The Wild Child

by Jeffrey Masson

  And so it was that in the writings about Feuerbach, in university speeches on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, or the hundredth anniversary of his death, etc., there could slip in the version that: “But he really was wrong with respect to Kaspar Hauser! And he admitted he was wrong!” And more of the same. No! I want to make it clear: Feuerbach may have made a mistake. Everybody can make a mistake. He may have made mistakes in the case of Kaspar Hauser just as he did in writing up other cases during the course of a life rich in thoughts and events. But he did not make any more mistakes in the case of Kaspar Hauser [than in the others—that is, he made only minor errors]. Above all, nowhere is there to be found a retraction of his views on Kaspar Hauser. It is clear that there are ever-renewed attempts by more or less interested parties to throw mud on Feuerbach’s views on Kaspar Hauser. The deeper psychological reason for this is also clear to me: There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who, like Feuerbach, are for the abolition of torture. (And they do abolish it, just as Feuerbach did, if they are powerful enough and capable of acting.) The other kind of people are in favor of using torture, like Mittelstädt in the characteristic quote in Kolb (1883, p. 38, note39 ). The first love “myth” (to call it this, just this once), as did Feuerbach, Daumer, and others. The others see in everything only lies and deception. My dear Professor, please excuse this long letter…. I will be very interested in the complete text of your book, which I hope will appear soon and enjoy the great success due you and the memory of a great man, now dead. With kindest wishes, I remain, Yours truly, Pies.

  Radbruch replied immediately, in a gracious letter dated April 27, 1934:

  Dear Dr. Pies:

  I am very grateful that you wrote back so quickly and in such detail. Your criticism, quite apart from all the single facts, touches on a point that is important to me. I really wanted to know what an informed and clever reader would be able to discern about my own point of view regarding Kaspar Hauser from my comments. Your remarks show me that the skeptical tone I have used toward Kaspar Hauser is too sharp. Actually I tend rather to believe in him. You are completely right: All the reactions to Kaspar Hauser can be divided into two types of people, and I consider myself, when the question is put in this way, very definitely on one side. But as a scholar I do not feel myself qualified to decide on a question that requires special study. Moreover, all arguments for one alternative over the non liquet [undecided] have not yet fully come out. As a biographer of Feuerbach I have to be careful that the interest in my book be not fully swallowed up by interest in Kaspar Hauser himself, which would without doubt be the case should I take a position pro or contra. So my comments had to leave the main question in the balance, and only attempt to make Feuerbach’s position understandable even in case he should have made a mistake. As I reread my piece, it became clear that one could all too easily form the impression that I believed Feuerbach really did make a mistake, and precisely your remarks showed me that some passages will have to be presented differently. I hope when you read the finished book you will be able to notice the influence of your comments on the final version. In any event I am deeply grateful to you. With kindest regards, I remain, yours truly, Radbruch.

  Thus the authenticity of this new document is beyond dispute. When we put all our documents together, then, this is what we get:

  Daumer kept handwritten notes about Kaspar Hauser. They were almost illegible (he was nearly blind) and he had them copied by hand and sent to Feuerbach. Feuerbach used them in his book about Kaspar Hauser. The manuscript stayed in the Feuerbach family until 1933, when Radbruch saw it. It was sent to Pies. I believe that what Pies was sent consisted of several hundred handwritten single sheets. Pies had these typed and made handwritten marginal notes indicating anything not obvious from the typed copy. Pies then returned the manuscript. When the French took control of Lindau at the end of World War II, many manuscripts, books, and papers were burned. I presume that this was the fate of that manuscript, since it has not been preserved by the family.

  Pies, however, had his copy. The occasion to refer to it never came, for Pies’s first major book, containing Daumer’s writings, had already been published in 1925. The subsequent volumes were concerned with later developments in the Kaspar Hauser case. Pies may have felt that there was no appropriate way to call attention to its existence. Perhaps he hoped to publish it separately. In any event, 164 years after it was written, it has again surfaced.

  The present document is fresh in ways that no other surviving document from the time of Kaspar Hauser is. Feuerbach’s book, by contrast, though it is a wonderful text in its own right, is contrived. The three later works by Daumer himself about Kaspar Hauser are clumsy and lack the spontaneity of this text. It is probably fortunate for us that this document was not conceived as a work for publication. Of course this document, too, like all the other records dealing with Kaspar Hauser, is limited by the narrowness of Daumer’s own interests. It would seem that nobody ever thought to ask Kaspar Hauser for the record: What do you actually remember about your cage? Have you any memories at all about anything preceding? Do you remember what you felt while you were there?

  This is perhaps the single most valuable and authentic document that has come down to us. Only one other document could surpass it in historical significance: Kaspar Hauser’s original diary. Presumably he burned it, though this has never been established, since everybody around him wished to read it for the wrong reasons. Perhaps it is even now lying in some unknown attic.

  The discovery of this new manuscript sheds new light on the Kaspar Hauser story because it allows us more direct access to the living Kaspar Hauser, because it gives us his actual voice. It does this better than the few pages of his own writings that were preserved, because those were “exercises” written with great deliberation, not spontaneous comments in the way some of these quotations are.

  I am pleased to note that the entire manuscript has just been published by Eichborn Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, September 1995) in the series Die andere Bibliothek (The other library), edited by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The text is edited by Johannes Mayer, and I contribute an essay about the discovery of the text. The volume, by Georg Friedrich Daumer, is entitled Anselm von Feuerbach: Kaspar Hauser.

  Appendix 3

  Translation of Kaspar Hauser’s Autobiography

  Three versions of Kaspar Hauser’s autobiography exist. All were written in 1828, during the time he was living in Daumer’s house. I have translated the earliest of these versions, as given in Pies, Augenzeugenberichte (p. 439). It is dated “Beginning of November 1828,” so some five months after Kaspar Hauser appeared in Nuremberg. Pies calls it “the oldest long fragment of the autobiography” and he says that he took it from Antonius von der Linde, who published it in 18881 and who had inherited the handwritten manuscript from Daumer. Why Linde, an enemy of Kaspar Hauser and Daumer, should have had access to the latter’s papers is not clear. But Linde carefully preserves the original text, with all the errors in spelling and punctuation. Naturally it is difficult to convey this in the translation. I have not attempted to maintain the spelling errors, nor have I kept Kaspar Hauser’s exact punctuation, although it probably indicates something of the rhythm of his thinking, or at least the mental pauses he was making.

  To show how the original looked, here is a typical sentence from the first page (439) of the text along with a literal translation: “Ich habe zwey [misspelled] spill [misspelled] Pferd [singular rather than plural], und Ein [spelling mistake] Hund gehabt, und so Rothe bänder [misspelled] wo ich die Pferd [grammatical error] Butz [grammatical error] habe; “I had twe pley horse, and an dog, and such redd ribons where I horse dicorate did.” In spite of the errors, it is clear what he meant to say.

  Daumer’s 1832 book, Mitteilungen über Kaspar Hauser, has a section with writings by Kaspar Hauser. Daumer writes (p. 55):

  I encouraged him as early as 1828 to write down the story of his fate. As he was
accustomed endlessly to rewrite his essays, there are several beginnings extant. The first reads as follows: “Kaspar Hauser I want to describe it myself, how hard it was for me. There where I was always locked up in this prison I thought all was well, since I did not know anything about the world and for as long as I was locked up and I never saw another person. I had two wooden horses and a dog, with these I always played, but I cannot say, whether I played the whole day or not since I did not know what a day was or a week, and I want to describe what the prison was like there was straw in there” and so on.

  “Another beginning is the following [Daumer then gives the first sentence of the text I translate below]. From a third attempt, done in February 1829, I give below a fragment. We can already see in this version a more educated, though still a very natural and naive style.” Daumer then provides several pages of this “third version” (I translate a portion of it in my Introduction). Daumer goes on to say that Kaspar Hauser continued to rework his autobiography, and provides the first two sentences: “Life story of Kaspar Hauser in Nuremberg. What adult could fail to feel deeply touched at my guiltless imprisonment during my young years, where I spent the most tender years of my life. While other young people enjoyed life living enchanted golden dreams and pleasures, I had not yet been awakened to life.” Daumer comments: “He considered this beginning very beautiful and took it badly when I said that it was worthless.” The only puzzle here is that what Daumer calls the first beginning, of which only the first three sentences have been preserved, is slightly more sophisticated than the supposedly later version, the one translated here, which is very primitive. Of course we are probably speaking of only a matter of days or weeks between them. The original handwritten versions have long been lost. Pies (Augenzeugenberichte, p. 448) also provides the essay by Dr. Hermann, the friend of Daumer, who had questioned Kaspar Hauser about his life while he was living in Daumer’s house, and the official depositions taken of Kaspar Hauser by the police, about his early life in the prison. All versions agree by and large, and make the idea of a hoax seem highly improbable if not impossible.

  Here follows my translation of the complete preserved fragment:

  I will write the story of Kaspar Hauser myself! I will tell how I lived in the prison, and describe what it looked like, and everything that was there. The length of the prison was 6 to 7 feet, and 4 feet in width. There were two small windows which were 8 to 9 inches in height and were [the same] width; they were in the ceiling as in a cellar. But there was nothing in it but the straw where I lay and sat, and the two horses, a dog, and a woolen blanket. And in the ground next to me was a round hole where I could relieve myself, and a pitcher of water; other than that there was nothing, not even a stove. I will tell you what I always did, and what I always had to eat, and how I spent the long period, and what I did. I had two toy horses, and a [toy] dog, and such red ribbons with which I decorated the horses. And the clothes that I wore it was short pants, and black suspenders, and a shirt, but the pants and suspenders were on my bare body, and the shirt was worn on top, and the pants were torn open in back, so I could relieve myself. I could not take off the pants, because nobody showed me how. I will give a picture of how I spent the day, and how my day went.

  When I woke up I found water and bread next to me. The first thing I did, I drank the water, then ate a little bread until I was no longer hungry, then I gave bread and water to the horses, and the dog, then I drank it all up. Now I start to play, I remove the ribbons. It took me a long time until I had decorated a horse, and when one was decorated, then I again ate a little bread, and then there was still a little water left; this I finished, then I decorated the second one, which also took a long time, as did the first, then I felt hungry again, then I ate a little bread, and would have liked to drink water but I no longer had any with which I could quench my thirst. So I picked up the pitcher probably ten times, wanting to drink, but never found any water in it because I assumed the water came by itself. Then I spent time decorating the dog. When the thirst was too terrible, I always went to sleep because I was too thirsty to play. I can imagine I must have slept a long time, because whenever I awakened, there was water, and bread. But I always ate the bread from one sleep to another. I always had enough bread but not enough water, because the pitcher was not large, it did not hold enough water, perhaps the man could not, give me more water; because I [sic, mistake for “he”?] could not obtain a bigger pitcher. And how long I had been playing I cannot describe because I did not know what was an hour, or a day, or a week. I was always in a good mood and content, because nothing ever hurt me. And this is how I spent the entire period of my life until the man came, and taught me to draw. But I did not know what I was writing. So now came the man for the first time to me, but I didn’t hear him come. All of a sudden he put a small chair in front of me, and brought paper, and pencil and placed [them] on the chair. I always stare a little at the paper. All of a sudden the man takes my hand, puts the pencil in my hand, and said I should pay close attention, then I will get beautiful horses, and pointed to my horse, you will get more, if I pay close attention, and do well, he meant my writing. Then he showed me, and guided my hand. The man was behind me, and then I did it all by myself and I spent a long time writing by myself, and on like this, and remembered what he told me, and from this time on I knew what a horse was called, and then I always said when I played horse, no, away, run, you stay, and the man was gone again. I didn’t know anything, where he went, but the chair, and the paper, he left, this is the first time I noticed him, see him I did not, because he was behind me, and where the man placed the chair I left it. I was not clever enough to have removed it. When I lay down and when I woke up again I again drank the water, and ate the bread, and the first thing I did, was start to write, and when I finished writing, I took the horse, and decorated it, as always and if I hit my hand a little I always said, horse, don’t run away, you stay here; but before I had always said, don’t run away, you stay here because I didn’t know it what they were [that is, didn’t know what a horse was called]. Then surely I slept, two or three more times, I describe it, I think, it must have been two or three days, until that man came, and when he came the second time, it was exactly the same. I did not hear him come, like the first time. And when he came the second time, he brought a small book; he placed it on the chair, like the paper, and the pencil, then he took my hand, and placed a finger on the little book, and read it out to me, three or four times then I knew it. Then he said I should remember well, then he took a horse and rolled it, and I liked that, and remembered everything, and I kept on learning, and the man was behind me, and when I couldn’t remember a word very well, he told it to me again; then I said it perhaps only two more times, and the man was gone, and I took my horse and did the same with it, because the man had said if I pay careful attention, I may also do so. And when I remembered the words well then I did the same thing with the horse that he showed me, and I rolled it so vigorously that I hurt myself. And then that man came and beat me with a cane, and hurt me so much that I silently wept, so that my tears rolled down; and he hurt my right elbow, and I didn’t know where the blow came from all of a sudden; since I never heard the man, when he arrived. When he beat me I kept very still, because it hurt me very much, and I decorated my horses, and I put the ribbons down so silently that the horse itself did not know how silently I did it;2 and when I relieved myself, I removed the cover very quietly. And the straw upon which I would lie and sit I was not able to leave, first because I did not know how to walk and second because I could not get away. It was as though I was restrained and never thought that I would want to get away, or that I was locked up. And after he beat me enough time passed that I certainly woke up twenty more times, [that is, it lasted for twenty days?] and played with the horses until he came and carried me out of my prison. Then he came again, and again brought paper, and said I should do the same thing, he meant writing. Now I had to write my name again and I had not forgotten what he ta
ught me initially and I had to repeat this again, and I knew everything he had taught me. Then he was gone. When he was gone, I again played with my horse; and the water and bread remained the same as when the man came for the first time. The water and bread, always come, when I woke up, the bread and water were there as they had been before the man came to see me.

  On the same day, on which he had me write my name again. Then he carried me off. Then this man came, and picked me up from my sleep and took off my short pants and put on another pair of short pants and a large hat and boots and jacket, and when he dressed me, he placed me against the wall, and put my two hands around his neck. When he carried me out, of the prison, he had to bend down, and carried me up a small mountain [stairs], and already I started to cry. And then the man said I should stop or I would get no horse but when I came to the top of the small mountain I was so cold because I had never had that air, and such a terrible odor overtook me that it hurt me and then we went up the second mountain, and I fell asleep. But I cannot say whether the mountain lasted a long time or a short one [how long we went uphill] and how far he carried me. I also cannot say, and when I woke up, I was lying on the ground, and I was lying on my face, and there was a terrible odor and everything hurt me so much. When I woke up I turned my head. The man must have seen that. He came and picked me up, and taught me to walk, and pushed my feet with his feet, because at the beginning he held my two arms, because I could not walk a step. And then the man said I should always watch the ground and pay careful attention so that I could walk alone. The first thing that always happened was that I cried. Kaspar don’t cry or you won’t get a horse. I cried a lot, because it was so difficult to walk, and everything hurt me, but when he said that I would not get a horse I immediately stopped crying. And I walked barely eight steps. Then the man placed me on the ground, and again with my face toward the ground, I rested for a little but I could not lie there very long because I found the odor too strong. Then I lifted my head and he picked me up again and continued dragging me along. The second time I went a few steps further than the first time, and my feet then hurt me more than I can say. Then he gave me bread and water. Then I sat down on the ground, and he was behind me, and as I finished the bread and water, he again dragged me on and for the first time led me by one arm, and I could not say how everything hurt me, and we went on several steps further than the second time, and it turned dark, and I was very tired, and my feet hurt a lot, then I lay down on the ground and slept, and how long I slept I cannot say. When I woke up it was daylight, and I was rested, but the pain did not go away, it always stayed the same, and I went on another eight steps which was probably the furthest I walked. When the first night was over, but I cannot say with certainty whether it was really night, it is possible that my eyes were closed from pain because the pain was too great, then he again gave me bread and water, and then this man taught me to pray. He must have said it three times, and told me I should pay attention so that you will get a beautiful horse. In the large village lives your father; he has pretty horses, and you can become a horseman like your father has been. And now it turned night for the second time, and the terrible pain came as on the previous night, so I lay down on the ground, and fell asleep, but I cannot say how long I always slept. But when I woke up, it was always light; when I woke up the man moved me on, I walked on a bit, and I started to cry, and said, horse, horse, because my, feet hurt so much. Then the man said I should stop crying, or I would get no more horses, and I again stopped crying, even if my feet hurt a lot. I may have rested only ten times, and this man always sat behind me, and I again got bread and water, but when I ate the bread, and drank the water, he moved me on again, and then I probably rested only eight or nine times, and I again started to cry, and said horse, horse, horse, and thereby I meant to say, he should take me home to my horses, where I was locked up; but I couldn’t say that. Then the man said: stop crying. You will soon have a horse. Then I rested only twice, then he again took off my short pants and put on long pants, and another hat, and when he put on the clothes he was always behind me, but when I had on those clothes, I may have rested twenty or thirty times until we reached the large village. When we were in the city, he put a letter in my hand, and said I should remain standing there until such a one as you are will come, then you tell him he should take you to where this letter belongs. So I stood there a long time, until a boy came along, but my feet hurt me so much, as did the arm with which I held the letter. Finally somebody came, who took me to the house; and when I got there, I was so tired, and my feet hurt so much that I cannot say it [more than I can say], and then I started to cry, then they brought me something on a plate, I did not know what it was supposed to be, because I had never seen a plate or a bowl, and then in a little glass, they also brought me something else, and I also didn’t know what it was supposed to be, and the odor alone hurt me, then they gave me bread, and water, that I recognized right away, that I ate immediately, and the water that they gave me was my best, and they put me in a horse stable, and when I got there the odor was so strong and I had many headaches, and I didn’t know what all this was. Then they led me away from this house, and took me to another house, and they removed me from that house, and my feet hurt so much, that I didn’t know how to walk. And when I arrived in the second house there were many boys and they bothered me so much and they always talked with me and I couldn’t understand what they said. Then they led me to another house, and I could barely walk anymore, because I had so much pain, and it wasn’t until the third house that I could sleep, but I was very happy when I could sit down, and immediately fell asleep, with all the pain I had.