Kaspar Hauser has been until now buried alive in a dungeon, isolated from the whole world, and left entirely to himself. Suddenly he was thrown into the world among people and found himself assaulted on all sides by a vast multiplicity of impressions which affected him not singly but all at once, impressions of the most diverse kind, fresh air, light, objects that surrounded him, all of which were new to him. Then the growing sense of an inner self, his aroused hunger for learning and for knowledge, his altered way of life, all of these impressions must necessarily have violently shaken him. Finally, because of his very sensitive nervous system, they must prove damaging to his health. When I saw him again, I found him completely changed. He was sad, very discouraged, and worn out. The excitability of his nerves had abnormally increased. His facial muscles were convulsing constantly. His hands shook so much that he could scarcely hold anything. His eyes were inflamed, could not bear the light, and hurt him considerably whenever he tried to read or observe an object more closely. His hearing was so sensitive that any loud talking caused him severe pain to such an extent that he could no longer even listen to the music he loved so passionately. He lacked the desire to eat, had infrequent, incomplete, and difficult bowel movements, complained about pains in his abdomen, and felt real discomfort. I was more than a little worried about his condition because it was not possible to deal with it through medicine, partly because he had an insurmountable disgust for everything except water and bread, and partly because even if he could have been convinced to take some medication, it was to be feared that even the most mild remedy could have too severe an effect upon him in the highly excited state of his nerves, etc.
On July 18, Kaspar Hauser was liberated from his room in the tower and handed over to the high-school teacher Daumer for board and education. Daumer was a man outstanding in both heart and mind, who had already taken the fatherly responsibility of instructing and molding Kaspar. Indeed, in the family of this man, in his dignified mother and sister, Kaspar Hauser found some compensation for what nature had given and human evil had taken away.
Some conception of the huge number of curious people to whom Kaspar Hauser was formerly exposed can be formed from the single circumstance that the mayor’s office in Nuremberg found itself obliged, as soon as Kaspar was handed over to Professor Daumer, to publish the following public announcement in the newspapers on July 19 [1828]:
The homeless Kaspar Hauser has been committed by the office of the city of Nuremberg to the care of a teacher who is particularly well qualified to promote the development of his mental and physical powers. So that they may proceed in their work without disturbance, so that Kaspar Hauser may enjoy and continue to enjoy the rest he so badly needs in every respect, the educator has been directed to permit no more visits to Hauser. The general public is therefore hereby put on notice to stay away from him and thereby avoid the humiliation of being sent away, if they intrude, through the intervention of the police.46
Instead of the pile of straw he had been given in the tower as a mattress, Kaspar Hauser was for the first time given a proper bed at Professor Daumer’s house, which pleased him enormously. He would often state that the bed was the only nice thing that happened to him in this world, that everything else was just awful. Only since he slept in the bed did he begin to dream. However, at first he did not recognize them as dreams. When he awoke he told his teacher about them as if they were real events. Only later was he able to distinguish between dreaming and waking.47
One of the most difficult tasks was to get him used to normal food, which only succeeded slowly and with great effort and care.48
At first he consented to watered-down soup, which he seemed to like more as the days passed. Each day he imagined that it was better prepared, at times asking why it could not have been made so well from the start. He also liked anything made of flour or leguminous plants, and whatever resembled bread. When a few drops of meat broth were mixed into his water soup, he was able to eat a few small pieces of overcooked meat. As these offerings increased, little by little he became gradually accustomed to eating dishes with meat.
In the notes he put together on Kaspar Hauser, Professor Daumer makes the following remarks: “After Kaspar Hauser finally learned to eat enough meat, his intellectual alertness diminished. His eyes lost their shine and expression, his lively drive for activity slackened, and the intensity of his being turned into a need for distraction and finally indifference. His ability to comprehend also lessened significantly.”49 The possibility that all this was not the direct result of eating meat, but a consequence of the fact that his almost painful overexcitation had turned into a kind of dullness, cannot be decided, and rightly so. On the other hand, it can be assumed more reliably that eating cooked foods and various meat dishes must have affected his growth significantly. In just a few weeks in Daumer’s house he grew more than two inches taller.
Since his inflamed eyes and the headache that resulted from any effort to use his physical senses made reading, writing, and drawing impossible, Mr. Daumer occupied him with things to do with pasteboard, in which he achieved no small measure of skill. He also taught him chess, which he learned quickly and practiced with delight. Moreover he was given easy garden work to do and was introduced to the many creations, the manifold appearances, and the wonders of nature. No day passed without his having been taught an untold number of new things, acquainting him with objects that made him disconcerted, admiring, or astonished.
Not a little effort and frequent correction was required to make him understand and become familiar with the distinction between organic and inorganic, something alive and something dead, as well as a voluntary movement and one occasioned from the outside. Many things that appeared to be men or animals—whether cut in stone, carved in wood, or painted—he still took to have a soul, endowed with all the qualities he perceived in himself or in other living creatures.
It seemed very strange to him that the horses, unicorns, ostriches, etc., which were chiseled in stone or painted on the walls of the houses of the city stayed in one place and did not run away. He expressed his indignation with one statue in the garden of his house, saying it looked so dirty, why didn’t it wash itself? When he saw for the first time the large crucifix by Veit Stoss on the outside of the Saint Sebaldus Church, the sight sent him into outrage and despair. He implored that somebody take down the tortured man hanging there. Although somebody tried to explain to him that this was not a real person, but only an image and did not feel anything, he was not satisfied for the longest time. He took every movement he perceived in any object to be intentional, and the object displaying it alive. A sheet of paper that the wind carried off had run away from the table. If a baby carriage rolled down a hill, it had decided to take the trip for its own pleasure. For him a tree manifested life in that it moved its branches and leaves, and spoke when the wind whispered through its leaves. He was indignant with a boy who struck a tree trunk with a stick, saying he was hurting the tree. To judge from what he would say, the balls in a bowling alley rolled on their own, hurt the other balls, and finally stood still when they were tired of running. For some time Professor Daumer attempted in vain to convince him that the balls did not move voluntarily. He only succeeded when he got Kaspar to form his bread into a ball and roll it back and forth in front of himself. He was only able to understand that a humming top he had kept dancing for a while did not spin on its own when his arm was sore from pulling the string so many times. This made him conscious of the fact that it was his own physical power that had set the top spinning each time.
For the longest time he ascribed the very same qualities to animals that he did to people, and seemed only able to distinguish one from another by their different appearances. He was annoyed at the fact that the cat ate only with her mouth, without using her hands. He wanted to teach her to eat with her paws, tried to make her walk standing up, spoke to her as if she were an equal, and displayed indignation that she did not pay any attention to him and did not
want to learn anything. On the other hand he greatly praised the obedience of a certain dog. When he first saw a gray cat, he asked why she did not wash herself so that she could become white. When he saw oxen resting on the pavement of the street, he asked why they did not go home and lie down there. It disgusted him greatly that horses, oxen, etc., dirtied the street and did not go to the outhouse like him. If he were told that something he asked an animal to do was beyond its capacity, he had a ready reply: They should just learn to do it, just as he too had learned a great deal after all, and still had much to learn.
At first he had even less concept of the origin and growth of objects in nature. He always spoke as if someone had stuck all the trees in the earth, human hands had made all the leaves, flowers, and blossoms and hung them on the trees. He first got some conception of the origin of plants when his teacher insisted that he plant some beans in a flowerpot with his own hands. He did so and saw them germinate and make leaves almost as he watched. He regularly asked about almost every new natural object that struck his attention: Who made that thing?
He had almost no sense of the beauty of nature. Nature seemed to mean something to him only when it made him curious and gave rise to the question: Who made this or that thing? The first time he saw a rainbow, he did, it is true, display pleasure for a few moments but shortly thereafter turned away from what he had seen. Asking who had made it seemed to touch his heart far more than its magnificent appearance.
One sight was a strange exception, and became a great and unforgettable occasion in his ever-growing mental life. It was in the month of August (1829), that his teacher showed him for the first time the star-studded sky on a clear, beautiful summer evening. His astonishment and rapture beggar any possible description. He could not get enough of looking at it, kept coming back to this view, kept looking in this way at the different constellations of stars and remarked on the particularly bright stars with their different colors. “That,” he cried, “that is really the most beautiful thing I have seen in this world. But who put the many beautiful lights up there? Who lights them, and who puts them out again?” When he was told that just like the sun, which he already knew about, they always shine, but are not always visible, he asked all over again who put them up there, so they are always burning? At last he lapsed into a deep and genuine meditation, unmoving, his head bent, his eyes fixed. When he came back to himself, his rapture had turned to melancholy. Trembling, he sat down in a chair and asked: “Why did that bad man keep me locked up all the time and never showed me any of these beautiful things? I never did anything bad.” At this point, he broke into uncontrollable sobbing difficult to still, and said that one should lock up the “man with whom I have always been” for a few days just for once, so that he would know how hard it is. Kaspar had never expressed any indignation toward that man before seeing this great heavenly spectacle, far less had he been willing to countenance any kind of punishment for him. Only weariness and sleepiness calmed him down. He went to sleep around eleven, something that had not happened before.
It would seem that only in Daumer’s family did he begin to reflect upon his fate, to realize more and more how he had been deprived and how much had been taken from him, and to actually feel the pain of this recognition for the first time. It was only here that the concepts of family, of relationships and friendship, of the human ties between parents, children, and siblings, were brought home to him. It was only here that the words “mother,” “sister,” “brother,” took on meaning for him, in that he saw how mothers, sisters, brothers, were bound together by mutual love, cared for one another, and lived to make each other happy. He wanted to know what, really, does one mean by “mother,” by “brother,” by “sister”? People attempted to satisfy him as much as possible with an appropriate answer. Soon thereafter he was found sitting in his chair, tears in his eyes, seemingly buried in thought. Asked what was wrong now, he answered, weeping: “I was thinking, why it is that I don’t have a mother, a brother and a sister; it would be so beautiful.”
Since his high degree of excitability at this time demanded complete rest from every mental effort, and since above all his weak body required exercise and strengthening, it seemed that along with other physical activities, horseback riding especially would be able to benefit his health, since he showed such particular eagerness for it. As with wooden horses formerly, living horses had become his favorite animal by far. Of all animals he considered the horse to be the most beautiful creature, and when he saw a rider playing with his horse, his heart swelled with the wish: “If only I too could have such a horse under me!” The riding master in Nuremberg, Mr. von Rumpler, was soon kind enough to gratify this deep longing: He accepted our Kaspar among his pupils. Kaspar took in all that the teacher showed and demonstrated to the scholars of riding, observing everything with the most intense attention. In the first few hours he had not only memorized the principal rules and elements of the art of riding, but mastered them in the first few attempts. In a few days he was already so far advanced that the other scholars, old and young alike, who had already had several months of instruction, were forced to recognize him as their master.
His bearing, his courage, his correct management of his horse amazed everybody; he felt confident of doing what no one but he and his teacher dared to do. Once when the riding master was breaking in a willful Turkish50 horse, the sight so little alarmed him that he asked permission to ride that very horse himself. After he had practiced for a certain amount of time, the riding school became too confining and he insisted on taking his horse riding in the open fields. It was here that he demonstrated, alongside his skill, an inexhaustible bodily endurance, toughness, and stamina that the most experienced rider could barely match. He preferred spirited and hard-trotting horses. He often rode for many hours without stopping, without becoming tired, without getting sore from riding, or without feeling any pain in either his thighs or in his seat. One afternoon he rode, almost the entire time at a full trot, from Nuremberg to the so-called Old Fort and back. This weakling, who would become so tired after a few outings in town that he had to go to bed a few hours earlier than usual in a state of exhaustion, came back home from that immense ride as fresh and strong as if he had only ridden at a walk from one gate of the city to the other. Every once in a while he joked about the lack of sensitivity in his seat: “If everything about me were as good as my behind, things would be very good for me.” It is certainly not improbable, as Professor Daumer assumed, that the many years of sitting on a hard floor was responsible for this insensitivity in his seat. From Hauser’s love of horses and his almost instinctual skill in horseback riding, one could just as easily draw the not entirely unacceptable conclusion that he may well have belonged to a nation of horsemen by birth. For it is not unknown that skills that can only be acquired originally through practice, when they are continued through many generations, can finally be transmitted as a habitual inclination or a particularly excellent predisposition. The talent that residents of the South Sea Islands show for swimming, the sharp-sightedness of the North American hunter nations, and so on, can serve as examples. A certain wily policeman51 was misled, as a result of Kaspar’s striking talent as a rider, to the conclusion that Kaspar is probably a young English rider who ran away from his gang to make fun of the good-natured Nuremberg citizens for his own advantage. Surely it would not be easy to find somebody eager to claim for its inventor the honor of this hypothesis.
Besides his unusual talent as a rider, what was particularly noticeable in Kaspar Hauser during his stay with Professor Daumer was the almost miraculous acuteness and intensity of all his senses.
With respect to sight, there was no such thing for him as twilight—no night, no darkness. One first became aware of this when it was noticed that at night he could stride ahead anywhere with the greatest confidence and that whenever he was in a dark place he would refuse any light offered him. It surprised him or made him laugh when he saw people—for example, when they came into t
heir houses at night or started to climb the stairs, trying to help themselves in dark places by stopping and groping their way. In fact he saw far better in twilight than in broad daylight. For example, he could read a house number after the sun set, which by day he would not even have been able to recognize from such a distance, at about 180 yards. On one dark, dusky evening, he drew his teacher’s attention to a fly caught in a spider’s web far off in the distance. At a distance of a good 60 yards, he could distinguish grapes from elderberries, elderberries from blueberries. According to careful testing, he could distinguish colors in the dead of night, even dark colors such as blue and green. If, at dusk, a normally sharp-sighted person could distinguish only three or four stars in the sky, he could already recognize the constellations, and knew the individual stars in them, and was able to distinguish them by size and particular coloration. From the Nuremberg Castle Tower he could count a series of windows in the castle at Marloffstein, and from its fortress the series of windows in a house beneath Rothenberg Fort. His eye was as sharp in distinguishing nearby objects as it was in penetrating the distance. When flowers were dissected, he noticed subtle distinctions and delicate particles that completely escaped the observation of others.
His hearing was hardly less sharp and far-reaching. When he went walking in a field, he could hear the footsteps of several hikers at a relatively great distance, and distinguished each footstep by its strength. Once he had had occasion to compare the sharpness of his hearing at that time with the even sharper one of a blind man, who was able to hear the quietest footstep of someone walking barefoot. On this occasion he said that his hearing earlier had been just as sharp, but from the time he began to eat meat, it had diminished significantly, so that he was no longer able to hear such subtle distinctions as the blind man could.
The Wild Child Page 13
