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Kaspar Hauser Also by Martin Kitchen Kaspar Hauser Also by Martin Kitchen THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF GERMANY THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND COMMONWEALTH: A Short History NAZI GERMANY AT WAR EMPIRE AND AFTER: A Short History of the British Empire and the Commonwealth A WORLD IN FLAMES: A Concise History of the Second World War WAR IN EUROPE AND ASIA EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (with Lawrence Aronsen) BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS THE SOVIET UNION, 1939–1945 GERMANY IN THE AGE OF TOTAL WAR (with Volker R. Berghahn) THE COMING OF AUSTRIAN FASCISM THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GERMANY, 1815–1914 FASCISM THE SILENT DICTATORSHIP: The Politics of the German High Command, 1916–1918 A MILITARY HISTORY OF GERMANY: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day THE GERMAN OFFICER CORPS, 1890–1914 Kaspar Hauser Europe’s Child Martin Kitchen Professor of History Simon Fraser University Canada © Martin Kitchen 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-96214-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-349-42731-4 ISBN 978-1-4039-1958-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403919588 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kitchen, Martin. Kaspar Hauser : Europe’s child / Martin Kitchen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-42731-4 1. Hauser, Kaspar, 1812–1833. 2. Baden (Germany)—Kings and rulers—Succession. 3. Baden (Germany)—Kings and rulers—Biography. 4. Abused children—Germany—Biography. I. Title. CT1098.H4 K58 2001 943’.073’092—dc21 [B] 2001021202 10987654321 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 To Julian and to the Memory of Julien Favre Contents Family Tree viii Introduction ix 1Feral Man 1 2 Kaspar Hauser Appears in Nuremberg 22 3 Homoeopathic Experiments 36 4The Search For Identity 51 5 Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach and ‘Crimes Against the Soul’ 66 6 Philip Henry, Lord Stanhope 81 7 Kaspar Hauser in Ansbach 98 8 The Death of Kaspar Hauser 112 9 Kaspar Hauser and the Grand Duchy of Baden 133 10 Who Was Kaspar Hauser? 156 11 Literary Representations of Kaspar Hauser 175 12 Conclusion 189 Notes 195 Bibliography 214 Index 226 vii viii Baden. Zähringen Family Tree Carl Friedrich 1728–1811 1803 Duke 1806 Grand Duke = I) Caroline Luise von Hessen-Darmstadt 1723–83 = 2) Luise Geyer v. Geyersberg (Countess Hochberg) 1768–1820 1 1122 22 Karl Ludwig Friedrich Ludwig I Leopold Amalie Wilhelm Maximilian 1755 –1801 = Amalie von ssen-Darmstadt 1754–1832 Karoline Luise Friederike Marie Karl Wilhelmine 1786–1818 1811 Grand Duke = Stephanie Beauharnais 1789–1860 Luise Son Josephine Alexander Marie 29.9.1812– 16.10.1812 (This is the son whom some claim was Kaspar Hauser †1833) Introduction Kaspar Hauser was a foundling of about 16 years of age who appeared in Nuremberg in 1828. He was the object of considerable public curiosity and speculation and aroused the compassion of the city fathers. He claimed to have been confined in a dark cellar for years on end and to have been fed on a diet of bread and water. He arrived in the city barely able to speak and walked with great difficulty. Here was a blank screen on which could be projected the fantasies of those with whom he came into close contact. Here was another of those wild children who people ancient mythology and who had appeared infrequently in Europe since the fourteenth century and had excited philosophers and medical men to speculate on the nature of man. How was a human being to be defined? How is speech acquired? Is man by nature good or evil? Are there any innate ideas? Do children have rights? Is civilization harmful or beneficial? By 1828 some of these questions had lost their urgency, but faced with a youth who appeared to have grown up apart from human soci- ety there were many who wished to test their pedagogical and medical theories on such a promising subject. Much of the speculation about Kaspar Hauser was conditioned by the reaction of earlier intellectuals to previous cases of feral man. Nuremberg’s intellectual elite was fully conversant with the writing of the likes of Montaigne, Rousseau and Voltaire and were eager to make their contribution to a debate to which so many distinguished writers had contributed. In our own day such cases are still of great interest, although the emphasis is now no longer on speculation about the nature of man but rather on the psychological effects of child abuse and the question of language acquisition. Few ask whether children have an innate conception of God, but the question still is raised whether children have an innate generative grammar. These questions are addressed in the first chapter which gives the intel- lectual setting to Kaspar Hauser’s reception in Nuremberg on Whit Monday 1828. ix x Kaspar Hauser The case of Kaspar Hauser was of particular interest to specialists in a number of different disciplines and thus provides us with fascinating insights into the climate of the times. This was the heyday of homoeopa- thy and Mesmerism, and ‘animal magnetism’ still had its devotees. Kas- par Hauser was put in the hands of a man who was fascinated by such forms of alternative medicine and he was placed in the care of homoeo- pathic doctors who conducted a series of experiments on their unfortu- nate patient. Kaspar Hauser appeared to be remarkably sensitive to homoeopathic medicines and was considered to have exceptional animal magnetism, particularly in his early days in Nuremberg. The doctors’ reports thus provide interesting insights into these unorthodox but popular medical practices. Kaspar Hauser claimed to have been kept in solitary confinement in a small, dark cellar for as long as he could remember. Under existing Bavarian law his gaolers were not necessarily liable for prosecution because it had to be shown that there were significant long-term harmful effects on the victim before a case could be made for abuse. Just as there had to be a corpse before anyone could be charged with murder so there had to be clear indication of abuse before charges could be laid. Kaspar Hauser appeared to be in good health, was not insane and insisted that he had been well treated, and thus no indictable crime had been committed. Under the Bavarian criminal code his gaolers could be charged with illegal confinement under articles 192 to 195 and with abandonment under article 174 but not for the lasting psychological damage they had inflicted on their victim. Anselm von Feuerbach, one of Germany’s foremost jurists and the principal author of Bavaria’s progressive crimi- nal code, was fascinated by the case and took a kindly interest in Kaspar Hauser’s welfare. In his remarkable pamphlet Kaspar Hauser: An Example of a Crime Against the Soul he argued that a dastardly crime had been committed against his soul, a crime that was far more serious in his view than either illegal confinement or abandonment. The debates between lawyers over child abuse and mental cruelty are indicative of current legal opinion on important issues that were only just beginning to be addressed. When Kaspar Hauser arrived in Nuremberg he was barely able to talk and could only write the alphabet and his name. His education was first entrusted to a schoolmaster on sick leave who espoused progressive views on education that were tinged with the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When it was felt that he was no longer safe in Nuremberg he was moved to near-by Ansbach where he was entrusted to a pedagogue with a radically different approach. He believed in strict discipline and Introduction xi learning by rote. These two opposing views on education illustrate how a change was taking place in Germany from the flexible and humanistic to the rigid and authoritarian. Inevitably questions were soon asked about Kaspar Hauser’s origins. He had become an overnight celebrity in Nuremberg. A steady stream of visitors came to his cell. Sensation seekers mixed with those who wished him well. Later, on his walks around the town he was surrounded by the curious. He was a local conversation piece, but soon his fame spread far and wide until he was christened ‘Europe’s Child’. But who was this strange youth? Whence did he come? Who were his cruel gaolers? Most people were familiar with the fund of stories of foundlings, mys- terious prisoners, and the intriguing drama of the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’.
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