Kaspar Hauser
1812–1833 · teenager from Germany, historical mystery case (not a painter)
Kaspar Hauser (born possibly 30 April 1812; died Ansbach, Franconia, 17 December 1833) was a German teenager whose story became one of the great enigmas of nineteenth-century Europe. He was not a painter, and the sources do not attribute any visual work to him; his relevance to art history is indirect, since his figure has inspired many creators. He has been called the orphan of Europe.
On 26 May 1828 a young man of about 16, with a neglected appearance, turned up in Nuremberg, in Bavaria. Taken to a police station, he identified himself as «Kaspar Hauser», a name that also appeared on a letter he carried, addressed to the military officer Friedrich von Wessing. He stated that he had been born on 30 April 1812. He seemed to have lived for a long time in isolation, and lawyers, theologians and educators tried to teach him to speak, read and write. His guardian, Anselm von Feuerbach, reported that at first he rejected milk and meat, and that he lived only on bread and water.
From the start, theories about his origin circulated. Feuerbach believed he was a prince of Baden, replaced by a dying child because of dynastic intrigues. Later genetic analyses have been contradictory. In 1996, bloodstains attributed to him showed no link to the ruling House of Baden; in 2002, another study found a strong, though not complete, match with the genetic profile of a descendant of Stéphanie de Beauharnais, wife of Charles II of Baden. In 2024 a new study ruled out the princely theory.
The most recent hypothesis holds that he was the illegitimate son of Napoleon and Stéphanie de Beauharnais, and it draws on physical resemblances to Napoleon II. According to this view, he spent his early years in palaces and was hidden after Napoleon's fall. His final stage probably took place at Pilsach Palace, about 35 km from Nuremberg, where a hidden room matching his description was discovered by chance in 1924.
His death is equally enigmatic. According to tradition, he was stabbed in Ansbach in 1833, and the doctors who carried out the autopsy judged it very unlikely that he could have inflicted the wounds himself. Today his name is used in ethology for experiments on animals raised without adult models, and the Kaspar Hauser syndrome describes children raised without affection or human contact. His story has inspired Werner Herzog, Paul Auster and Jakob Wassermann, among many others.