From what general area Kaspar was brought to Nuremberg, what road he took, through which gate he came, whether he arrived on foot or by wagon, or whether he made his trip by both foot and wagon, these things and others remain questions, even if they could be answered with certainty, that would be of interest only to an investigating magistrate pursuing the truth, and less to the general public. Kaspar himself remembers only that he walked. There is nothing in his account to establish how long he walked or approximately what distance he covered. The fact that he has no memory at all of riding does not prove in any way that he may not actually have been driven, possibly even the greater part of the way. Even today, when Kaspar rides, especially in the fresh air, he soon falls into a virtual deathlike sleep. He cannot be awakened whether the wagon moves or stands still. When he is in that state, he can be picked up and put down, no matter how roughly, without his taking the slightest notice, as if he were nothing but an inanimate bundle. Once sleep has taken hold of him, no noise, racket, or din, no thunder is loud enough to wake him.
Since, as one can conclude from his own account, Kaspar lost consciousness as soon as he was in the fresh air, he was probably once again given the foul-tasting water (opium diluted with water) as a precaution. One could then throw him into a carriage with some confidence and take a few day-trips, even many such trips, without having to be concerned that he would wake up, scream, or in some way make himself disagreeable to his abductor.
Mr. Schmidt von Lübeck, in an astute essay entitled Über Kaspar Hauser (Altona, August 1831) attempts to substantiate his conjecture that Kaspar was brought from a place very close to Nuremberg. For this, as for many other conjectures, the account given above provides ample room. It is certain that the person who brought Hauser to Nuremberg had to have been closely acquainted with Nuremberg and its neighborhoods. It is also highly probable that he had once served as a soldier in one of the regiments stationed there.
The crimes committed against the person of Kaspar, as far as they have been charged, are to be judged according to the Bavarian Criminal Code35 as follows:
The crime of illegal confinement (Criminal Code, Part I, Articles 192 to 195). This is doubly aggravated, first with regard to duration, insofar as the imprisonment is concerned, begun, from earliest childhood and continued, so it appears, until adolescence; secondly by its manner, insofar as it was accompanied by particular “abuse.” In the latter case we must take into account not only the bestial lair that crippled the unfortunate child’s body, not only the miserable food that was barely acceptable for a dog, but above all, the cruel denial of all those gifts, even the smallest, which nature extends to the poorest with a generous hand, the withholding of all means of mental development and education, the unnatural retention of a human soul in a state of bestial unreason.
That also objectively meets the requirements of the crime of felonious abandonment, which, according to the Criminal Code, Part I, Art. 174, can be committed not only against children but also against adults, if they “are incapable, due to illness or feebleness, of taking care of themselves,” in which category Kaspar certainly belonged, since at that time he was as stupid as an animal, practically blind, and barely able to walk upright. The abandonment of Kaspar was at the same time an abandonment that should be classified as exposing his life to danger. This person was, by virtue of his mental and physical condition at the time, in danger of falling into the Pegnitz River, near where he was abandoned, or of being run over by a horse or a carriage.
Were the customary law or the Bavarian Criminal Code to recognize a special crime against the powers of the mind,36 or more precisely a crime against the life of the soul, then this would have to occupy the first rank in legal judgment next to the crime of imprisonment—or rather, the crime of imprisonment would have to be subordinated to this crime. The deprivation of freedom of movement, though in and of itself an irreparable injury, cannot possibly be compared to the incalculable totality of irreplaceable and inestimable benefits which were completely taken away from this unfortunate victim. Robbed of his freedom in this way, his capacity for the enjoyment of these benefits was destroyed, or at least crippled, for the rest of his life. This grave offense, this murderous assault, was carried out not only on a person s external physical self, but aimed at his innermost essence, his spiritual being, the holy temple which houses natural reason itself. Our writers classify such crimes only as a deprivation of reason (noochiria), and, with [Carl August] Tittman37 make them dependent in essence upon “effectuating a loss of reason or insanity.” But the example of Kaspar Hauser shows that this concept is far too narrow. A legislator who would increase the reach of his system by including a category of crime such as this one really needs to adopt a much broader and all-encompassing point of view. Kaspar was imprisoned for his entire childhood, but he did not fall into dementia or go crazy. Once freed he emerged, as we shall see more clearly in the following pages, from the state of bestiality that he was in and has developed to the point where he can be considered everywhere, with certain reservations, as a reasonable, sensible, ethical, and civilized person. Nonetheless, nobody will fail to recognize that it is primarily the criminal assault on the mental life of this person, the sin against his higher spiritual nature, that constitutes the most outrageous aspect of the violation against him. To deprive a human being of nature and the company of other sentient beings, through artificial means; to remove him from his human destiny; to withhold from him all the spiritual nourishment that nature has provided for the growth and prosperity of the human soul, for its training, development and education. Such a deprivation, independent of its consequences, deserves in and of itself the most serious punishment as an invasion into what is most holy, most unique to a human being, an invasion of the freedom and destiny of the human soul. Yet added to this is the following: Kaspar, submerged in a bestial slumber of the soul during childhood, wasted [verlebt] the most beautiful part of his whole life without having lived it [gelebt]. He was like a dead man during this period. He slept through his childhood, it passed him by, without his really having had one, since he could never become conscious of it. Torn out of his life by the terrible deed done to him, this gap cannot be bridged. The time that was not lived cannot be called back to be lived over. He cannot catch up on the childhood that escaped him while his soul lay asleep. No matter how long he might live, he remains a person without a childhood and without a youth, a monstrous being, who, contrary to the laws of nature, has begun his life only in the middle of it. Insofar as his entire earlier life was thus taken away from him he was the victim of what I may be permitted to call a partial soul-murder [See-lenmord]. The act committed against Kaspar is to be distinguished from a crime committed against a person whose reason is healthy and who is later driven into dull idiocy, or into a state without consciousness or reason, by virtue of the fact that the soul murder was committed at a different period of life. In the first case the life of a human being’s soul is snuffed out before it has even begun, in the second case, at the end of that life. Moreover, we should not forget a major consideration. Childhood and youth have been designed by nature as the time for development and education, both of the physical self and of the spiritual life, since nature does not allow for omission of these stages. Kaspar emerged into the world as a child at the age of early manhood. Now and for all time the stages of his life have been jumbled and displaced. Because he could not begin his childhood until he was physically mature, his mental development will lag behind his physical age for the rest of his life, and his age will always outdistance his mind. Mental and physical life, which in the natural stages of development keep pace with each other, in Kaspar’s person have been as it were torn apart and placed in unnatural opposition to each other. The childhood that he slept through, precisely because he slept through it, will never have its day. He will have to repeat it, and, always untimely, it will follow him in later years not as a smiling spirit but as a frightening apparition. If we take into consideration, in a
ddition to all this, the devastation that fate has brought upon his youth and spirit, which will become clear later in this account, we can conclude from this example that the idea of theft of the intellect does not by any means exhaust the notion of a crime against the life of the soul.
What other crimes could possibly remain hidden behind the wrong committed against Kaspar? What purpose could the secret imprisonment of Hauser have been designed to further? These questions would lead us too far into the giddy heights of speculation, or into certain hallowed halls that could not tolerate such illumination.38
This remarkable crime, scarcely believable in the history of human atrocities, presents yet another strange aspect to the scholar of law as well as to the forensic medical doctor. The examination and judgment of states of mind usually looks only at the criminal to determine whether or not he can be considered responsible for his actions. But here we have before us a case that is by its very nature unique, in which, for the most part, the evidence for the crime lies hidden in the human soul. The facts of this case, therefore, can only be investigated by purely psychological means and can only be based on, and determined through, observation of the mental and emotional expressions of the victim.
As for the history of the crime, we have at present no information other than the account of that person against whom it was committed. But the truth of the narration is vouched for by the personality of the narrator upon whose body, spirit and emotions, as we will learn in greater detail, the crime itself is clearly written, in a way that cannot be misunderstood. Only he who has experienced and suffered what Kaspar did can be like Kaspar. Whoever shows himself to be like Kaspar must have lived under identical circumstances to those Kaspar related. Thus does our evaluation of the trustworthiness of the narrator of an almost unbelievable event rest once again almost exclusively on psychological grounds. Events supported this way acquire authenticity which outweighs any other kind of proof. Witnesses can lie. Documents can be falsified. But no other person, unless he were at the very least an omnipotent and omniscient magician, could lie in this fashion, so that no matter how carefully examined, the lie resembles the purest truth, indeed would seem to be the very personification of truth itself. He who doubts Kaspar’s story must doubt Kaspar’s person. But then such a skeptic, were he faced with a man lying in front of him bleeding from a hundred wounds, convulsed in his death throes, must wonder with equal logic whether the man is really wounded and dying. Maybe he is just pretending to be wounded and dying.?39 But it won’t do for me to anticipate the reader’s judgment. My description of Kaspar’s person has just begun.
Chapter V
When Kaspar Hauser had already been in Nuremberg well over a month, I heard tell of this foundling among the latest gossip. The highest authorities of the province had not yet received any official notice of this event. It was therefore purely in my capacity as a private individual, out of human and scientific interest, that I traveled to Nuremberg on June 11, 1828, to observe this phenomenon, which was in its own way unique.
At that time Kaspar was still living in the Luginsland Tower at the Vestner Gate. Anyone who wanted to have a look at him was given permission to do so. In truth, Kaspar enjoyed from morning until night hardly less clientele than the kangaroo or the tame hyena in Mr. von Aken’s celebrated menagerie.40
I, too, made my way to him, accompanied by Colonel von D., two ladies, and two children. Fortunately we arrived during a time when nobody else was there at the spectacle.
Kaspar’s dwelling was a small but neat and bright little room whose windows opened out onto a country scene, offering the eye an expansive and friendly landscape. We found him barefoot, dressed in an old pair of long pants, and nothing else on but a shirt.
As far as he could reach, Kaspar had decorated the walls of the room with sheets of painted pictures, gifts from his many visitors. Each morning he would glue them onto the wall. For glue he would use his own saliva, which at that time was as thick as glue.41 As soon as it began to grow dark, he took them back down and folded them up next to him. There was a built-in bench against all four walls of the room, and in one of its corners was his bed, a straw sack with a pillow and a woolen blanket. The entire rest of the surface of the bench was covered with a large quantity of every kind of toy: hundreds of tin soldiers, little wooden dogs, horses, and other toys made in Nuremberg [the city was famous for such toys]. During the day he no longer [as he had earlier] played with them very much, but in the evening he took considerable pains to put all these things, big and small, away carefully, just so he could take them out again and put them next to one another in rows in a certain order when he woke up. Moreover, the good citizens of Nuremberg, out of a sense of charity, had given him various items of clothing that he kept under his pillow and showed us with a childlike pleasure, not without a little vanity. On the bench, among the toys, different kinds of coins lay strewn around, which he favored with no attention. I took a dirty silver Kronentaler [crown] and a brand-new Vierundzwanziger [twenty-four-penny coin] in my hand and asked him which he liked best. He chose the smaller, shiny coin. He said the larger one was nasty and made a disgusted face. When I tried to make him understand that the bigger coin was worth more, that one could buy far more pretty things with it than with the smaller coin, he listened to me carefully, true, but soon looked bewildered, and finally gave me to understand that he didn’t know what I meant.
When we entered his room, he seemed anything but shy or timid. Quite the contrary, he ran up to us trustingly with pleasure at our visit. At first he was preoccupied with the bright uniform of the colonel. He could not stop admiring his shining golden helmet. But then he turned his attention to the colorful clothes the women were wearing. At first, I, in my modest black frock coat, was deemed unworthy of a single glance. We introduced ourselves to him one at a time, each with name and title. At each introduction Kaspar came right up to the person being introduced and stared at him, taking in every feature of the face in a quick glance: forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and so on. I clearly noticed that it was only after he had read them one by one that he was able to put the parts of the features into a whole. He thereupon repeated the names of the people to whom he had been introduced. As later experiences would demonstrate, now that he knew that person, he knew that person forever.
He turned his eyes away from the bright light as much as possible. He very carefully avoided every ray of sunlight that came through the window. If such a ray accidentally hit his eyes, he blinked rapidly, wrinkled his forehead, and showed obvious pain. In addition, his eyes were slightly inflamed and on the whole showed great sensitivity to light.
At that time the left side of his face, which was later to be perfectly symmetrical, was strikingly different from the right. The left side was conspicuously twisted and contorted. Frequent spasms struck it like lightning. The left side of his entire body, especially his arm and hand, was visibly involved. If he was shown anything that stimulated his curiosity, if a word was spoken that he took notice of and did not understand, he immediately went into spasms that ended more often than not in a kind of rigidity. Then he stood motionless. No facial muscle moved, his eyes stared lifelessly without blinking. It was as if he were a statue, unseeing and unhearing, which could not be stimulated to life. This state could be observed whenever he was in deep thought, whenever he sought the appropriate word for a new object, when he tried to connect something unknown with something already known, or tried to understand something as a result of something else.
Those words he was able to speak he enunciated distinctly and clearly without pausing or stammering. But he was still far from being able to speak in coherent sentences, and his vocabulary was as poor as his supply of concepts. It was therefore difficult to make oneself understood. No sooner had one spoken a few sentences which he seemed to understand, than one added something that was foreign to him, when he would fall prey to spasms in his efforts to understand. Conjunctions, particles, and auxiliary verbs were lacking in al
most everything he said. His verbal forms comprised little more than the infinitive. The badly tousled and jumbled syntax was the worst. His normal manner of speaking was to say, “Kaspar very good,” instead of, “I am very good.” Or: “Kaspar already say Juli” instead of “I want to tell it to Julius” (the son of the jailer). He hardly used the pronoun “I” but spoke nearly always of himself in the third person. When he spoke to other people he did not use the pronoun “you” but addressed them in the third person. Instead of “you” he would use the third person: Mister Colonel, Mrs. General [the wife of the general], etc. If you wanted him to understand that you were referring to him, you could not say “you” but had to say “Kaspar.”42 One and the same word was frequently used in various different meanings, which often led to a ridiculous and funny Quiproquo [confusion]. Sometimes he would use a word that referred only to a species for the whole genus. For example, he employed the word “mountain” for any curve or elevation, so that a large-bellied gentleman whose name he could not remember was called “the man with the big mountain.” A woman whose shawl hung down so low that the end trailed on the floor he called “the woman with the pretty tail.” It will certainly be expected of me not to have failed to give him every opportunity, through various questions, to tell me the story of his life. But what I was able to get out of him was such an indeterminate, jumbled, confused gibberish that I could only guess what most of it meant, and much I could not understand at all since I was not yet familiar with his way of talking.
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