trade was not to be thought of now 
 
 1 He was afterwards told that this Hungarian noble 
 and his son had since often laughed together over the 
 "startling dramatic entertainment" got up for their benefit 
 by Hauser. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 41 
 
 that he had been introduced into a different 
 sphere. Perhaps he might do best as a clerk. 
 His inordinate vanity and self-conceit were not 
 surprising, in consideration of the flattering 
 attentions he had been in the habit of receiving, 
 and now received more than ever. His tend- 
 ency was to be shifty and untruthful. 
 
 In a report furnished to the police authorities 
 in 1 8 34, Meyer gives a curious picture of Kaspar's 
 powers of dissimulation. He was so different at 
 different times that no one could have believed 
 him to be the same person ; and Feuerbach well 
 described his nature as " chameleon like." The 
 every-day face, which he wore to those im- 
 mediately about him, was neutral and common- 
 place enough, but instantly vanished if he was 
 in company. Sometimes, when surprised sitting 
 alone in his own room, it was gloomy and morose, 
 and looked years older : then changed as if by 
 magic when he saw himself observed. It could 
 wear whatever expression seemed appropriate to 
 the occasion : sometimes the candid simplicity 
 and ignorance of a little child ; sometimes the 
 bright intelligence of an appreciative listener ; 
 now it beamed with affection and sympathy, and 
 then again, when he was reproved or angered, 
 bore the unmistakable stamp of an evil and vin- 
 dictive temper. To those he was anxious to 
 
42 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 please he was perfectly charming : no manner 
 could be more insinuating, coaxing, and caressing, 
 no words more winning and sympathetic. He 
 had a singular power of assimilating himself to 
 his surroundings, and of knowing and doing 
 exactly what they expected of him. He was 
 very soft-hearted ; his tears were ever ready to 
 flow ; but Meyer disliked these lachrymose 
 exhibitions, and once, when he began weeping 
 bitterly at an account of the Deluge, severely 
 said, " This must not happen again." Nor did 
 it, though, as Meyer rather plaintively adds : 
 " I read many other more moving passages with 
 much pathos." He would never tell the truth. 
 " To lie had become so completely a second 
 nature with him, that it was exacting an actual 
 impossibility to require him to give it up." Yet 
 he was extremely touchy whenever his veracity 
 was in question. Though he constantly made 
 statements and framed excuses that could easily 
 and demonstrably be proved false, he was in- 
 variably most indignant when found out, and 
 insisted on his word being taken in the teeth of 
 all adverse evidence. As these continual wrangles 
 could do no possible good, Meyer came to the 
 wise conclusion that it was useless to persist in 
 taxing him with every petty falsehood that passed 
 his lips, and ignored all lies, except in case of 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 43 
 
 actual necessity. After this their relations 
 became far more comfortable, and Kaspar was 
 always (with the exception of an occasional fit of 
 sullenness) friendly and civil to his tutor. But 
 he took a violent dislike to Colonel Hickel. 
 Once they had a regular passage-at-arms together, 
 during which the Colonel, whose temper appears 
 to have been short, became so exasperated by his 
 prevarications that he with difficulty refrained 
 from boxing his ears. Kaspar, equally excited, 
 twice repeated, " Then I would rather die ! " his 
 favourite asseveration whenever he found him- 
 self disbelieved. " By all means ! " retorted the 
 angry Colonel ; " die, then, and we will inscribe 
 on your tombstone, ' Here lies the deceiver 
 Kaspar Hauser.' ' When, soon after, he was 
 away for a few days, the young man sought to 
 revenge himself by making mischief between him 
 and the President. On his return home, Feuer- 
 bach told him of this, adding, "That lad 
 frightens me ! Why, he is a regular intriguer 
 and backbiter! Can this be our Kaspar 
 Hauser?" 
 
 But when his own personality was not in 
 question, he was neither unfair nor unkind. He 
 was very popular in society, making many friends, 
 and the advice he gave them was always sound, 
 sensible, and well meant. He had a wonderful 
 
44 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 insight into character, and read men's minds as 
 he would an open book ; always judged correctly, 
 and divined motives and foresaw actions with an 
 accuracy that amazed and alarmed Meyer. He 
 was a shrewd and intensely suspicious observer, 
 and had an inconvenient knack of finding out 
 everything that it was wished to keep secret from 
 him. Any plan or arrangement regarding him- 
 self he knew, in spite of all precautions, as soon 
 as it was made. He received his numerous 
 visitors with tact and discrimination, always 
 making a favourable impression, and yet manag- 
 ing to cut short any uninteresting or unimportant 
 call. In September 1833, when passing through 
 Nuremberg on his return from a tour in Saxon 
 Switzerland, he was, at her own request, presented 
 to the Queen of Bavaria, and showed neither 
 awkwardness nor embarrassment. He presented 
 one of his paintings, and begged Her Majesty 
 to proclaim an amnesty for the man that had 
 kept him prisoner, as the only chance of protect- 
 ing him from the assaults of murderers. 
 
 He had apparently not adopted a strange 
 theory, propounded by Feuerbach in a pamphlet 
 published nine months before, that this gaoler 
 had in reality been his benefactor. According 
 to Feuer bach's conjecture, Kaspar was the legiti- 
 mate son of a sovereign House, who stood in the 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 45 
 
 way of the next in succession, and would have 
 been long since in his grave, had he not been 
 rescued by a faithful retainer, who kept him in 
 close confinement to conceal him from his pur- 
 suers. The House designated was the reigning 
 House of Baden, 1 and the " Memoir " was dedi- 
 
 1 The myth of a suppressed Prince of Baden had already 
 been ventilated in the daily papers. Kaspar was reported 
 to be the son and heir of the Grand-Duke Charles Louis 
 Frederick and his French wife Stephanie de la Pagerie, 
 the adopted daughter of Napoleon : a little prince, born in 
 1812, who only lived a fortnight. He did not, it was 
 alleged, really die, but was secretly carried off, and a dying 
 baby left in his place, to make room for the succession of a 
 wicked uncle, the next Grand-Duke. A certain Countess 
 Hochberg was accused of having accomplished this substitu- 
 tion in the disguise of the White Lady of Baden ; and 
 Major Hennenhofer was named as her accomplice. It is, 
 I believe, quite true that the Grand-Duchess, who was very 
 ill at the time, never saw her dead child ; but it is hard to 
 conceive that its father, and its grandmother the Margravine, 
 who, with her daughter Amelia, was in close attendance, 
 together with the ten Court physicians assembled for the 
 post-mortem examination of whom two had been present 
 at its birth could have been deceived as to its identity. 
 
 Feuerbach had not ventured to publish any names, and 
 the whole story was first openly promulgated in a pamphlet 
 published at Stuttgart the year after Kaspar's death. Tt was 
 revived again and again, and was said to be credited by the 
 Grand-Duchess herself. She had read and admired Feuer- 
 bach's Crime against a Human Soul ; she told my father 
 she would have liked to translate it into French ; and she 
 often questioned him about Kaspar Hauser. But if the 
 idea that this phenomenal being might be her own child 
 ever crossed her mind, it was promptly discarded as an 
 " impossibility." The Duchess of Hamilton (Princess Marie 
 
46 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 cated to a Princess of Baden : Caroline, Queen 
 Dowager of Bavaria. Of course he could 
 produce no evidence in support of this romantic 
 tale ; it rested only on " coincidence of circum- 
 stances," " strong presumptions," and Kaspar's 
 own " remarkable dreams " (!), which together 
 constituted what he is pleased to call a " moral 
 certainty." 
 
 President von Feuerbach died of a paralytic 
 stroke on May 28 of the same year (1833) >' 
 and my father appointed Herr Hofrath (Court 
 Councillor) von Kliiber guardian in his stead. 
 Like his predecessor, Von Kliiber was a well- 
 known and highly distinguished man, but not, 
 like him, a resident at Ansbach ; and he selected 
 his friend, Herr Hofrath (Court Councillor) 
 Hofmann as his representative. This gentleman 
 had always taken the liveliest interest in Kaspar's 
 story ; but on a nearer acquaintance did not 
 approve of him at all. After giving him daily 
 instruction for six months, he said to Dr. 
 Meyer, " I can't get on with that young man. 
 I have no opinion of him ; I have found him 
 both a flatterer and a dissembler." 
 
 of Baden) wrote in 1872 that her mother had never believed 
 the story ; and Napoleon III. told King Louis of Bavaria, 
 who questioned him on the subject during his visit to 
 Paris in 1867, that Stephanie had described it to him as a 
 " senseless myth." 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 47 
 
 On the occasion of Hofrath Hofmann's 
 appointment, my father wrote to announce that, 
 though doubts had latterly arisen in his mind as 
 to Hauser's former unhappy position, they would 
 in no wise affect his conduct. As before, he 
 would provide what was needful for his main- 
 tenance and improvement, and had already, in 
 case of his own death, secured him an annuity by 
 a codicil to his will. Even without this, his 
 heirs would have felt bound by the engagement 
 he had entered into. He added that the best 
 kindness to the young man would be the choice 
 of some suitable profession for him. 
 
 This announcement was a great relief to all 
 concerned. My father's letters had been full of 
 doubts and questionings ; and in the preceding 
 autumn he had sent the President a list of thirty 
 points that required elucidation in Kaspar's 
 story. Meyer had become so anxious about his 
 pupil's prospects, that he omitted, as far as 
 possible, in his reports any mention of his 
 deceitfulness, lest my father should be still 
 further prejudiced against him. What would 
 become of him if his kind and liberal patron 
 were to give him up ? 
 
 My father, as we have seen, had no such 
 ungenerous intention. For a year past he had 
 been revolving in his mind a most painful 
 
48 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 problem the question how far he had been 
 duped and deceived. The more he pondered 
 over Kaspar's story, the more he felt it to be 
 impossible and incredible, but he still believed 
 that he had been very badly treated, and was 
 willing to hope that his habits of duplicity and 
 dissimulation were contracted through fear of ill 
 usage. He even thought it possible that his life 
 had been threatened if he ventured to reveal 
 where he had been. He was ingenious in 
 finding excuses for the friendless lad towards 
 whom his heart had warmed, whom he had 
 taken under his wing, and found affectionate and 
 grateful. Never for one moment had he thought 
 of casting him adrift. 
 
 Kaspar's profession was now decided on ; he 
 was to be a clerk ; and in July he entered the 
 Ansbach Chancellerie as a paid writer. There 
 could be no further uneasiness as to his future, 
 which was securely provided for; yet he was 
 profoundly dissatisfied. He was heartily weary 
 of his lessons, and gave less and less attention to 
 them : nor did he appreciate his position as a 
 clerk. He had hoped for something very 
 different, and bitterly and repeatedly complained 
 that he had not been taken to England. He 
 hated Hickel, and was sorely chafed by his 
 dependence upon him. " I can't stand the 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 49 
 
 Colonel any longer," he said, " I can't bear being 
 for ever told c When the Earl comes, what will 
 he say ? ' My father was again travelling in 
 Germany, and was expected at Ansbach for 
 Christmas. On December 9 (subsequent events 
 fixed the date indelibly on his memory), Meyer 
 had occasion to find great fault with his pupil, 
 and rated him severely. Kaspar was, as usual, 
 blameless, and fenced with his adversary till, 
 fairly driven into a corner, he began to cry and 
 promise to lie no more. Meyer was very angry 
 and spoke very strongly. " I wish," he cried, 
 " I had never set eyes on you ! Through you I 
 have perhaps forfeited my character as an honest 
 man ! Have I not, from an exaggerated regard 
 for your welfare, given a better report of you 
 than I ought to have done ? and when the Earl 
 comes, how can I find it in my conscience not 
 to tell him the truth ? What will happen then ? 
 He already, as you well know, mistrusts you. 
 Consider the predicament you place me in! 
 Even here in the town you are discredited. 
 People have found you out, and there are few 
 indeed that still see in you the former upright, 
 amiable, good-natured Kaspar Hauser. How 
 must it all end if you go on like this? " Then 
 for the hundredth time he preached re- 
 pentance and amendment. Kaspar listened and 
 
50 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 said nothing, but he was deeply incensed, 
 and never after that would take Dr. Meyer's 
 hand. 
 
 Then followed the catastrophe. On Saturday, 
 December 14, as Meyer and his wife were sitting 
 together in the short winter's afternoon, Kaspar 
 rushed into the room, panting, speechless, and 
 half frenzied, pointed with theatrical gestures 
 to a wound in his breast, and, seizing Meyer's 
 arm, dragged him out of the house. They 
 hurried along in the direction of the Hofgarten 
 (public gardens), and Meyer asked, "Was it 
 there ? " Kaspar nodded assent, and gasped out 
 " Went Hofgarten man had knife gave 
 bag stabbed ran as hard as could bag still 
 lying there." Meyer, perceiving that his 
 strength was fast failing, then induced him to 
 turn back, and got him safely home, though he 
 sank down once on the way. He was put to 
 bed : two doctors were summoned, and Meyer 
 rushed off to the police -bureau. A gendarme 
 was instantly despatched to search the Hofgarten, 
 and there picked up a silk bag, which contained 
 the following note, written in pencil, and legible 
 only in a mirror, as the handwriting was re- 
 versed : 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 51 
 
 " To be delivered. 
 
 " Hauser will be able to tell you exactly how I look, and 
 whence I come. To save Hauser the trouble I will myself 
 tell you where I come from. 
 
 " 1 come from from . . . 
 
 " The Bavarian frontier . . . 
 
 " On the river . . . 
 
 " I will even give my name as well. 
 
 "M. L. OE." 
 There was no address. 
 
 The doctors meanwhile had examined Kaspar, 
 and found a small cut on the left side of his 
 breast, which, from its slanting direction, they 
 were unable thoroughly to probe ; but it bled 
 very slightly, and he was pronounced to be in 
 no danger. The Commissioners of Police even 
 commenced taking his evidence, but were not 
 allowed to proceed far. The next day, as there 
 was some fear of inflammation, they were not 
 admitted at all ; and it was only on the morn- 
 ings of the 1 6th and iyth that his deposition 
 could be taken. He made it calmly and col- 
 lectedly, but the doctors would not allow him 
 to be sworn. 
 
 That Saturday morning, as he was entering 
 his office about nine o'clock, he found a stranger 
 in the blouse of a workman waiting for him, 
 who brought a message from the Hofgartner 
 (head gardener), asking him to come to the 
 
52 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 garden that afternoon at half-past three, and 
 see some specimens of clays from the borings of 
 the new artesian well. The same man had come 
 three days before with a similar request, to 
 which he had not then attended. This time he 
 answered, " I will come/' and went. There 
 was no one at the artesian well, and he went a 
 little further on to the Uz monument (the 
 memorial of the poet Uz). There another taller 
 man started forward, put a bag into his hand, 
 saying, " I give you this," and, as he took it, 
 stabbed him in the breast. Kaspar dropped the 
 bag, and ran home as fast as his legs would 
 carry him, 1 without ever looking back or 
 noticing whom he met. The man was fifty or 
 thereabouts, tall, with a red face, and black 
 whiskers and moustache ; he wore a cloak and 
 a black hat. No one else was in the garden, 
 for it was a wild blustering afternoon, with 
 showers of snow and sleet. "Why," he was 
 asked, " when you found no one at the appointed 
 place, did you go on to the Uz monument ? " 
 " Because it is my usual walk. I often walk 
 there." " After what happened at Nuremberg 
 were you not afraid ? " " Now that I have a 
 
 1 Kaspar had told Dr. Horlacher that he had swooned on 
 receiving the blow, and did not know how long he had lain 
 on the ground unconscious. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 53 
 
 foster-father, I have no fear." It was pointed 
 out to him that he had first said the messenger 
 sent to him was fair, and then that he was dark. 
 This, he insisted, could only be the mistake of 
 the shorthand writer. 
 
 That same evening, at eight o'clock, the 
 Commissioners were hurriedly sent for again, as 
 his condition had suddenly changed for the 
 worse, and he was not expected to survive the 
 night. In fact, he died as the clock was strik- 
 ing ten, just seventy-eight hours after he had 
 received his wound. About a dozen people, 
 including the officials and three doctors a 
 fourth had previously left were present in the 
 room. 
 
 All his utterances during this last day were 
 carefully noted down. His nurse deposed that 
 he kept moving his hands over his bedclothes 
 as if writing, muttering to himself, "I must 
 write I have much to write to-day all in 
 pencil." As another witness was putting his 
 bed to rights, he suddenly flung out his arms, 
 and with wide-open staring eyes cried, " My 
 God ! My God ! To have to shuffle off like 
 this, in shame and disgrace ! " Once again he 
 repeated these words in his nurse's hearing, and 
 said, " What is written with lead, no one can 
 read." 
 
54 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 This was before the arrival of the Com- 
 missioners, who found him in a deep swoon. 
 When he came to himself, Meyer bade him put 
 his trust in God, and asked if he had any- 
 thing more to say. " I would gladly forgive," 
 he replied, " if I knew who had done this 
 to me." Meyer resumed, " Dear Kaspar, 
 have you nothing to say to me ? Look me full 
 in the face. You know that I have always 
 meant well by you." " Oh, much very much 
 I might have to say but cannot " ; then 
 taking Meyer's hand, he added, " Many many 
 thanks for all you have done I owe you 
 more than I can tell." Then he murmured 
 something about men being more easily led 
 away by evil than by good. " I too been 
 led away but found the right road." 
 Colonel Hickel now came forward and asked, 
 " Have you no word for the Earl ? " " For 
 the Earl yes my thanks, too many thanks. 
 He, too must keep on the right road 
 that the faults from which he too, is not 
 quite free do not overcome him. He has 
 done good to many done good to me, too 
 in the next world will be reckoned or 
 it might go ill, too " His gasping utter- 
 ances here ceased to be intelligible. A pause 
 followed. Then he muttered to himself, " Sin 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 55 
 
 destruction cannot get free the monster- 
 stronger than I "; and again became inaudible, 
 till, as if appealing to those around, he raised 
 his voice to say, " If you see a man leaving 
 the right road drag him back at once by 
 the hair of his head." Another pause, then 
 again, " Hard struggle not every man can 
 endure it." 
 
 Pastor Fuhrmann, who had prepared him 
 for confirmation, and was praying by his bed- 
 side, asked him if his mind was at rest. 
 
 " Have I not," he answered, " begged pardon 
 of every one I know why should I not 
 be at rest the good God surely will not 
 forsake me." 
 
 "It is not enough," said the Pastor, " to ask 
 forgiveness. Our Lord has told us to forgive, 
 as we hope to be forgiven. There should be no 
 anger or rancour in your heart." 
 
 "Why should I feel anger or rancour 
 no one ever did me wrong." 
 
 He was growing more and more feeble every 
 moment, and repeated several times, " Tired 
 very tired all my limbs too heavy for 
 
 me." 
 
 The good Pastor comforted and encouraged 
 him with the words of Scripture, ending with, 
 " Father, not my will," and Kaspar responded, 
 
56 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 " but Thine be done." To test his conscious- 
 ness, the Pastor asked, " Who prayed thus ? " 
 and again he was ready with his answer, " Our 
 Saviour."" And when ? " " Before He died." 
 A few minutes after this followed his last words, 
 " Tired very tired a long journey to take," 
 and, turning his face to the wall, he passed 
 peacefully away. 
 
 The post-mortem examination 1 showed how 
 far the doctors had at first been from estimating 
 the extent of the injury. Not only had the 
 knife passed through the lung, but its point had 
 actually punctured the heart. They were at a 
 loss to understand how Kaspar, after receiving 
 such a wound, should have been able to go so 
 long a distance : first to hurry home from the 
 Hofgarten, then go nearly all the way back 
 again, and lastly return home a second time. 
 So far they were agreed ; but as to how this 
 wound was inflicted, they held diametrically 
 opposite opinions. Dr. Horlacher, who claimed 
 a professional experience of forty -one years, 
 believed that it had been dealt by Kaspar him- 
 self with his left hand (he was left-handed, and 
 even played bowls with the left hand) ; while 
 
 1 It is remarkable that, though the poor corpse was ex- 
 amined and described with almost painful minuteness, no men- 
 tion was made of the malconformation of the knees (see p. 15). 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 57 
 
 Dr. Albert was convinced that he had been 
 murdered. But where was the murderer? 
 
 The police -soldier sent to search the Hof- 
 garten could only trace the footsteps of one 
 man in the snow, who seemed to have been 
 walking up and down ; there were none near 
 the artesian well, nor in the direction of the 
 gate leading into the country. What tracks 
 there were were quickly obliterated by the 
 people crowding to visit the spot, and by the 
 snow which continued to fall all night. The 
 knife was nowhere to be found, but might 
 have been thrown into a little brook hard by. l 
 Colonel Hickel, as he had done at Nuremberg, 
 sent out notices to rouse the country, and made 
 strict inquisition in the town ; for, as Kaspar 
 had been invited to the Hofgarten three 
 days before he went, it was concluded the 
 murderer must then have been on the spot. 
 Now, Ansbach is an insignificant provincial 
 town, little visited by strangers, and least of 
 all in the depth of winter ; the kind of 
 place where a new face is in itself an event, 
 and every newcomer is eagerly discussed; yet 
 no trace of any stranger was discoverable. Nor 
 
 1 Several years afterwards a dagger or stiletto, such as 
 might have caused the fatal wound, was dug up in the 
 Hofgarten. 
 
58 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 were the researches in the neighbourhood more 
 successful. 
 
 My father, who was then travelling, received 
 the news on Christmas Eve, at a post-station on 
 the road between Vienna and Munich. He 
 was greatly shocked, and no less surprised ; for 
 having, as we have seen, made himself person- 
 ally responsible for Kaspar's safety, he had 
 taken every imaginable precaution to secure it. 
 "Had he been a State prisoner committed to 
 my charge," he writes to Dr. Meyer, " I could 
 not have guarded him with greater care and 
 anxiety. Feuerbach once said to me, * You 
 cannot do more, short of locking him up/ ' 
 No strangers were admitted to see him unless 
 they could produce a satisfactory guarantee of 
 their respectability. Kaspar was strictly for- 
 bidden to go out, even into the streets, by 
 himself ; whenever he left the house he was to 
 be accompanied by an old soldier, who was a 
 servant of Colonel Hickel's ; but this restriction 
 became excessively irksome to him, and he per- 
 suaded the President to relax it. He was then 
 allowed to go about alone in the streets, but 
 never outside the town, and the Hofgarten was 
 consequently forbidden ground. 1 " When once 
 
 1 Before going to the Hofgarten on that fatal Saturday 
 afternoon, Kaspar visited Pastor Fuhrmann, and told him, 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 59 
 
 he was relieved of supervision in the streets, it 
 was impossible to prevent his going elsewhere. 
 This was done without my knowledge or con- 
 sent, and I was only informed of it after Kaspar's 
 death. On this occasion, as on many others, 
 President von Feuerbach assumed a right to 
 which he had no claim ; for all authority, and 
 with it all responsibility, belonged to me alone." 
 On arriving at Munich, my father hastened 
 to seek an audience of the King, as well as of 
 the Minister of the Interior, and obtained the 
 appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, and 
 the proclamation of a reward of 10,000 florins 
 for the apprehension of the murderer. The 
 whole district, for many miles round, was again 
 patrolled, the strangers' books at the inns, in 
 which all wayfarers had to enter their names, 
 carefully searched, and every carriage and cart 
 that had been in use noted ; for those were not 
 the days of railroads, and there was compara- 
 tively little travelling. Ansbach had no regular 
 communication with the outer world except the 
 Eilwagen (mail cart) that brought the daily post. 
 But all this trouble was taken in vain. 
 
 as he left, that he was going on to Fraulein Lilla von 
 Stichauer, who had asked him to come and help her to 
 paste a cardboard screen that she was making. This was 
 untrue : she had made no such appointment. 
 
60 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Moreover, many suspicious circumstances 
 tended to confirm Colonel Hickel's firmly-rooted 
 belief that the man in the cloak was a myth. 
 
 It was not likely that Kaspar would go out 
 in very inclement weather merely to inspect 
 specimens of clays ; for he had never shown the 
 slightest interest in them, and they could not be 
 novelties, as no work had been done at the 
 artesian well since the preceding month of 
 August. 
 
 He expressed the greatest eagerness to recover 
 the bag dropped in the Hofgarten, yet never 
 once inquired what it had been found to contain. 
 
 Dr. Meyer remembered to have seen a similar 
 bag in his possession since his last visit to 
 Munich, but none such was found among his 
 effects. 
 
 The note was folded exactly in the way that 
 Kaspar was accustomed to fold his notes. 
 
 It contained a fault in grammar he often 
 made in his writings, the substitution of " den " 
 for " dem." 
 
 The paper (of which the water-mark was 
 cut ofF) corresponded with some found in his 
 waste-paper basket. 
 
 For about three weeks before December 16, 
 he had been in the habit of leaving the Chancel- 
 lerie, on some pretext or other, before the right 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 61 
 
 time, and had always shut himself up in his 
 own room for an hour or more every day, lock- 
 ing the door, and pulling down the window- 
 blind, though it was dark winter weather. 
 
 Some letters and papers, known to have been 
 in his possession a short time before, were not 
 found after his death. Nor was a diary, that he 
 professed to have kept from the time he had 
 lived with Professor Daumer, forthcoming. He 
 had been very mysterious about this journal, 
 and never allowed any one to see it, but once 
 showed my father a blue paper cover, lying 
 in a drawer, which he said contained it. 
 There had been, at different times, great pres- 
 sure brought upon him to produce it, but he 
 never would ; and at last declared that he had 
 burnt it. 
 
 It was never supposed that Kaspar had 
 deliberately intended to commit suicide ; but 
 that the pressure required to pierce his thick 
 winter clothing and wadded coat drove the knife 
 further home than he expected, and inflicted a 
 deadly, instead of a slight wound. The blow, 
 too, was dealt in a dangerous place ; had it been 
 struck only a little lower down under the next 
 rib it would have done comparatively little 
 harm. It should be borne in mind that the 
 former attempt at Nuremberg had been a great 
 
62 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 success. Why should it not be repeated? It 
 had reawakened the waning interest in his story, 
 replaced him on his pedestal as the hero of the 
 hour, removed him from a very distasteful 
 position, and confirmed the existence of a mys- 
 terious persecutor the criminal "against a 
 Human Soul," which some had begun to doubt. 
 Who else could have any conceivable object 
 in seeking to take Kaspar's life? The story 
 and the murderer could not be dissociated ; 
 they must either be accepted or rejected to- 
 gether. 
 
 The judicial investigation dragged on for 
 nine months. Not till September 1834 did 
 the Ansbach Commissioners announce that the 
 materials at hand for their inquiry were ex- 
 hausted, and proceed to make their fifth and final 
 report to the Minister of Justice at Munich. 
 At the end of February my father had gone to 
 Nuremberg to examine the witnesses who had 
 first seen Kaspar on his arrival that is, the 
 two men whom he addressed in the street, the 
 Captain's groom, and the Captain himself; and 
 he also obtained the evidence of two police- 
 soldiers who were on guard at the police-station 
 when he was brought there. During the three 
 hours that he was detained, he never once 
 attempted to sit down, but either stood or 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 63 
 
 walked about (see p. 100) ; and one of these 
 men was positive that when asked where he 
 came from, he answered, " I must not tell." 
 " Why not ? " " Because I don't know." 
 
 The communication addressed by my father 
 to Colonel Hickel on the subject induced the 
 Commissioners to order a formal and minute 
 re-examination of those witnesses whose evi- 
 dence, as disproving Kaspar's story, is the first 
 point touched upon in their report. The 
 second is Dr. Meyer's long and detailed account 
 of his two years' experience of his pupil, and 
 the estimate he formed of his character, " cor- 
 roborated on many important points by the 
 testimony of Herr Biberbach, Professor Daumer, 
 and Freiherr von Tucher, even though they 
 differ in opinion as to whether Hauser inflicted 
 the wound himself." 
 
 The result of the inquiry was " the convic- 
 tion irresistibly forced upon their minds," that 
 no murder had been committed. From first to 
 last, " no single ground of suspicion had arisen 
 against any individual that was not completely 
 set at rest by subsequent investigation ; and, 
 after taking into account all the circumstances, 
 and more particularly the attempted murder at 
 Nuremberg," they had come to the above con- 
 clusion. 
 
64 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 They had, " even in their first report, en- 
 deavoured to explain the reasons that had led 
 them to doubt the truth of Kaspar's account of 
 the pretended outrage, and given rise to the con- 
 jecture that he had dealt the blow himself." 
 
 Here follows a discussion of his character 
 and probable motives. 
 
 " From this point of view, three facts de- 
 serve more especial notice and consideration. 
 
 " When Kaspar no longer liked staying with 
 Daumer, because the latter had seen through 
 him, because his untruthful ness had been dis- 
 covered and severely censured, when tutor and 
 pupil alike wished to part, there occurred the 
 first so-called attempt to murder, in broad 
 daylight, and in a frequented street, and the 
 murderer unaccountably disappears, leaving no 
 trace. 
 
 " After this attempt Kaspar was transferred 
 to the house of Herr Biberbach ; but here again 
 a similar motive led to similar results. Hauser 
 did not like this family. And again at the 
 very nick of time the accidental discharge of a 
 pistol in his own room, occasioning a slight 
 hurt, furthered his wish to leave the house. 
 
 " Then he came to Ansbach. Here, again, his 
 tutor found him out. He heard of the doubts 
 cast upon his story, and shared by Lord Stan- 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 65 
 
 hope. Fearing these doubts might lead to 
 fresh researches, and perhaps unwelcome dis- 
 coveries, discontented with his position and the 
 occupation assigned to him, disliking work, 
 severely taken to task for lies on December 9 
 four days before the wound : his endeavour 
 would be to put an end to this state of things 
 at any price ; and the supposed murder then 
 occurs, in as marvellous a way as at Nurem- 
 berg, by daylight and in a public garden, and 
 again the murderer vanishes, leaving a note and 
 a bag, as if to scoff at the researches of the 
 police. 
 
 " This note, in particular, should receive the 
 most marked and special consideration." 
 
 The circumstances already mentioned (see p. 
 60) are here detailed, and some of his utterances 
 on his deathbed quoted. 
 
 My father entirely concurred with the ver- 
 dict thus pronounced ; and the following year 
 published a full account of Kaspar Hauser's 
 story and of the fraud practised upon him. " I 
 suppose," he used to say, " that I am the only 
 man in the world that ever wrote a book to 
 prove himself in the wrong " ; yet he summed 
 up his experiences with these generous words : 
 " It cannot be denied, and I must myself confess, 
 that Kaspar Hauser's statements were not to be 
 
 F 
 
66 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 trusted ; that he invented and misrepresented 
 much ; and that in several instances, if not in 
 his whole story, he deceived us ; but it must 
 always remain a question whether he should be 
 called an impostor in the usual acceptation of 
 the word, and I hope that in this respect 
 the world will judge the unhappy foundling 
 fairly. 
 
 " I have no reason to believe that he came to 
 Nuremberg with the intention of playing the 
 part that was afterwards, in some measure, sug- 
 gested to him ; and which, to the wonder of 
 the world and the conviction of many very com- 
 petent judges, he enacted with such extreme 
 skill." ' 
 
 I wish I could here conclude the story of 
 Kaspar Hauser. But the public interest, revived 
 by his tragic and sensational end, would not 
 suffer him to rest in his grave. Two rather 
 scurrilous pamphlets, one reflecting on various 
 crowned heads, and a lyric poem, appeared in 
 1835 ; but it was not till four years afterwards 
 that the first attack upon my father (with the 
 exception of one newspaper article, promptly 
 refuted and contradicted) was given to the 
 world. It was written, I am sorry to say, by a 
 countrywoman, the English widow of a German 
 officer Countess Albersdorf, then an old woman 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 67 
 
 verging upon eighty. She had previously de- 
 nounced three perfectly innocent men, two of 
 them as Kaspar's murderer ; and the Commis- 
 sioners, before whom she appeared on the second 
 occasion, ungallantly describe her as "an ex- 
 tremely loquacious, foolish, and confused wit- 
 ness, bent upon repeating on hearsay all the 
 gossip of the town." In these two volumes 
 of Revelations she professed to have discovered 
 the secret of Kaspar's parentage, with the true 
 reason of his imprisonment ; and further pro- 
 claimed that my father had, from the time of 
 his first appearance at Nuremberg, organised 
 and concerted all the intrigues against him. It 
 was a tissue of follies and absurdities, 1 yet some 
 of this farrago of nonsense is gravely quoted 
 twenty years afterwards by Professor Daumer in 
 his even more scandalous work. This came out 
 in 1859, four years after my father's death ; and 
 is again entitled Revelations on Kaspar Hauser, 
 by his former Tutor. Daumer goes far beyond 
 the Countess in his denunciation. According to 
 him, Kaspar was the heir of a great English 
 house, sent early in life to Hungary, and only 
 adopted by Lord Stanhope in order that he 
 might the more easily oblige some English 
 friends who were (probably on account of an in- 
 1 See p. 101. 
 
68 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 heritance) interested in Kaspar's disappearance 
 by making away with him. Not only did he 
 direct the young man's assassination, but he also 
 poisoned President von Feuerbach, 1 and even 
 threatened Daumer's own life. The Professor 
 declares that in 1835, when walking in an un- 
 frequented street at Nuremberg, he met an 
 extremely sinister-looking individual, who, from 
 the suspicious action of his right hand, evidently 
 meant mischief; and that the evil intention he 
 thus divined was only frustrated by the merest 
 accident! As an instance of his reasoning, I 
 may note that he believed the bag dropped in the 
 Hofgarten was Kaspar's own, but had been pre- 
 viously stolen from him to avert suspicion from 
 the murderer. 
 
 Another newspaper, the Neue Frankfurter 
 Zeitung, took up the theme in 1 868. Its article, 
 chiefly compiled from Countess Albersdorf s 
 book, is full of gross inaccuracies and still 
 grosser abuse of the wicked English Earl who 
 had plotted the murder of his adopted son. 
 Thus it is that slander grows. What was at 
 first only the hint of a hideous suspicion had 
 now developed into an uncontroverted fact. 
 
 1 So far from being, as was alleged, totally unexpected, 
 the President's death had been for some time anticipated, 
 as he had never recovered from his first paralytic stroke 
 in June 1832. The second killed him. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 69 
 
 Dr. Meyer's son now endeavoured to stem 
 the rising tide of calumny and falsehood. His 
 father, who had always intended to write on the 
 subject of his former pupil, was dead, and the 
 duty thus devolved upon him. In 1870 he 
 asked and obtained permission from the Minister 
 of State to publish extracts from the numerous 
 documents concerning Kaspar Hauser that were 
 preserved in the archives of Munich, Ansbach, 
 and Nuremberg, comprising all the evidence, 
 reports, and judicial proceedings connected with 
 the case, together with some private letters. 
 Had it been possible, this should have been 
 done years before ; but these police records 
 being under the seal of official secrecy, their 
 publication would not have been permitted at 
 an earlier date. Dr. Julius Meyer was thus 
 enabled to give to the world the only perfectly 
 authentic account of the so-called " Child of 
 Europe" ; and it is from this book that my 
 narrative has been almost entirely derived. 
 
 Professor Daumer, however, remained uncon- 
 vinced. In 1873 he wrote another controversial 
 pamphlet : Kaspar Hauser, his character, his 
 innocence, his sufferings, and his origin thoroughly 
 discussed and established, in which he accused 
 Dr. Meyer of having kept back part of the evi- 
 dence and garbled the remainder. It was quite 
 
70 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 true that the official documents had not been 
 given in extenso ; they would have filled ten or 
 twelve volumes ; and who, piteously asked Dr. 
 Meyer, would ever have published, much less 
 bought and read these ? But that he had per- 
 formed his task of selection fairly and conscien- 
 tiously and never once swerved from the exact 
 truth, two very eminent jurists, both of them 
 well acquainted with the archives, readily came 
 forward to testify. 
 
 Another decade had passed before the story 
 cropped up again, and Professor Daumer was by 
 that time dead. In 1883 an anonymous pam- 
 phlet was published at Ratisbon, entitled Kaspar 
 Hauser : the history of his life and the proof of 
 his royal birth. From the papers, now first 
 given to the public, of a person of the highest 
 rank. It professed to contain some " most re- 
 markable revelations,'* both " from official 
 sources hitherto inaccessible," and " from the 
 private notes of a man thoroughly conversant 
 with the case, who had at his disposal materials 
 very difficult of access." From this it might 
 fairly be inferred that some fresh information 
 was forthcoming, but this new publication was 
 simply a compilation of others that had appeared 
 forty or fifty years before, viz. : 
 
 i. Kaspar Hauser, or the Foundling, ro- 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 71 
 
 mantically four t rayed by Stuttgart, 
 
 1834- 
 
 2. Kaspar Hauser, the heir to the throne of 
 Baden. Paris (in reality Zurich), 1840 : the 
 preface by N. E. Mesis (Nemesis, i.e. Sebastian 
 Seiler). 
 
 3. Kaspar Hauser, or the true revelation of 
 the secret of his birth : the cause of his imprison- 
 ment : its duration: analysis and signification 
 of the letter he brought to the Bavarian captain : 
 detailed specification of the man who received 
 Kaspar as a child and then brought him as a 
 young man to Nuremberg : Hausers position at 
 Nuremberg until his attempted assassination: 
 
 finally ^ Lord Stanhope s first appearance at this 
 time at Nuremberg^ and the contrivance and 
 preparation of the intrigues in which he was 
 afterwards engaged. By W. C. Gr. v. A. 
 (Countess Albersdorf). 2 volumes. Munich, 
 1839. 
 
 4. A French pamphlet, privately circulated 
 at Paris in 1870, without a title, or the name 
 either of the author or printer. 
 
 No. i was taken from a pamphlet published 
 in the same year at Strasburg by one Gamier, a 
 refugee from Baden, then resident in Alsace, and 
 entitled Some contributions to the history of 
 Kaspar Hauser^ with a dramatic preface. This 
 
 SELIB 
 
 Or TKf 
 
72 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 man was arrested at Baden seventeen years after- 
 wards, and during his imprisonment deposed on 
 oath that this was a composition of his own, con- 
 cocted from common report and current rumours, 
 which he had published to revenge himself on 
 the Government that had proscribed him ; one 
 Engesser, to whom he bore a grudge, being 
 denounced as incriminated. 
 
 Of No. 2, Professor Daumer, the sworn 
 champion of Kaspar Hauser, says, tc lt breathes 
 throughout bitter enmity against princes and 
 priests. It is full of inaccuracies ; it is written 
 in the style of a novel or romance, and contains 
 one fantastic episode, which, from internal 
 evidence, is unmistakably a fiction. Who can 
 credit such things, without historical proof or 
 foundation, or indeed authority of any kind, on 
 merely anonymous testimony ? " Before it was 
 given to the public, this precious production, 
 with the promise of inviolable secrecy in the 
 future, had been three times offered to the Baden 
 Government ; first, for 1 700 florins, next, for 
 1500 florins, and finally for 24 louis, and on 
 each occasion refused. 
 
 No. 3. Countess Albersdorf's two volumes 
 I have already described (p. 67). I may add 
 that she herself owns to a strong animus against 
 my father. It appears that she had twice asked 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 73 
 
 for an interview with him, and he had twice 
 excused himself from receiving her. She was 
 very indignant, and declared, " He will be sorry 
 some day that he would not see me." 
 
 No. 4 had of course a very limited circulation, 
 and Dr. Meyer had considerable difficulty in 
 procuring a copy. He thought he discerned in 
 it traces of the same hand that had been 
 employed on the new pamphlet. 
 
 The better to compare them, he printed in 
 1883 parcel passages from Nos. i, 2, and 3, 
 and this last publication, which satisfactorily 
 establish their identity. 
 
 All recount, in great detail, a secret sitting of 
 the Council of State of Baden, held under the 
 presidency of Herr von Burniz, on the death of 
 the Grand-Duke Louis, with whom the elder 
 line of the House of Zaehringen expired, on 
 March 30, 1830. On this occasion Major von 
 Hennenhofer and other witnesses testified that 
 his nephew, their rightful sovereign, had been 
 set aside for reasons of State, and was then living 
 at Nuremberg, under the name of Kaspar 
 Hauser. The Grand -Duke Leopold, who 
 was present, with some difficulty prevailed 
 upon them to ignore his nephew's claim, and 
 name him as the next in succession to the 
 throne. 
 
74 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 These so-called revelations profess to be 
 extracts from the MS. memoirs of Major von 
 Hennenhofer, which he valued so highly that he 
 slept with them under his pillow, and had left 
 instructions that they were to be given to the 
 world at the end of the present century. These 
 he had given to a former lawyer's clerk, named 
 Seiler, to be copied, and Seiler, being dissatisfied 
 with his remuneration, carried off his copy to 
 Zurich, where he had it printed, and intended 
 to publish it. But, before he could do so, the 
 secret was betrayed to the Baden representative, 
 Freiherr von Rudt, who, in the name of his 
 Government, demanded from the Swiss authorities 
 the suppression of the entire edition, and the 
 banishment of Seiler, who was, however, to 
 receive payment. 
 
 This is a fabrication from beginning to end. 
 Major von Hennenhofer, who was singled out 
 for incrimination, was a Court favourite who had 
 risen from the ranks, and as such, an exceedingly 
 unpopular (and I believe deservedly unpopular) 
 man. He was a voluminous writer ; but no 
 memoirs of any sort were found among his 
 papers (now preserved in the archives or 
 Karlsruhe), and all those acquainted with his 
 style have pronounced Seiler 's " Extracts " to be 
 very clumsy forgeries. He himself, to his dying 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 75 
 
 day, expressed the liveliest indignation at being 
 suspected of complicity in such a conspiracy. 1 
 
 Of the story itself, it need only be said that 
 no Council of State existed in Baden at that date. 
 It was only instituted thirty-three years after- 
 wards, in 1863. The republication in 1883 of 
 this and other allegations against the reigning 
 House of Baden, was all the more unpardonable, 
 as they had been refuted and exposed eight years 
 before by Dr. Mittelstadt, in his Kaspar Hauser 
 and his Baden Princedom. Heidelberg, 1875. 
 
 The accusations against my father were, if 
 possible, even more extravagant and envenomed 
 than those that had gone before. Not only had 
 he been the accomplice of Countess Hochberg 
 and Major von Hennenhofer, who had been 
 employed to kidnap the Crown Prince of Baden, 
 but he was himself " the soul of the conspiracy, 
 the instigator and ringleader" of all the plots 
 hatched against the unfortunate Hauser. He 
 had been concerned in the attempted murder at 
 Nuremberg. He had travelled to Ansbach with 
 Hennenhofer in December 1833 f r tne p ur pse 
 of finally despatching his victim, and "either 
 with his own dagger, or that of a hired assassin, 
 
 1 "The accusations and insinuations in all these 
 pamphlets," he writes to one of his friends, " embitter my 
 life." 
 
76 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 inflicted the mortal wound. On them, and on 
 those whose orders they obeyed, rests the 
 burden of this crime, and the guilt of innocent 
 blood." 
 
 Next came the turn of Dr. Meyer. " On 
 him rested the grave suspicion of having 
 delivered up to Lord Stanhope, Kaspar Hauser's 
 journal " : this mysterious and unseen journal 
 (see p. 61), which he fully believed had never 
 been written. He was the servile "creature," 
 the paid tool of the English Earl, initiated in all 
 the evil secrets of his machinations, and had 
 pocketed such heavy bribes, that from a poor 
 man he had grown to be a rich one. Colonel 
 Hickel, again, was another salaried conspirator, 
 who had purposely absented himself from 
 Ansbach on the day of Kaspar's assassination, in 
 order to delay and hamper the judicial investiga- 
 tion it was his duty to conduct. 
 
 All this fury of vituperation was, it should 
 be observed, levelled against men from whom no 
 rejoinder was to be apprehended, as they had 
 long since passed into the " eternal silence " of 
 the grave. But Dr. Meyer's sons were not 
 disposed to allow such vile imputations on their 
 father's memory to pass unchallenged. They 
 brought an action for libel against the publishers 
 of these wicked slanders, and applied to me to 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 77 
 
 join in the prosecution on my own father's 
 behalf. My brother being dead, I now re- 
 mained his nearest representative. But I refused 
 to notice so foul a charge. I felt that, in 
 stooping to answer it, I should be insulting, 
 rather than vindicating his memory. I replied 
 that if any people could be found to believe that 
 he, or any English gentleman, had either himself 
 used the dagger of an assassin, or employed that 
 of a hired bravo, they must have altogether lost 
 their understandings, and I did not see how the 
 verdict of any tribunal could remedy their 
 condition. 
 
 The cause was tried in April 1883, at 
 Ratisbon, where the pamphlet had been pub- 
 lished. No attempt was made to defend it, or 
 uphold the libels it contained ; the publisher 
 only pleaded that he had acted in ignorance of 
 the truth, and not from wilful malice. But he 
 was sentenced to pay a fine of 100 florins, 
 with costs, and ordered to destroy all the copies 
 of the obnoxious publication that remained on 
 his hands. 
 
 Some part of my father's correspondence with 
 Dr. Meyer, and the last letter he wrote to Kaspar 
 himself, dated Vienna, December 17, 1833, were 
 read in court, to show the warm interest he had 
 taken in his pupil's welfare, his thoughtful care, 
 
78 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 and unwearied kindness. His name was never 
 mentioned except with respect and commenda- 
 tion, and a due appreciation of his noble and 
 upright character. One eminent jurist who gave 
 evidence, President Schmausz, declared that 
 " any one that studied the case must be lost in 
 amazement at the raving lunacy that could make 
 Lord Stanhope out a murderer." l 
 
 It might have been hoped that the Hauser 
 legend was now finally disposed of; but this 
 was very far from being the case. Scarcely four 
 years had elapsed before it cropped up again : 
 this time in a refutation of the story, entitled 
 Kaspar Hauser : Eine neugeschichtliche Legende^ 
 von Antonius von der Linde. But this publica- 
 tion scarcely met with the success it merited, for 
 we are told that " the historian Gregorovius " 
 (whoever he may be) only became " morally 
 certain" that Kaspar Hauser was Stephanie's 
 son after reading Von der Linde's book. 
 
 Then in March 1892 a more ambitious title, 
 Des Rat hs els L'dsung (The Solution of the 
 Riddle), by Baron Alexander von Artin, held 
 out the prospect of something better than moral 
 
 1 As I have a prejudice (evidently not shared by some 
 writers I might name) in favour of evidence taken on oath, 
 I have transcribed that part of the President's evidence 
 which bears out my own statements. (See p. 104..) 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 79 
 
 certainties. It contained two documents that 
 were to set the matter at rest for ever, be- 
 queathed by the Minister von Berstett to a 
 prince whose name is not given, with the 
 stipulation that they were not to be made public 
 for fifty-five years after his death. This period 
 had now elapsed. 
 
 One was the following letter in facsimile, 
 purporting to be written by the Grand-Duke 
 Louis, and dated June 5, 1828 : 
 
 " To my Government. 
 
 " In Nuremberg last month total failure. Take measures 
 that this event does not disturb the peace of my Grand 
 Duchy. Accept on my part the assurance of my continued 
 interest in your welfare. I remain, your well-affectioned 
 
 " LUDWIG." 
 
 This seems a remarkable circular for a 
 sovereign, engaged in a nefarious conspiracy, 
 to address to his Cabinet : and, to heighten its 
 dramatic effect, it was delivered at midnight! 
 I need scarcely add that it is entirely discredited 
 in Germany. " A comparison made by experts 
 of the handwriting and phraseology of this 
 document with those of a great number of 
 Cabinet papers of the reign of this Grand-Duke, 
 plainly shows independently of the contra- 
 dictions in its arrangement and wording that 
 we have here to do with a clumsy forgery. 
 
8o KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Besides other errors, the beginning and end is 
 entirely different from that of similar official 
 circulars. The address and superscription are 
 in direct contradiction to the usual form. In 
 particular, the Minister von Berstett (the whole 
 of whose correspondence was made over by his 
 widow to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) never 
 appears to have been so addressed." Karlsruher 
 Zeitung^ March n, 1892. "The only novelty 
 contained in this publication is the reproduction 
 in facsimile of a Cabinet circular respecting 
 events said to have occurred at Nuremberg in 
 1828, probably to form the basis of future 
 fables and suspicions. Several papers have 
 already thrown doubts on its genuineness, and 
 in fact a closer examination reveals unmistak- 
 able signs of forgery: a seal where no seal is 
 ever placed ; a superscription and address quite 
 contrary to usage ; four lines in a different hand- 
 writing from the rest ; single words either dis- 
 placed, or with a blank space left around them ; 
 a date fourteen years anterior to that of the 
 water -mark of the paper, and so strangely 
 written as to suggest its having been tampered 
 with! A publication that, either wilfully or 
 erroneously, makes use of methods such as 
 these, cannot deserve any kind of notice. "- 
 Badische Landeszeitung^ March 9, 1892. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 81 
 
 The other document is Von Berstett's dying 
 confession to the anonymous prince, which does 
 not tell us much. He avers that, though as 
 long as he can remember, "the air was full of 
 whispered suggestions that the first-born prince 
 was still alive," he only became aware of it after 
 the accession of the Grand-Duke Louis: and, 
 hearing that the prince was " crippled and 
 ruined in mind and body," he thought it best 
 for the welfare of the State to keep the matter 
 to himself. " Also, I feared that if the truth 
 were revealed, the unhappy Grand -Duchess 
 Stephanie would go mad. Major Hennenhofer, 
 whom I may well call my evil genius, knows 
 more about this matter than I do. After 
 Leopold's accession, I found in his orders a 
 good excuse for resigning my post." 
 
 The rest of the book is simply a reprint of 
 the obnoxious publication prosecuted and con- 
 demned at Ratisbon in 1883, of which I have 
 already spoken (see p. 70). It is thus described 
 by the judge who there pronounced the verdict : 
 
 " This work is shown to be compiled from 
 former, partly anonymous, publications concern- 
 ing Kaspar Hauser, which are, from internal 
 evidence, utterly unworthy of belief, and 
 accumulates falsehood upon falsehood, and 
 suspicion upon suspicion and these of the 
 
 G 
 
82 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 worst kind ; as is likewise apparent in the 
 charges brought against Lord Stanhope, which 
 are well known to be utterly without foundation 
 in fact." 
 
 Not only is the prince who receives Von 
 Berstett's death-bed confession anonymous, but 
 the name given by the author is a pseudonym. 
 "Baron Alexander von Artin" is simply non- 
 existent. No noble family of that name is to be 
 met with in Germany. The author is supposed 
 to be a certain Von Ehrensberg, a native of 
 Baden, and once a captain in the Prussian service, 
 which he left, as is said, not entirely of his own 
 accord. He then lived for some time at Zurich, 
 but, falling under the suspicion of being an in- 
 former, 1 was sent out of the country. A work of 
 his on the Guelph Fund had been previously 
 published by the same firm at Zurich. 
 
 Some months after this, I am ashamed to 
 say that an English writer and a London firm 
 ventured to publish to the astounded world that 
 my father had been in the pay of the Grand - 
 Duke of Baden, and was the murderer of Kaspar 
 Hauser ! The various scurrilous and discredited 
 publications which I have described, hitherto un- 
 noticed in England, had been brought together 
 
 1 The literal translation is agent provocateur, but I do 
 not know how to render this in English. 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 83 
 
 and translated to form " an interesting page of 
 history," entitled The Story of Kaspar Hauser, 
 from authentic (i.e. anonymous) Records. In 
 my great indignation I would have welcomed 
 the weapon of defence that I had rejected in 
 Germany ; but I found that the law of England 
 did not place it in my hands. The time that 
 had since elapsed had relegated these ancient 
 scandals, far beyond the reach of attack, into the 
 neutral ground of History. History ! I might 
 exclaim with Madame Roland, "what crimes 
 are committed in thy name ! " I can imagine 
 some future Macaulay, engaged in sifting the 
 ashes of the lower strata of our literature, 
 suddenly lighting upon this ghastly story, and 
 pouring forth his indignation in a torrent of 
 scathing eloquence : " What a state of society 
 does this not reveal ! Here we have a lady 
 a lady doubtless of high social standing, 
 perfectly conversant with the manners and 
 customs of the nobility openly accusing a 
 nobleman of ancient and honourable lineage of 
 being the hired bravo of the Grand -Duke of 
 Baden ! True, she gives no proofs in support 
 of her statement, but it is evident that the 
 fact was even then thirty -seven years after 
 the Earl's death so notorious as to need 
 none. Her name probably already familiar 
 
84 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 to the literary world was alone a sufficient 
 guarantee ; for no contradiction has ever been 
 attempted. And this is in the nineteenth 
 century ! in the reign of the good Queen 
 Victoria ! What must we think of the corrup- 
 tion and degradation of a time in which such 
 monstrous crimes passed unheeded ? How is it 
 that we do not hear of this Earl's being brought 
 to justice, or at least expelled from the House 
 of Lords ? Where is the boasted respectability 
 of our ancestors? We find this assassin to 
 their shame be it spoken taking part in the 
 debates as a peer of parliament, addressing 
 crowded and enthusiastic public meetings, and 
 receiving addresses and testimonials in recogni- 
 tion of his services. Then, what an indictment 
 is here against the Bible and missionary societies 
 that employed this caitiff as their colporteur ! 
 Is it by hands such as these that Christianity is 
 to be disseminated? Yet, incredible as it may 
 appear, this polluted traffic was his principal 
 means of subsistence ; it was on this petty and 
 precarious pittance that his wife and family had 
 for years to struggle on ; and his abject poverty 
 might be pleaded as the sole excuse for his 
 being, as is stated, open to any bribe. But we, 
 in this superior and more virtuous age, may 
 dismiss such paltry subterfuges with the scorn 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 85 
 
 they deserve, and rejoice that our standard of 
 morality is not that of the disgraced and debased 
 nineteenth century. All the more honour to 
 the noble-minded woman who, ignoring any 
 risk to her own character, boldly lifted the veil 
 that had so long shrouded this hideous mystery, 
 and earned the respect and gratitude of posterity, 
 if not of her contemporaries ! " 
 
 Here the author finds that he has missed one 
 very telling point. 
 
 " But I must not be unjust. I must not 
 leave untold the one striking incident that re- 
 deems the criminal apathy of the age. One 
 English nobleman and one only was found 
 honest enough to speak out. His voice alone 
 is raised in the universal silence, and he, at least, 
 does not shrink from proclaiming the truth. 
 Lord Daniel Alban Durteal" (I have copied this 
 nobleman's remarkable name with the most 
 careful solicitude), " advocate of the Royal Court 
 in London, said to . . ." (the writer of an 
 anonymous letter) : " c I am firmly convinced 
 that Kaspar Hauser was murdered. It was all 
 done by bribery. Stanhope has no money, and 
 lives by this affair/ 
 
 "We know nothing of Lord Daniel Alban 
 Durteal. His name has not been handed down 
 to us in the pages of history. But it should be 
 
86 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 ever gratefully enshrined in the memory of his 
 countrymen, and take its place beside that of the 
 noble lady who so courageously bore witness to 
 the truth with her pen. May we not please 
 ourselves with the fancy that they were not 
 altogether strangers to each other ? that she may 
 have been connected either by birth or marriage 
 with the noble family of which he was the 
 representative? or even, at one period of her 
 life, herself borne the honoured name of Alban 
 Durteal? Between their hearts, at least, there 
 was true affinity." 
 
 I feel I am far from having done justice to 
 the stirring passages that will delight our 
 descendants in the future. But even this little 
 attempt may serve to show how poor a figure 
 the truth must cut by their side. How tame, 
 flat, and altogether unsatisfying it must appear ! 
 Was it for this, men may well ask, that our best 
 feelings were laid under contribution ? Is it 
 fair? Should so much good sympathy and 
 honest indignation be utterly wasted and thrown 
 away ? Disappointment is not the word for it. 
 Vexation would be a truer one. 
 
 And yet, with all this, there can be no ques- 
 tion as to the result. It is not the highly 
 wrought romance, but the plain and simple 
 truth, that eventually wins the day. Not for a 
 
KASPAR HAUSER 87 
 
 single moment have I faltered in this faith, or 
 felt a misgiving as to the verdict I have to 
 expect. I accept it before it is pronounced. 
 One who bears the proud name of Englishwoman 
 should be the last to doubt the good sense and 
 right feeling of her countrymen ; and it is with 
 the most perfect confidence that I leave my 
 father's honour in their hands. 
 
 In his own words (written to Dr. Meyer on 
 July 24, 1834) : "Truth is great and victorious, 
 and much as we may now be maligned, through 
 ignorance and prejudice, I have the conviction 
 that in this, as in all other matters, it must in 
 the end prove the conqueror." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 EVIDENCE of the master shoemaker, George Leonard 
 Weichmann, resident in the Unschlittsplatz in 
 Nuremberg, taken on oath before the examining 
 magistrate, November 4, 1829. 
 
 jjj. What do you know in respect to Kaspar 
 Hauser's first appearance in the year 1828 ? 
 
 A. I was standing at my house door on Easter 
 Monday, when a young lad, the same shown to me 
 before the magistrates under the name of Kaspar 
 Hauser, came trudging down the Barleinhuter hill. 
 While still at some distance from me, he began to call 
 out, " Hi, lad ! " and, as he came nearer, pronounced 
 with tolerable distinctness the words, "Neue Thor 
 Strasse ? " (New Gate Street). I supposed the lad 
 wanted to go to some one in the Neue Thor Strasse, 
 and offered to show him the way. I then went with 
 Hauser over the Max Bridge towards the Neue Thor 
 Strasse, when, not far from the bridge, he put his 
 hand into the pocket of his jacket, and drew out a 
 large sealed letter. He gave me the letter, and I read 
 the address to the " Herr Rittmeister (Captain) of 
 
92 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 the 4th Squadron." As I could give him no informa- 
 tion respecting this gentleman, I said, "It will be 
 best for us to go to the guard-house at the Neue 
 Thor " (New Gate) ; and Hauser repeated, " Guard- 
 house guard-house Neue Thor no doubt just built ? " 
 I explained to him that the Neue Thor was by no 
 means recently built, but only bore the name ; and, 
 meanwhile, we were slowly approaching it. On the 
 way I asked Hauser where he came from. He said, 
 " Ratisbon " ; and to my next question, whether he 
 had ever been here before, he replied, "No, it's the 
 first time." But when I went on to inquire what 
 news there was at Ratisbon, and what they said there 
 as to peace or war, Hauser indeed repeated my words, 
 " War war " ; but I soon perceived he had no idea 
 what war meant, and had not understood my question. 
 When we got to the Gate, the Police Examiner 
 called out, " Have you got a Wanderbuch ? " (travel- 
 ling journeyman's book, serving as a passport), but 
 omitted any further inquiries, as I explained that 
 Hauser had no Wanderbuch. Then I took him up 
 to the corporal and two other soldiers standing by. 
 Hauser took off his hat very respectfully, put it under 
 his arm, and showed the letter to the Herr Rittmeister. 
 The corporal took the letter, and the Examiner, point- 
 ing to the Gate, called out "Go straight in," and 
 when I saw that Kaspar went as directed, I went my 
 own way, not seeing far less being able to tell how 
 he reached the Rittmeister's house. 
 
 J|J. How was Kaspar Hauser dressed on this, his 
 first appearance ? 
 
 (Witness here described and identified the clothes.) 
 
APPENDIX 93 
 
 JfJ. Doubts have been expressed as to whether 
 Kaspar Hauser really used the words you reported 
 " Ratisbon, Neue Thor no doubt just built." Have 
 you a distinct remembrance of them ? 
 
 A. I distinctly remember hearing Kaspar Hauser 
 pronounce the words as I reported them. 
 
 Weichmann was again examined in May 1834, 
 and recapitulated his former evidence, adding the 
 following details : 
 
 I was standing talking to the shoemaker, Jacob 
 Beck, and we had been chatting together about ten 
 minutes when I saw a young stranger, afterwards 
 named Kaspar Hauser, come down the tolerably steep 
 Barleinhuter hill at a good pace. . . . He was not 
 bent down, as has been asserted, but walked like any 
 one else ; and as long as he was with me, stood firm 
 on his feet and did not stagger. But he was evidently 
 jaded, and rather dusty, as if he had just walked a 
 long way. Beck said to me it would be well if I 
 showed him the Neue Thor Strasse, as in any case I 
 was going that way. This I accordingly did. Kaspar 
 Hauser kept step with me, and it would have been 
 folly to think of leading him. . . . About ten days 
 after this Kaspar Hauser was brought before the 
 Town Council, that I might identify him. But he 
 would not recognise me, and when I asked him if he 
 did not remember me, replied, " No, no " ; and this 
 he said in a tone that might have led one to suppose 
 him to be dazed. While the questions and answers 
 recorded in the minutes were being read out, I kept 
 my eyes fixed on his face, and when he observed I 
 was watching him, he cried impatiently, " What makes 
 
94 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 you stare at me so ? " . . . He was very tolerably 
 dressed ; I have already described his clothes (before 
 the magistrates). His dress, appearance, and general 
 demeanour was that of a stable boy. 
 
 EVIDENCE of the shoemaker, Jacob Beck of Nurem- 
 berg, taken on oath before the examining magis- 
 trate, May 5, 1834. 
 
 On the afternoon of the day that Kaspar Hauser 
 first came to Nuremberg, I was standing with the 
 shoemaker Weichmann at the corner of the Un- 
 schlittsplatz and the middle Kreuzgasse, when we 
 saw Kaspar coming down the Barleinhuter hill with 
 a firm step. He was really a droll figure, for he wore 
 very wide trousers, a short jacket, and on his head a 
 low-crowned hat, which looked very comical. I took 
 him for a journeyman tailor just arrived. As he came 
 nearer, he cried with a distinct but rather broken 
 voice, " Where's Neue Thor Strasse ? " As I knew 
 Weichmann was going in that direction, I told him 
 he ought to take the stranger with him ; and so he 
 did. I myself went another way. Afterwards I heard 
 from Weichmann that he had mentioned before the 
 Town Council our being together when Kaspar came 
 down the Barleinhuter hill. This is all I know of 
 Kaspar Hauser. If I could have guessed that this 
 Kaspar Hauser was such an interesting person, I 
 would certainly have gone with him to the Neue Thor 
 Strasse ; but as it was he looked to me a very ordinary 
 sort of fellow. 
 
APPENDIX 95 
 
 EVIDENCE of Johann Matthew Merk, servant of the 
 Rittmeister von Wessenig, taken on oath before 
 the examining magistrate, December 20, 1829. 
 
 On that Easter Monday my master and all his 
 household were absent, and I left alone in the house, 
 when, about seven o'clock in the evening, the door bell 
 rang. I went from the stable to open the front door, 
 and found there the same young man whom I often 
 saw afterwards under the name of Kaspar Hauser. He 
 wore a gray jacket, and trousers of the same, with a 
 round hat, and showed me a letter he held in his hand, 
 saying that he " wanted to be a trooper, as his father 
 was," and that he had been " directed to come here 
 to this house." I asked him where he came from, to 
 whom the letter was addressed, etc., but could get 
 nothing out of him except, " I don't know." Young 
 Hauser was very tired : so much so that he reeled as 
 he walked, and pointed to his feet to show that they 
 hurt him ; and as I thought, because he had a letter 
 for the Herr Rittmeister, that I was bound to let him 
 stay, I took him to the stable, where he lay down on 
 the straw. He took bread and water greedily, but 
 turned with disgust from the meat and beer offered 
 him. Towards eight o'clock the Herr Rittmeister 
 came home. I do not remember being present when 
 he found Hauser in the stable ; I only know that 
 Hauser was afterwards got rid of, and that he was 
 scarcely able to walk. 
 
 j^. Who had rung the bell when you opened the 
 house door to admit Kaspar Hauser ? 
 
96 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 A. I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but as 
 I found Kaspar Hauser standing at the door quite 
 alone, I conclude it must have been him. 
 
 RE-EXAMINATION of Merk on May 5, 1834. 
 
 Kaspar Hauser looked quite healthy, but his feet 
 were swollen, and he was very dusty, as if he had 
 just come in from a long journey. He seemed 
 to understand all that was said well enough, but 
 he did not speak very intelligibly, but rather un- 
 connectedly, and with evident difficulty. We had a 
 long chat. He told me he did not know where he 
 came from, and began to cry about it ; then he dis- 
 tinctly said that he had been forced to travel day and 
 night ; that he had been carried when he could no 
 longer walk : that he had learnt to read and write ; and 
 that he had to cross the frontier every day to go to 
 school. When I showed him the horses, he said, quite 
 distinctly, " There were five like that where I came 
 from." This is all I know of Kaspar Hauser. 
 
 j^. Did you satisfy yourself that he really could 
 read and write ? 
 
 A. I cannot affirm it on oath : I don't quite re- 
 member. 
 
 j^>. It is stated that you sat together on a stone 
 bench, and that he wrote his name in pencil : is that 
 true ? 
 
 A. Yes, I believe I saw Kaspar Hauser write, but 
 I cannot swear to it. 
 
APPENDIX 97 
 
 EVIDENCE of Johann Hacker, coachman of Rittmeister 
 von Wessenig, taken on oath before the examin- 
 ing magistrate, November 2, 1829. 
 
 Kaspar Hauser, on arriving at Nuremberg, and 
 coming to the house of Rittmeister von Wessenig, 
 whom I served as coachman, took great delight in the 
 horses : he was very sorry to part from them, and kept 
 on patting them. When he first came, the Herr 
 Rittmeister was not at home, but was attending the 
 consecration of the church at Erlangen. I had to 
 drive him there : and when we came back in the even- 
 ing, Kaspar Hauser was lying asleep on the straw, 
 curled up, and as it were rolled together, for he had 
 drawn his legs close up to his body. 
 
 EVIDENCE of the Rittmeister of the 4th Squadron of 
 the 6th Bavarian Regiment of Cavalry, Friedrich 
 von Wessenig, taken on oath before the examin- 
 ing magistrate, November 2, 1829. 
 
 On the evening of that Easter Monday, when I 
 returned from a drive with the Commissioner of Police, 
 Von Scheurl, and Lieutenant von Hugenpoet, I was 
 told that a stranger bringing a letter was waiting for 
 me, lying on the straw in the stable : that they could 
 not make him out : that they offered him meat and 
 beer, which he would not touch : and that he had 
 taken nothing but bread and water. I went myself to 
 the stable, accompanied by the Commissioner and the 
 Lieutenant, and found a young peasant asleep on the 
 straw. I had him awakened : and when he saw me, 
 
 H 
 
98 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 he came up to me, smiling, said, " I want to be such a 
 one " : took hold of my porte-epee^ and began playing 
 with it. I asked him his name ; he replied that his 
 foster-father had desired him to say only "I don't 
 know, your Honour " ; then he took off his hat, add- 
 ing, "My foster-father said I was always to take off 
 my hat and say your Honour," and made me a bow. 
 Meanwhile my servant delivered the letter he had 
 brought, and I read it through. Its tone of impor- 
 tunity and insistence provoked me ; and I therefore 
 handed it to the Police Commissioner who was present, 
 asking him to take charge of the boy. This he at 
 once agreed to do : and my servant led him to the 
 Police Court, as the lad was not well able to walk 
 alone, being tired and footsore. In other respects he 
 looked healthy, and well-fed : the peasant's dress he 
 wore seemed clean and quite new : and he had with 
 him a Catholic prayer-book and a cotton handkerchief : 
 there was a name written in the prayer-book, but it 
 was so effaced that it could not be made out. When 
 I had him taken away, he was very loath to leave the 
 stable, complained of pain in his feet, and seemed 
 greatly pleased with the horses, repeating " Ross " 
 (horse). During the short time I had the opportunity 
 of observing him while he was in my house, I judged 
 him to be entirely uneducated and so to speak in a 
 state of Nature, and the possibility of any deception on 
 his part was not to be thought of. 
 
APPENDIX 99 
 
 EVIDENCE of the police-corporal Christopher Wiist, 
 sworn on his official duty, May 5, 1834. 
 
 On the day that Kaspar Hauser first arrived, he was 
 brought to our guard-room, where I was on duty. I 
 was about three hours with Kaspar in this room. He 
 was very loutish-looking, with a healthy complexion, 
 and of very stout build. He certainly appeared neither 
 pale nor delicate, and I should have said that, instead 
 of living in confinement, he had been a great deal in 
 the open air, but he showed a considerable amount of 
 fatigue. When light was brought in, he did not 
 shrink from it, nor did his eyes seem to be sensitive to 
 light. I wrote down directions on a piece of paper 
 that he was to sign his name, with the name of the 
 place he came from ; then I gave him a pen ready 
 dipped in ink, and he came quite close to the light 
 without the slightest apparent discomfort. He held 
 the pen properly, just like other people, and wrote his 
 name quite legibly, though far from well. The only 
 thing that struck me while he was writing was that 
 his hand shook a little. He did not write down what 
 place he came from. I showed him my paper again, 
 desiring him to tell me the name of this place, and 
 he answered, without hesitation and in a distinct voice, 
 " I dare not say." I then asked why he dared not tell, 
 and he replied, clearly and decidedly as before, " Because 
 I don't know." This was the only answer he would 
 give to all the other questions that I put to him, so 
 that I had but little conversation with him. 
 
ioo KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 EVIDENCE of the police-soldier Jean Jaques Lemarier, 
 sworn on his official duty, May 5, 1834. 
 
 On the first day that Kaspar Hauser came to 
 Nuremberg, he was brought into our guard-room, 
 where I was, and I was then with him for about two 
 hours. He held himself quite upright, and walked up 
 and down the room with short steps, not appearing 
 fatigued at least he did not complain of fatigue : and 
 during the two hours he was in the guard-room never 
 asked to sit down. 
 
 Compare these matter-of-fact statements with 
 Professor Feuerbach's sensational account of Kaspar 
 Hauser on his first arrival at Nuremberg. 
 
 " A tradesman, dwelling in the so-called Un- 
 schlittsplatz in Nuremberg, was loitering before his 
 door, about to go from thence to the so-called Neue 
 Xhor, when, on turning round, he perceived, not far 
 from him, a young man, dressed as a peasant, who was 
 standing in a most unusual attitude ; and as if in- 
 toxicated was trying to move forward without holding 
 himself upright, or being able to direct his steps. 
 The tradesman went up to this stranger, who held 
 out to him a letter addressed to the Rittmeister of the 
 4th Squadron of the Schmolische Regiment. As the 
 Rittmeister lived near the Neue Thor, the tradesman 
 conducted the stranger thither." Beispiel elnes Ver- 
 brechens am Seelenleben des Menschens (Instance of 
 a Crime against a Human Soul) : pp. I, 2. 
 
 " Kaspar Hauser showed such an utter deficiency of 
 words and ideas, such perfect ignorance of the com- 
 
APPENDIX 101 
 
 monest things and appearances of Nature, such horror 
 of all the customs, conveniences, and necessities of 
 civilised life, and with all this, such extraordinary 
 peculiarities in his social, mental, and physical disposi- 
 tion, that one might have felt one's self driven to the 
 alternative of believing him to be the citizen of an- 
 other planet, transferred by some miracle to our own : 
 or else for the man described by Plato, who was born 
 and grew up under the earth, and only emerged to the 
 light of day when he had attained the age of manhood." 
 Ibid., pp. 20, 21. 
 
 EVIDENCE of Andreas Hiltel, warder of the Tower 
 Prison in the Castle of Nuremberg, November 
 1829. 
 
 On his first arrival, Kaspar Hauser's feet were, not 
 indeed sore, but much swollen, as his boots were very 
 tight. Moreover, it should be noted, that to judge 
 from his feet, it may be safely assumed that he had 
 been more in the habit of walking barefoot than in 
 boots. During the time he was in my charge he at 
 first sat always on a bench, and only later on used a 
 chair. At the beginning he sat rather bent down ; and 
 neither on the bench nor on the ground did he ever 
 stretch out his legs, but tucked them under him, like a 
 tailor. When he was asleep, too, he lay curled up, 
 and drew up his legs. 
 
102 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 COUNTESS ALBERSDORF. 
 
 As a specimen of Countess Albersdorf's writings, I 
 have here given a literal translation of two extracts from 
 this book. 
 
 " Some time after this I had a vision, in which 
 Hauser appeared to me. I was at Ansbach, and went 
 to the cemetery, through the gate of which two men 
 were passing out, engaged in a heated colloquy. I let 
 them pass, and entered the cemetery. There I saw 
 Kaspar, with his arms stretched out, hurrying after 
 these gentlemen, as if he wished to detain them ; but 
 he could not pass the gate, and was obliged to stop. 
 Struck by this apparition, I asked, 'For God's sake, 
 Kaspar ! I thought you were dead ? ' on which he 
 sighed deeply, and pointed with his right hand to the 
 bleeding wound, from which the blood was dripping 
 down even to his feet. ' Then it is true ! ' I said ; 
 c they say you took your own life ; tell me, Kaspar, is 
 that true ? J Whereupon he gazed piteously up to 
 Heaven, and shook his head. On this I said, c Kaspar, 
 I am convinced of your innocence, and swear to you in 
 the name of God that I will defend your honour as 
 far as lies in my power ' ; at this assurance his counte- 
 nance brightened ; he folded his hands together three 
 times in supplication, and vanished. Since then I have 
 no peace "... 
 
 Then followed a second vision : 
 
 " I was transported into an Eden-like country, of 
 which no pen can describe the beauty. I beheld an 
 illimitable meadow, covered with the loveliest and 
 
APPENDIX 103 
 
 most balsam - breathing flowers. While I was still 
 gazing on all these marvels, Hauser came across the 
 meadow towards me, greeted me, and gave me his 
 hand. His countenance was transfigured, and his 
 dress as magnificent as any worn by a courtier on a 
 gala night at court ; on his breast were the decora- 
 tions of two great Orders. I cried in surprise, 
 c Hauser, what great change has come over you ? ' 
 Pointing to the Orders on his breast, he answered, 
 c This is what I should have attained to, had I lived.' 
 c Oh, forget all that ! ' I said ; c you are sufficiently 
 recompensed for all your sorrows in the world, now 
 that you are translated into this heavenly paradise.' 
 He now took me by the hand and led me, he still 
 walking in the meadow, and I on the sand -strewn 
 path, from the eminence into a most beautiful valley, 
 through which flowed a crystal-clear river ; here he 
 turned, took my other hand, and led me back by the 
 same way to a place strewn with such priceless and 
 dazzling precious stones that my eyes were quite 
 blinded, and I cried in delight, c This is no earthly 
 treasure ! J And while I was still rapt in the con- 
 templation of this splendour and beauty, he said 
 warningly, c Be steadfast, and not irresolute, and keep 
 your promise.' As I turned to look at him he had 
 vanished. My eyes sought him, and found him walk- 
 ing towards a hill. c That is the way to Ansbach ! ' 
 I cried ; c he goes to his grave, to visit his bones.' 
 At this outcry all disappeared." 
 
 I confess myself much " fetched " by the idea that 
 men may receive in paradise the decorations they have 
 failed to obtain on earth. 
 
104 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 TRIAL FOR LIBEL. 
 
 The case was tried on April 16, 1883, in the 
 Schaffen Court at Ratisbon, before Oberlandgerichts 
 rath 1 von Ammon. 
 
 The plaintiff, Dr. Julius Meyer, was represented 
 by the advocate Hanle. 
 
 The defendant, Von Coppenrath (the publisher), 
 by the advocate Adlmann. 
 
 The defence set up was that Von Coppenrath had 
 accepted the book, in good faith, from a friend and 
 correspondent of Professor Daumer's, who had inspired 
 him with the most perfect confidence. No vindication 
 was even attempted ; for any intention of upholding 
 the truth of the statements it contained was formally 
 and expressly disclaimed ; and Von Coppenrath 
 declared he had never seen Dr. Meyer's book till a 
 fortnight before the trial. 
 
 The verdict I have already given. 
 
 EXAMINATION of President Karl Schmausz 
 of Nuremberg. 
 
 Hanle. Are you acquainted with the Acts 2 now 
 preserved in the archives of Ansbach, as well as those 
 at Nuremberg, relating to the violent death of the 
 foundling Kaspar Hauser ? 
 
 Schmausz. Yes, I read them if not word for word 
 
 1 In mercy to the English reader, I have omitted some of this gentle- 
 man's titles. 
 
 2 Official documents are so called in Germany. 
 
APPENDIX 105 
 
 in the year 1868 or 1869 ; they were then kept in 
 the Court Registry Office, and, as I had often talked 
 over the case with the late Dr. Meyer, I took an 
 interest in it : all the more that, being a native of 
 Ansbach, I had heard a great deal about it already. 
 
 Hanle. Did these Acts give you the impression 
 that the investigation had been careless, superficial, or 
 incomplete ? 
 
 Schmausz. No investigation was ever conducted 
 with greater care than this. I would only observe 
 that, as regards the Nuremberg Acts, they are not 
 free from bias. The object then intended and kept 
 in view was to prove that Kaspar Hauser was of noble 
 origin ; and it was from this standpoint that the 
 inquiry was carried on. 
 
 Hanle. Do Dr. Julius Meyer's Authentic Communica- 
 tions respecting Kaspar Hauser (the book mentioned in 
 p. 82) correspond with the contents of these Acts ? 
 
 Schmausz. Yes, as far as my memory serves me. 
 My decided impression is that they gave all the salient 
 points of the case. I am quite positive that nothing 
 really essential was left out. These Authentic Com- 
 munications appeared in the year 1872, and led to great 
 attacks on Dr. Meyer. He asked me to bear witness 
 that they contained all the essential points of the case. 
 I gave him this testimony, and my letter was after- 
 wards reprinted in the Allgemeine Zeitung. 
 
 Hanle. Does it appear from these Acts that the 
 late Dr. Meyer was suspected of knowledge or com- 
 plicity in any crime committed against Kaspar Hauser ? 
 
 Schmausz. As far as I know, there is no trace of 
 this in the Acts ; and I am convinced that in the year 
 
io6 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 1834, when the investigation as to murder was proceed- 
 ing, there was no idea of any suspicion of the kind. 
 As far as I remember, Dr. Meyer was then held to be 
 an unimpeachable authority. He was of a frank and 
 open character ; a man of undoubted and unquestioned 
 integrity and uprightness. No one in Ansbach sus- 
 pected him of a base or criminal action. And he was 
 one of the best-known persons there. 
 
 Hanle. Was the book published by his sons intended 
 to remove any suspicion from their father at the cost of 
 Kaspar Hauser ? 
 
 Schmausz. I think not ; the origin of this work will 
 prove it. 
 
 It may have been in the summer of 1858 that I 
 met the plaintiff's father at an evening party. The 
 conversation turned on Kaspar Hauser, who has 
 always been a " curiosity " ; and Dr. Meyer was thus 
 involuntarily led into telling me, and one or two other 
 gentlemen present, a great deal about what had occurred 
 during the two years that Kaspar lived in his house as 
 his pupil. 
 
 I may say, that though till then I had formed no 
 very definite opinion regarding Kaspar Hauser, Dr. 
 Meyer, on that evening, in the course of a conversation 
 that lasted for two hours, entirely convinced me of the 
 correctness of his point of view. Since then, I have 
 held the decided opinion that the popular version of 
 Kaspar Hauser's life, especially as given by President 
 von Feuerbach, is founded on a delusion ; and that 
 Kaspar Hauser, either at his first appearance or later 
 on, inundated the world with lies and fictions about 
 himself. Every one may be mistaken, Dr. Meyer as 
 
APPENDIX 107 
 
 well as myself, but I can say with perfect sincerity that 
 he entirely convinced me. Then he told us he had 
 kept notes (at that time about twenty-five years old) 
 about Kaspar Hauser, and thought of publishing them. 
 I told him he was quite right, as the case had grown 
 into a sort of historical problem, and it would be a 
 good thing to have it cleared up. 
 
 The bookseller Seybold in Ansbach soon after 
 announced the forthcoming publication of a Life of 
 Kaspar Hauser^ by Dr. Meyer. But this project fell 
 through ; and meanwhile years rolled on. Dr. Meyer 
 never published his book, and died in 1868. 
 
 Since then I have often spoken to his son about it, 
 and urged him to undertake it as a sort of legacy from 
 his father, and to clear up the story before the world. 
 But I can safely say that neither then, nor when 
 speaking to his father on the subject, had I the 
 slightest idea of any suspicion that this work was in- 
 tended to avert. Neither I nor any one else ever 
 thought of such a thing. 
 
 The Judge. Did you think him capable of an action 
 similar to that imputed to him in Coppenrath's 
 publication ? 
 
 Schmausz. Not in the remotest degree. 
 
 Hanle. Did the Acts give you the impression that 
 Lord Stanhope was " the soul and motive-power of all 
 the plots against Kaspar Hauser " ? 
 
 Schmausz. No impression of the kind. The Acts 
 show the exact reverse, though they do not contain 
 much about him. But when one studies the case, one 
 is lost in amazement at the raving lunacy that would 
 make Lord Stanhope out to be a murderer. Lord 
 
io8 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Stanhope was an Englishman, and, like all Englishmen, 
 came to Germany on the look-out for curiosities : and 
 just as such another Englishman might nowadays 
 walk into Pickert's curiosity -shop in Nuremberg, 
 Lord Stanhope went after Kaspar Hauser. That was 
 the probable reason of their being brought together. 
 As time went on for Lord Stanhope was a noble- 
 hearted and benevolent man he grew fond of him, 
 and enacted the part of a father towards him ; but 
 that he was a murderer is perfectly incredible. 
 
 The "Judge. That is proved by the letter Kaspar 
 Hauser received from him on the day of his wound. 
 
 Schmausz. Yes : that letter was written by Stanhope 
 at Vienna, before his departure for Munich, to Kaspar 
 Hauser, then already wounded, at Ansbach, evidently 
 in the best possible intention ; and I cannot conceive 
 how any one could wander so far afield in the realms 
 of imagination as to describe Lord Stanhope as a 
 murderer. It is a deplorable hallucination. 
 
 The Judge. It had been already stated in the Paris 
 pamphlet. 
 
 Hanle. And by the Albersdorf. 
 
 The Judge. Kaspar was not heir to a throne ? 
 
 Schmausz. I may be permitted to remark, that as 
 far as I remember, I never spoke about the Baden 
 Princedom to Dr. Meyer, and I do not think that I 
 mentioned it to his son in 1868 or 1869. In point of 
 fact, there is not a single thread of evidence that 
 connects Ansbach with Karlsruhe. Even supposing 
 that a prince of Baden had been set aside an 
 assumption long since disproved by Mittelstadt it 
 would not follow that a problematical individual who 
 
APPENDIX 109 
 
 turns up at Nuremberg eighteen years afterwards 
 must be that prince. 
 
 The yudge. The family likeness would have shown it. 
 
 Hdnle. I have studied this question a good deal, 
 and if all the assertions that have been made are 
 correct, the princes of the elder line of Zaehringen 
 must all have been exactly alike ; for at one time 
 Kaspar is so strikingly like one prince that he might 
 be mistaken for him : then equally like another prince : 
 and finally like a third. 
 
 Schmausz. Feuerbach also discovered in him a 
 likeness to the Canon Guttenberg. 
 
 Hdnle (quoting Feuerbach). cc Hauser is, so to 
 speak, a canon en miniature" 
 
 Do you know whether, as stated in Coppenrath's 
 publication, the experts examined before the Commis- 
 sion " gave incontrovertible testimony that the wound 
 could not possibly have been self-inflicted " ? 
 
 Schmausz. As regards that, I only remember it is 
 stated in the Acts, that, of the two experts, the first, 
 Dr. Horlacher, held an unfavourable opinion of Kas- 
 par's statement, and the second, Dr. Albert, a more 
 favourable one. Otherwise I remember nothing of 
 their report. 
 
 Hdnle. One question more Are you acquainted 
 with Triesdorf, and is there a country house near there 
 named Schloss Falkenhaus ? 1 
 
 Schmausz. I know Triesdorf very well indeed. 
 The house is called in the anonymous publication 
 
 1 This is in allusion to another of the random statements contained in 
 the book. The place of Kaspar Hauser's incarceration was discovered to 
 be Falkenhaus, a shooting lodge secluded in the depths of a Royal forest, 
 and far removed from all human habitation. 
 
no KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Falkenhaus by Triesdorf. That is an incorrect de- 
 scription. Triesdorf is a Royal park, about an hour 
 and a half's drive in circuit, and enclosed by a brick 
 wall. Within this are a number of dwelling-houses, 
 forming a kind of village little villas, public-houses, 
 etc. In the midst of these stands Falkenhaus, no 
 more isolated than the house we are in now, and sur- 
 rounded by gardens and shrubberies. 
 
 Hank. Was there a garrison at that time in the place ? 
 
 Schmausz. I don't doubt that there was a garrison 
 then, and am pretty sure there was once from the year 
 1792 a Prussian garrison. During the thirty years 
 over which my recollections extend, there has always 
 been a garrison at Triesdorf. I have no doubt there 
 was one previously, but I cannot speak of my own 
 knowledge. 
 
 Hdnle. Is Falkenhaus on the high road ? 
 
 Schmausz. A broad carriage road passes through 
 Triesdorf and leads to Weidenbach, only about a rifle- 
 shot distant. 
 
 The Judge. Is the Unschlittsplatz in Nuremberg 
 near the gate by which you enter in coming from 
 Neumarkt ? 
 
 Schmausz. No. From Neumarkt you enter by the 
 Frauenthor. From there to the Unschlittsplatz there is 
 a greater distance perhaps a quarter of an hour's drive. 
 
 The Judge. It is supposed that Hauser came from 
 Neumarkt. He spoke Low Bavarian. 
 
 Hdnle. His first word was "Bua " (lad). 
 
 Schmausz. He never learnt that at Triesdorf, nor 
 at Nuremberg either. 
 
 Adlmann. May I ask whether you read the Acts, 
 
APPENDIX in 
 
 or merely looked them over ? How far do they corre- 
 spond with the Authentic Communications ? 
 
 Schmausz. I read them. I am a practical "Kri- 
 minalist," * and have been all my life engaged in read- 
 ing Acts. I wished to inform myself regarding this 
 case, as I took an interest in it. I naturally did not 
 read these gigantic masses of evidence through from 
 beginning to end, but I read every Act I considered 
 of importance, and these Communications therefore 
 contained nothing that was new to me. Nor have I 
 discovered in them either changes or omissions. When 
 the book first appeared, I said to Dr. Meyer, " I only 
 wish you had published the Acts in full, word for 
 word." "But," Meyer objected, "who would then 
 publish or buy the book ? " I said at the time, if they 
 are not published word for word, it will be alleged that 
 something or other has been suppressed. 
 
 Hanle. They found an easier way than that, for 
 the Acts are said to have disappeared at Vienna. 
 
 Adlmann. Have not the Acts, or some part of them, 
 really disappeared ? 
 
 Schmausz. The magisterial Acts in Nuremberg 
 have disappeared. But it is perfectly clear, from 
 Feuerbach's book, that these Acts militated against 
 the view he took of Kaspar Hauser. Feuerbach him- 
 self says they contain a number of anachronisms. 
 Stanhope mentions a noteworthy expression of his 
 regarding them. Feuerbach once said to him, " Those 
 Acts ought to be burned ! When one studies those 
 Acts one begins to think that Kaspar Hauser was a 
 liar ! " 
 
 1 That is, versed in criminal law. 
 
112 KASPAR HAUSER 
 
 Adlmann. Are you aware that Dr. Heidenreich 
 was the first doctor who examined Kaspar Hauser 
 after he had received his first wound ? 
 
 Schmausz. I only know it as a fact from having 
 read it either in the Acts or the Communications. 
 
 Adlmann. And you are likewise aware that Dr. 
 Heidenreich, who made this examination, held that 
 the theory of suicide was inadmissible ? 
 
 Schmausz. I have Heidenreich's finding here. It 
 tells us that he, as well as Dr. Albert, held that 
 opinion, but he expressly adds, and that in the plainest 
 possible words even Daumer's book admits this 
 that the possibility of a suicide could not be kept out 
 of view. 
 
 Here follows a long account of the finding of a 
 stiletto in the Hofgarten (see p. 57), by a forester 
 named Pausch, etc. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. 
 
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