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UNSOLVED CRIMES |
Date
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The Enigma of Nuremberg |
August 2003 |
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The teenage boy who appeared from
nowhere, staggered through the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, on Whit
Monday 1828, acted as if he was injured or drunk.
He walked unsteadily up to a complete stranger, a local cobbler, and
gave him a letter addressed to the Captain of the 6th Cavalry
Regiment, then stationed in the city, and mumbled repeatedly: 'I want
to be a soldier like my father was.'
The cobbler helped the boy to walk with difficulty to the police
station where the lad waited until the cavalry officer was summoned.
At the police station the letter was opened and the senior police
officer and the cavalryman read the poignant and bitter message.
The letter explained: 'I send you a boy who is anxious to serve his
king in the Army. He was left at my house on 7th October 1812,
and I am only a poor labourer. I have ten children of my own to
bring up. I have not let him outside since 1812.'
With cruel indifference, the letter added: 'If you do not want to keep
him, kill him or hang him up a chimney.'
The letter was unsigned and the police and the army officer sadly
assumed that the 16 year old boy, abandoned as a baby, was still
unwanted. The scrawled message seemed to explain his peculiar
behaviour, unable to walk properly on feet as soft as a baby's and
with an infant vocabulary of only a few words. But the lad could
write his own name in a firm, legible hand - Caspar Hauser.
The jailer in Nuremberg was fascinated by the boy and kept him in a
room in his own quarters where he could watch him through a secret
opening. It took him only a few days of careful observation
before he decided that Caspar was neither a born idiot nor a young
madman. With loving patience, the jailer, using sign language,
taught Caspar to talk, noting how quickly and eagerly the boy began to
learn new skills.
Within six weeks the burgomaster of Nuremberg had been summoned to the
jail to hear the first halting details from Caspar of his wretched
life.
All Caspar could remember was being kept in a small cell, about 1.8 m
(6 foot) long, 1.2 m (4 foot) wife and 1.5 m (5 foot) high. The
shutters on the window of the cell were kept permanently closed and he
slept in threadbare clothes on a bed of straw. He saw nobody and
heard virtually nothing all the years he was there, living on a diet
of bread and water he found in his cell when he awoke each day.
Sometimes, he revealed, the water tasted bitter and made him fall
asleep. Every time this happened, he woke up to find his hair
had been cut and his nails trimmed.
After years of isolation, Caspar recalled, a hand reached into his
cell from behind him and gave him a sheet of paper and a pen.
The hand guided him each day until he could write his own name and
repeat the phrase: 'I want to be a soldier...'
One morning his cell was unlocked and he was taken out into the
street, into daylight and the company of other people for the first
time in his life. It was the first time, too, that he wore
shoes.
In the confusion of unfamiliar sights and sounds, Caspar remembered
nothing until he found himself in Nuremberg with the letter in his
hand.
The boy's story touched the burgomaster and the people of Nuremberg
and soon young Caspar was 'adopted' by a Professor Daumer who began
the task of educating the teenager into the ways of the world around
him.
In a few months Caspar was transformed from a stumbling retarded child
to a bright intelligent young man. With his mysterious
background creating a buzz of excitement in his new home town, he
became a much sought after guest in the homes of curious philosophers
and wealthy intellectuals. And Nuremberg society soon began to
remark on Caspar's startling physical resemblance to the members of
the families of the grand dukes of Baden, the rulers of the province.
Rumours abounded, the most popular being Caspar was of noble birth,
two of the princes of the Baden family in direct line of succession
had died in mysterious circumstances. The people of Nuremberg
were convinced that Caspar Hauser was an unwanted son of the royal
family, born to the Grand Duke Karl and his wife the Grand Duchess
Stephanie.
Grand Duchess Stephanie had indeed given birth to a child sixteen
years earlier, but she never saw the baby. Scheming palace
doctors had told her that the baby had died soon after the birth of
cerebral meningitis, a diagnosis confirmed by a post-mortem
examination.
And when Grand Duke Karl became seriously ill in 1829, he had no son
and heir to succeed him.
Caspar, by that time, had been in Nuremberg for a year, living with
Professor Daumer and growing in reputation as a personable,
intelligent young man of distinct ability and culture.
As the Grand Duke's health failed, in October 1829, Caspar's already
bitterly unhappy young life was almost ended. He was attacked
and stabbed by a masked assailant in the basement of Professor
Daumer's house, but he survived his wounds.
The following year the Grand Duke died and the royal succession passed
to another line of the family, the sons of the Countess of Hochberg.
A few months later an eccentric English nobleman, said by many to be a
friend of the Hochberg family, appeared in Nuremberg to petition
the courts to become Caspar's guardian in place of Professor Daumer.
Philip, the 4th Earl of Stanhope, won his court plea in spite of local
opposition. And so, out of public sight, another period of
isolation began for the wretched Caspar. he was taken away from
his new found friends in Nuremburg on Lord Stanhope's orders and
lodged with a surly Protestant pastor in the town of Ansbach, twenty
miles away.
With Caspar safely out of the way, Lord Stanhope lost interest in his
new foster son, leaving him to his miserable existence with Pastor
Meyer.
On 11th December 1833 Caspar, then 21 years old and working as an
apprentice bookbinder, was returning to his dismal lodgings through a
park when he was stopped by a stranger. The man asked his name
and when Caspar replied, he stabbed him repeatedly. Badly
wounded, Caspar staggered back to Pastor Meyer's home. But the
preacher never informed the police, cruelly taunting Caspar that he
had inflicted the wounds himself to get attention. Three days
later Caspar Hauser died in agony.
Hearing of his death, the Grand Duchess Stephanie was reported to have
broken down and wept, sobbing that she believed the young man had
really been the son she was told had died in infancy.
But none of his friends or the German courts could ever prove the
background of the boy with no history and no future. They could
never solve the riddle of who had locked him away for the first
sixteen years of his hopeless life, or who the mysterious assassins
were who finally succeeding in killing him.
The boy who came from nowhere was buried in the churchyard at Ansbach.
On his tombstone was the simple epitaph: 'Here lies Caspar Hauser,
enigma.' |
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