Kaspar To raise - whose name is sometimes francized in Gaspard Hauser, inter alia by Verlaine - is a found teenager who lived at the 19th century. Appeared on the place of Nuremberg on May 26th 1828, it was probably old approximately 17 years. Called “the orphan of Europe”, it is still today in the center of a enigma relative to its origins.

The orphan of Europe

Kaspar Hauser appears the May 26th 1828 in a street of Nuremberg, exhausted, staggering, gesticulant and grognant in an incomprehensible way.

It holds with the hand a letter addressed to the “Commander-in-chief of the 4th squadron of the 6th regiment thelight ones”, the Wessnich captain; the letter specified that the father of Kaspar would have belonged to this regiment and another ticket, declared joint with the letter, it born on April 30th 1812. The first of the two messages would supposedly have been written by the man who raised Kaspar Hauser: “This boy was entrusted to me in 1812, on October 7th, and I am me even a poor day laborer, I have myself ten-children, I have myself enough sorrow to escape from the difficulty, and his/her mother entrusted the child for her education to me”.

As for the second ticket, it would be of the mother Kaspar Hauser. It is this second ticket which provides the birth date of the young man and contains a request: “If you raise it, his/her father was a light horseman. When it is 17 years old, send it to Nuremberg with the 6th regiment of Schowilsche. There too his/her father was. ”

However the Wessnich captain notices that the two tickets are written same hand and suspectant an assembled blow, place the teenager in detention.

The only words which is able to pronounce the young man are: “riding want like father be”. He can also write his name.

The mayor ends up taking it under his wing, and making it speak. He would have lived in a dark tiny room, slept on the beaten ground or the straw without never seeing anybody; he had received the visit of a man vêtu of black which had learned how to him to go and to write his name. Later, this man would have led it for Nuremberg and would have given up there, with this envelope containing the two tickets.

The history consequently makes the turn of the newspapers which call Kaspar “the orphan of Europe”. Rumors start to circulate on its noble pace and the features of its face. Lodged in a professor who learns how to him to read and write, it is victim of an attack in 1828, which starts again the rumors: the myth of the noble birth of the teenager is forged little by little. This family would have tried to get rid some to inherit the duchy Bade. Lodged this time in a city council man, Kaspar is victim of another attack, in 1830, but the police officers put this one doubts it and suspect a setting in scene. The count de Stanhorpe, who becomes its third host, questions it and comes from there to believe that it is of Hungarian origin, rather than German.

In December 1833, Kaspar is attracted at night in a park of Ansbach, in Franconie, by a mysterious individual who stabs it. He dies a few hours later; to the site of the attack, an inscription indicates today still “ difficulty occultus occulto occisus is ” (here, an unknown was assassinated by an unknown).

A princely birth?

The noble pace of Kaspar makes suppose that it is of high birth and belongs to a famous family.

The research carried out in the princely files of the year of its birth indicates that, the September 29th 1812, the princess Stéphanie de Beauharnais, niece of the empress Joséphine and married with prince Charles of Bade, puts at the world a son who dies brutally 15 days later. Stéphanie is not even authorized to see the corpse of his/her child.

However, Stéphanie is in hillock with the hostility of Louise Geyer de Geyersberg, countess of Hochberg, second wife (morganatic) of the large-duke Karl-Friedrich de Bade, grandfather of Charles and who would like that the succession with the throne was ensured his/her own children (to died from the second wire of Karl-Friedrich and its last wire, Ludwig de Bade, the crown of Bade passed indeed to Léopold, wire of Karl-Friedrich and the countess of Hochberg).

Stéphanie convinces that, the night when his/her child was given for death, the countess of Hochberg would have removed it to substitute to him the child of one of her workmen, which one would have doped to make die. She goes secretly to Ansbach to see Kaspar there and convinces herself that he is well his son.

Mysteries of the DNA

A search for DNA realized in 1996, financed by the Der Spiegel weekly magazine, and comparing the DNA of Kaspar which would have been taken on the shirt that it carried the day of its assassination, with that of two downward of the Maison of Bade, did not reveal the least similarity.

In 2002 however, analyzes of the DNA taken on six hair Kaspar To raise and realized at the Institute of legal medicine of Münster under the direction of the pr. B. Brinkmann, led to positive tests. These results remain disputed, taking into account the risk of contamination of the hair in question, at one century of variation. The princely House of Bade always refused to let analyze the bones of the son of Charles and Stéphanie de Bade.

Confirmation?

The discovery of a secret dungeon also delighted those which believe at the noble origin of the teenager. This dungeon was discovered following the boring of a wall in the commun runs of the castle of Beuggen (close to Rheinfelden), the August 11th 2000; one found there on a beam the drawing with the pencil of a horse, it by what it is necessary to conclude with the presence from a prisoner formerly. The style of installation of the dungeon (and the reference to the figuration of the horse) present striking analogies with the dungeon discovered to the castle of Pilsach (close to Nuremberg), called “Castle Kaspar Hauser today”.

It should in addition be noted that Kaspar drew, of alive sound, of the armorial bearings which it would have seen of its eyes; however, these same armorial bearings are reproduced on the doors of the castle of Beuggen.

Other possibilities

It was also evoked the fact that Kaspar Hauser was the fruit of a cruel experiment. A question which agitated much 18th and the 19th century was to know if a child distant from any human contact would develop or not a kind of language, and which would be in this case the primal language which would get clear thus.

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