23 One ought not even later to have made the questionable attempt to cloak the purely private investigations in the apparent form of an official interrogation, which only gave the increasingly large police files an odd appearance.
24 This public declaration is the document that has served as the source of all the many brochures and fliers that have appeared up to now about Kaspar. [Translator’s note: The proclamation is translated in full in appendix 1].
25 [Translator’s note: See appendix 3 for a translation of Kaspar Hauser’s autobiography.]
26 He is still in the habit of using this expression to mean his abandonment in Nuremberg and the awakening of his mental life.
27 According to Kaspar’s more detailed account, he never, not even when he was sleeping, lay with his whole body stretched out, but rather, whether awake or asleep, sat with his back straight. This is completely confirmed by several facts: by the unmistakable traces that have remained on his body; by the shape, peculiar to him alone, of his knees and the hollow beneath his knees; and by the very odd way, peculiar to him, he had of sitting on the floor with both legs outstretched. It is probable that the way this lair was constructed and some particular contrivance made him take this position. He himself is unable to give any further information on this point.
28 This account allows us to assume that his water was mixed with opium. Later the assumption was completely confirmed in the following circumstances: When Kaspar had long been living with Professor Daumer, his doctor once tried to get him to drink a glass of water that contained one drop of opium. Barely had Kaspar taken a single swallow of this water than he said: “This water tastes awful. It tastes just like the water that I sometimes had to drink in my cage.”
29 From this and other circumstances it is clear that Kaspar was always treated with a certain primitive care during his imprisonment. This would then explain his devotion, which he retained for a long time, to the man “with whom he had always been.” Only very recently is this beginning to diminish, though not yet to the point where he would like to see him punished. He would only like to see those who ordered his imprisonment punished; but the man himself, he said, had never done anything bad to him.
30 As early as on the first morning after his appearance in Nuremberg, Kaspar proved before people’s very eyes that he had really had writing lessons, in fact regular elementary lessons. When the jailer Hiltel came to him in his prison that first morning, he gave him, either to keep him busy or to give him pleasure, two sheets of paper and a pencil. Kaspar hastily grabbed both of them, put the paper on the bench, sat himself down on the floor in front of it, and immediately began to write. He wrote continuously, without looking up or allowing himself to be disturbed by anything at all, until he had completely covered all four sides of the folio sheets with writing. These sheets of paper which are still to be found in the police files, don’t really look any different than if Kaspar had had in front of him a sample of the kind children use as a model during their first writing lessons, though it was clear that he was writing from memory. In fact these sheets contain rows of letters and syllables. Each row consists of repetitions of the same letter or the same syllable. At the end of the page there are even to be found all the letters of the alphabet, just as one usually finds them in a sampler for children, one right after the other, all put together in one line, and then on another line the Arabic numbers from 1 to 10, again completely in order. One side of the sheet repeats over and over the name “Kaspar Hauser.” On another the word reider (rider) is frequently found. But it is clear from the appearance of these sheets that Kaspar’s writing had never progressed beyond the most elementary stage.
31 It is clear and can be demonstrated from other circumstances that Kaspar could not, at that time, distinguish between a rising motion and a descending one, high from low, even in his own feelings, let alone was he capable of correctly indicating this difference in words. What Kaspar called a “hill” was most probably steps, as became clear from other comments he made. Kaspar thinks he can remember being scraped on his side as he was being carried.
32 [Translator’s note: André-Marie Jean-Jacques Dupin, 1783-1865, French lawyer and member of the French Academy.]
33 In his Reisen durch Deutschland (see the Göttingsche gelehrte Anzeige, July 1831, p. 1097).
34 In Calderón’s Life Is a Dream.
35 [Translator’s note: Feuerbach was the author of the Bavarian Criminal Code.]
36 See [Julius Friedrich Heinrich] Abegg, Untersuchungen aus dem Gebiete der Strafrechtswissenschaft, Part III.
37 Handbuch der Strafrechtswissenschaft, Part I, Paragraph 179ff.
38 [Translator’s note: This is Feuerbach’s first hint, apart from the quotation from Calderón that opens the book, that Kaspar Hauser’s imprisonment may have had a dynastic purpose. His use of the words “geheiligte Räume” (hallowed halls), suggesting palace rooms, was clearly intentional.]
39 [Translator’s note: Remember that Feuerbach wrote this in 1831. It is ironic in light of what happened: In 1833, when Kaspar Hauser was lying wounded and dying, both Meyer and Stanhope said he was only pretending. Even after he died of the wound, they both maintained their position.]
40 [Translator’s note: There is a passage on page 69 of Daumer’s unpublished diary that is relevant to this remark. Daumer writes that when Kaspar Hauser “saw monkeys doing all kinds of tricks, he was thrilled. But when he realized that they had to begin all over again to satisfy a new audience, he begged piteously to be led away. He said later that out of compassion he could no longer bear to watch, for he himself had experienced how disgusting it was to have to start all over again after what he had already told and demonstrated to curious onlookers a thousand times.”]
41 His saliva was so much like glue that when he removed the pictures, parts of them remained on the wall, and parts of the plaster stuck to the pictures.
42 Professor Daumer’s notes agree with this observation. [Translator’s note: Feuerbach could have inserted this note at many points in his book. Why he does so precisely here is not clear; he is correct however. For on page 5 of the unpublished Daumer diary there is the following note: “At first he did not understand ‘I’ and ‘you.’ He spoke of himself in the third person, like a child, and called himself Kaspar, which when speaking with him, one had to do as well if one wanted to be understood. The word ‘you’ he is supposed to have used as the proper name of the unknown man with whom he had earlier lived, calling him the ‘You.’”]
43 [Translator’s note: One can’t help wondering if Feuerbach’s quote is correct here. Is Kaspar Hauser referring to the few times the man taught him to read and write, or perhaps to the time he was beaten for making noise with his horse? Otherwise it is hard to see how the man taught him anything at all, and by what means.]
44 In his Philosophie de Newton (Oeuvres complètes [Gotha: 1786], vol. 31, pp. 118ff).
45 Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voyent (Londres: 1749), pp. 159-64. Moreover, Diderot wrote down Voltaire’s account word for word.
46 Nonetheless this public announcement did not entirely have the desired effect. Just as a stranger could not easily visit Nuremberg and not be taken on a visit to the grave of Saint Sebaldus, the paintings on glass in the Church of Saint Lawrence, [the statue of] the little boy herding the geese, so, too, now nobody could feel he had properly visited Nuremberg if he did not at least get to see the mysterious adopted child of this city. From the time Kaspar arrived in Nuremberg to the time of my writing, several hundred people of almost every European nation, from all social ranks, scholars, artists, statesmen, officials of every kind, high and the highest, have seen and spoken with him.
47 Psychologists, especially our brilliant Schubert, should not ignore these circumstances, and should recognize in them a striking sign of the state of Kaspar’s mind at the time.
48 Until the time he was able to eat cooked food, he was constantly thirsty, and drank daily from five to six quarts o
f cold water. He is still a great drinker of water, so much so that our famous water doctor, Professor Oertel, could hold him up to everybody as a model.
49 [Translator’s note: This passage is not among the pages of Daumer’s manuscript that I found in Stuttgart. Where, then, does it come from? The idea is of course found in many places in Daumer, including my manuscript, but not word for word.]
50 [Translator’s note: There is an error here. This passage comes from the manuscript Daumer sent Feuerbach. But what Daumer actually said was not a “Turkish” horse, but a “tütckisches” horse, a stubborn, or willful, horse. See p. 175.]
51 Mr. Merker of Berlin. [Translator’s note: See the Introduction, p. 51.]
52 [Translator’s note: He was a mathematics teacher in the Gymnasium in Nuremberg who took it upon himself to question Kaspar Hauser about his early life, when he was living in Daumer’s house. His manuscript was included in Daumer’s 1873 book and is also reproduced in Pies, Augenzeugenberichte, pp. 448-55. See also Pies’s note on p. 513.]
53 [Translator’s note: In the diary by Daumer that I found in Stuttgart, on page 42 is the sentence: “At the beginning of September he began to write down the story of his past fate.” Pies notes in the margin: “Important!” See also the Introduction, p. 10.]
54 This refers to an incident when Kaspar was very frightened by the chimney sweep, who was sweeping in the kitchen.
55 [Translator’s note: “Nicht nach Erlangen in Wallfisch.” Erlangen is a city not far from Nuremberg. Could Wallfisch be the name of a restaurant or hotel there? or is it a family name? Wal in German means a whale.]
56 [Translator’s note: It is not clear to me why Feuerbach would omit this description. When Kaspar Hauser was deposed on October 20, 1829, he provided such a description as best he could. It is printed in Pies, Augenzeugenberichte, pp. 471ff. It is interesting that when asked about the man’s voice, Kaspar said: “The voice in which he said to me that you must die before you leave the city of Nuremberg, was quiet, but nonetheless I was able to recognize in this quiet voice the man who brought me here to Nuremberg and also the same person who had spoken to me there (in the dungeon) with a quiet or distorted voice.”]
57 This is what he always called his foster mother, the mother of Professor Daumer.
58 Every step he reports having made turned out to be true through traces of blood.
59 Traces of blood on the closet could be seen for several days later.
60 How exactly, honestly, and true to nature does Kaspar relate the effects of fear and anxiety. There is no doubt that he did not crawl into the cellar to hide through an already open door. There can be no doubt that he had to have lifted this door on his own, and he did so. But it is just as little open to doubt that Kaspar, the weakling, would have been completely incapable, under any other circumstances, and at any other time, of the Herculean effort needed to lift the cellar trap door.
61 [Translator’s note: I do not know what Feuerbach is referring to here. Does he mean that he has found the weapon, or that he knows something about the identity of the perpetrator?]
62 [Translator’s note: Full details with transcriptions of the depositions can be found in Pies’s Dokumentation, chap. 7, “Das Nürnberger Attentat,” pp. 57-77.]
63 [Translator’s note: In French medieval tales, in Chaucer and Spenser, and in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon is the king of the fairies.]
64 [Translator’s note: This is without any doubt a reference to Kaspar’s royal birth as the son of the Grand Duke Karl of Baden and Stéphanie. That Feuerbach believed this is clear from the manuscript, where this page contains a genealogical study showing that Feuerbach had already solved the mystery. It is reproduced in Mayer and Tradowsky, Kaspar Hauser, p. 409. See my Introduction, p. 29.]
65 [Translator’s note: Doch woo verübt’ die schwarze Mitternacht Wird endlich, wenn es tagt, an’s Sonnenlicht gebracht. This sounds like a quote but I have not been able to trace it.]
66 Except for riding, which he still passionately loves. In skill and elegance in riding, as well as in his way of mounting and dismounting, he can hold his own with the most talented riding master. In this respect Kaspar is an object of admiration to several of our best officers.
67 Especially since the attempt on his life.
68 He was finally released from this situation, even as I write this booklet, through the generosity of the honorable Lord Stanhope, who has formally taken him as his foster son. He is living now in Ansbach, where he has been handed over to a competent grade-school teacher, and at the same time living in his house. Later on, accompanied by security, he will follow his beloved foster father to England. [Translator’s note: There was nothing competent about his teacher, Meyer, and Stanhope meant Kaspar Hauser nothing good. Seethe Introduction, pp. 18-26.]
69 [Translator’s note: Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, 1802-69, was a Protestant theologian.]
70 He [Kasper] has [recently been] instructed in the religion to which the majority of the inhabitants of Nuremberg, Lutheran Protestants, belong.
APPENDICES
Appendix 1
Translation of Mayor Binder’s Proclamation
Proclamation
With ref. to a young man raised in unlawful captivity, completely neglected, and then abandoned. 2138 F. 1-4.
From the municipal authorities of the royal Bavarian city of Nuremberg, a case is hereby brought to general public attention that is so unprecedented and in its way scandalous that it is bound to engage the attention of all official institutions, of the police, the judiciary, civil courts, military authorities, but also the empathy of all sensitive people of our fatherland.
On the second day of the Pentecostal holiday, May 26, 1828, in the afternoon between four and five, a young man, unaccompanied, who, to judge by his appearance, was between sixteen and eighteen years old, approached a citizen of this city at the beginning of the Kreuzgasse, near the so-called Unschlittplatz, and asked him where the street called New Tower was. The citizen offered to show the young man the way and accompanied him. On the way the young man produced a sealed letter from his pocket with the following address: To the Honorable Captain of the Cavalry of the Fourth Squadron of the Sixth Regiment of the Light Cavalry in Nuremberg. Whereupon the citizen decided to take him to the Guard Tower in front of the New Gate to inquire there about the matter. On the way the citizen attempted to strike up a conversation with him, but was soon convinced that such would not be possible for lack of understanding. When he reached the New Gate, upon producing the aforementioned letter, the young man was directed toward a nearby house in which lived the addressee, the captain of the cavairy. In his absence his servant tried his best to question the young man, but could not obtain a satisfactory response. Meanwhile the captain of the cavalry had returned and read the letter. He too tried in vain to determine the strange and enigmatic content of the letter by questioning the young man, and so handed the letter and the young man over to the municipal authorities that very evening.
What the letter and the attachments contained is reproduced here in an exact facsimile, numbered one, submitted to the royal court for all the districts of the Upper and Lower Donau [Danube], the Regen and the Isar.
An officer from the municipal authority conducted a first deposition with him, but short, incoherent answers gave rise to no other result but this: that he did not know the place or the surroundings of his birth, or of his residence, or of his origin, and that he had always been with the unknown man until he got to the “big village” (Nuremberg), whereupon the stranger quickly departed.
His behavior during this first deposition provided no reason to assume that it was occasioned by idiocy or dissimulation, but rather led one to believe that this young man, from childhood, had been deprived of all human society and kept prisoner, isolated in an animallike state in the most inhuman manner. The circumstance that primarily justified this conclusion was the fact that he would eat nothing but water and bread. Neverthele
ss the municipal authority, in order to make certain that there was no deception, ordered the royal forensic physician of the city to observe and examine him, while at the same time the experienced jailer was to observe him carefully in secret as well. But since the physician was not able to discover anything whatsoever that could give rise to suspicions about the young man, after six days the following expert opinion, to quote it exactly, stated: “That this person is neither crazy nor an idiot, but evidently had been raised like a half-wild person, had been forcibly and in the most heinous way removed from all human and societal education, could not be persuaded to consume regular food, but only black bread and water.”
The signatory of this proclamation, the head of the municipal authority and of the police senate was able to convince himself of the truth of this judgment in a detailed deposition that he himself conducted with this young man shortly thereafter. What emerged from this deposition was that the young man had no concept of humans or of animals, and that apart from “Buben” (boys), by which he meant only himself and the man with whom he had always been, and a “Ross” (horse) with which he had played, he knew nothing.
His limited understanding, although it was in the most obvious contrast to his enormous intellectual curiosity and an extraordinary memory, suggesting an excellent hereditary predisposition, soon determined the author of this proclamation to forsake the format of a formal deposition and instead to engage the young man in intimate conversations. Physicians, teachers, educators, psychologists, court officials, police officials, the most astute observers from all social classes, and innumerable people who were deeply moved by his sad past have since been allowed to visit him, and their repeated comments agree with the views of the undersigned police official.
He is now free, as much as is possible under supervision, but remains true to the first account of his fate, apart from the welcome visible daily progress in his mental development. Based on numerous conversations with him, the undersigned can, with confidence, present the following account of his former life in so far as it is clear to himself:
The Wild Child Page 17
