The first day when I awakened I sat up, and it was so bright I didn’t know where I was, and everything hurt me, and my eyes hurt a lot, and I kept looking for my horses and saw none, thereupon I started to cry. There was somebody else [in the room], he came over and said something to me, but I did not understand what he was saying, but I said to him Ross, Ross, ham [horse, horse, home]. Then he returned to his bed, and lay down again, and I cried again, then he still stayed on his bed for a while, then he got up, and he took the water and I thought he wanted to drink but drink he did not he put it in his mouth and washed, and when I saw that, I didn’t know what he was doing, and then he came over to me again and he again said many things to me but I understood nothing of what he said, and then somebody else came and brought me bread, and water, and that one spoke so loudly that he really hurt me. Then many tears flowed from my eyes, then I was able to say everything that the man had told me, that I should become a horseman like my father, and would get beautiful horses, and that I said to the man, I could not call Hildel [Hiltel] anything else but the man because I did not yet know how to speak to the jailer because I do not know how to talk, but when he brought water and bread he spoke very loudly and for a long time, then he left, then I said to Hildel Heim weissen [take home], then he told me I should tell him where I came from, I did not understand this when he asked me this then he again left, then I started to cry so that the tears fell from my eyes, then the man who was locked up with me came over to me again and told me to stop crying, and said a lot more to me, but I did not understand anything else he said to me, but this I did understand, when he told me I had to stop crying, then I stopped, and said to him horse, rider like father is then he said something else, but I did not understand what he said, and when he said this he again went back to his bed, and then I remained sitting until the jailer came, and when he came, he brought the meal to me in a bowl, and to the other [man] and as he put down the bowl, I was so overcome by odors that I cannot even describe it, and felt a lot more pain, and as he placed it in front of me, I [didn’t] know what this was supposed to be I have never seen a bowl and a spoon, and the man who was with me also got something in a bowl, he ate everything, and when he ate up his, he took my bowl and the spoon and held it for me and said I should eat and that I also did not understand when he said this, then I said I don’t know, then he ate it up, but I did eat the bread which Hildel had brought, and when he put the food down he always said I should say where I’m from and because I did not understand him, I always said don’t know, horse, rider like my father is, then Hildel said, if I don’t tell where I’m from, I cannot become a rider, but I understood nothing of all this and then I always said, don’t know, then he left again then I again cried for a long time, then this man came over again and said I stop crying, and I did and he said even more but I did not understand all that he said, then it was evening and Hildel again brought bread, and water, then I started to cry and said want to go home, white horse, then Hildel spoke to me always quite sharply and that always hurt me [physically] a lot in the head then I ate the bread and drank the water, then it was night, then I slept again, now it became day for the second time, and I sat up again and again started crying, and again cried until Hildel came, and brought the bread, then I said again home horse and rider want to be like my father, then Hildel said what he always said, and always so sharply that it hurt me, and because I never understood Hildel what he said I always said don’t know and cried again then he left again, then again the man who was locked up with me came over and said I should stop crying then I stopped again, and then he said more, but I did not understand what he said. Toward 9 o’clock he left and then I was alone, and when he was gone I again started to cry until Hildel came at noon and brought the food and bread—[manuscript ends abruptly].
Appendix 4
Kaspar Hauser’s Dreams
Kaspar’s dreams are strange, disturbing experiences halfway between visions, hallucinations, and dreams. In 1831, in a deposition, the thirty-two-year-old Tucher tells about taking Kaspar on a visit to the Veste Castle in Nuremberg on September 14, 1828 (so five months after arriving in Nuremberg), the first Kaspar made. They were walking up the steps when the large French doors to one of the palace rooms became visible. Kaspar stopped and looked troubled. Asked what was the matter, he told Tucher that the doors reminded him suddenly of a dream he had had on the night of August thirtieth, some two weeks earlier (he had mentioned the dream to Tucher, but the latter had not paid much attention). He stared at the doors for a long time. Then they proceeded up the stairs, and Kaspar said that these stairs were like the ones in that dream, only the ones in the dream were more beautiful. When they reached a great hall with paintings, Kaspar stopped, stared, and then went into convulsions, “as he always did when he was thinking deeply about something.” His dream was coming back to him in greater detail, and in full color. He began recounting the dream, then stopped and said “with deep emotion”: ‘It feels like I had such a house, I don’t know what this means.’” At the end of the dream, he saw himself lying in a bed, and a woman came to the door, with a yellow hat with thick white feathers in it. After her, a man walked into the room, dressed all in black, a tall hat on his head, a sword on his hip, and on his chest a cross on a blue ribbon. The woman came to Hauser’s bed and stood still, the man stood behind the woman. Hauser asked the woman what she wanted. She did not answer. He repeated his question. She still did not answer. She held in her hand a white kerchief, which she held out to him and which he only noticed after he asked her for the second time what she wanted. Then the man went out the door, and the woman followed him. That was the end of the dream.
Tucher then said that on November 11, less than a month later, Kaspar told him about another dream: that his mother came and stood in front of his bed, wept profusely, and called him Gottfried over and over, a name he did not recognize. This was not, said Kaspar, the same woman as the one in the earlier dream. Tucher said that he got the feeling that deeply buried memories were attempting to make their way into consciousness.1
This same dream is related in our manuscript by Daumer:
1828. During the night of November 10, Kaspar Hauser dreamt that his mother came to his bed and called his name. He believed he awakened when he heard her call. The lady placed her blue wrap next to him and covered his face with hot tears. She talked about many things, but he had forgotten them. But he remembers that she called him Gottfried, a name he had not heard since he had been in Nuremberg. He wept much in his dream, so that a tear-soaked spot could be seen on his pillow. His eyes were red and swollen. He wept while talking about his dream and felt very sick and much affected all day. The woman, who in an earlier dream came to his bed in a castle, had a different face than his mother, one that was unknown to him. The latter [his mother] he recognized instantly.2
The question that arises, then, is whether Kaspar Hauser told this same dream to both Daumer and Tucher or whether Tucher merely heard it from Daumer. It would seem that Kaspar Hauser told both dreams directly to Tucher. We know for certain that he told him the first one, since Tucher says so explicitly: “Kaspar Hauser told me about a dream that he had during the night of August 30 to 31, 1828, that is, three months after he arrived here. I immediately wrote down what he told me and am now repeating it exactly.”3 What we don’t know, however, and what Tucher does not tell us, is when did Kaspar Hauser tell him this? At the time or months later? There are some more clues: Tucher goes on to say that “the memory of this dream came to him clearly for the first time when he visited the local palace for the first time on September 14, 1828. I well remember him speaking about it, but I do not know how it came about that his account was not immediately given full attention, for normally nothing, not even the most minor detail, was left unnoticed.”4 What seems to follow from this is that this dream was not the product of Kaspar thinking others wanted such a dream. Nor did anybody jump upon it as a means of solving the puzzle of his identity. Its authenticity see
ms vouched for. Tucher says about the first dream (and it would probably be true of the second one as well): “I can therefore give expression to my conviction that old memories which had disappeared from his waking consciousness but were dormant in his soul, may well form the basis of this dream.”5 I would have to agree. The question is: What dreams are found “interesting” enough to recount to more than one person? Was the dream “memorable” to Kaspar Hauser because it dealt with his noble origins, or was the dream in and of itself of interest to him because of its vividness, or perhaps its emotional content?
It is impossible to say, at this time, whether Daumer encouraged Kaspar Hauser to believe that these dreams were genuine memories of a life led before he was imprisoned. It does not seem impossible. Certainly Daumer took them to be actual reminiscences and continued to show an interest, as we see from a later entry in the same manuscript:
In the spring of 1830 he said to me: “I dimly feel as though I had had a teacher at one time.” He said that it seemed to him, as a result of a dream-state (upon awakening, still half asleep), that, as a fourteen-year-old child6 he had been taken by his father to a room on the lower floor of the castle that he had dreamed about earlier, to meet with a teacher. His father warned me to study because some day he would have to take his place and threatened punishment if he became inattentive, (p. 153)7
Daumer then asked Kaspar more details about the first dream. (These were reported by him in a book he published in 1873). Did he, asked Daumer, remember anything about a coat of arms? Kaspar did not know what this term meant. Daumer presumably explained (it is unclear whether he actually did). Kaspar said he knew neither the word nor the object. However, in the dream there was a picture he remembered seeing, inside the door, on the wall. He then drew for Daumer what he remembered seeing in the dream. This drawing has been preserved. What it shows is indeed a coat of arms: an animal of uncertain origin (lion), a scepter (a word and object he did not know), crossed swords, a cross, and so on. Daumer had to content himself with wondering whether any castle contained such a coat of arms. The question remained unanswered until many years later, in 1929, when the historian Fritz Klee found an almost identical coat of arms in a castle at Beuggen, which had always been the subject of rumors: This, said the inhabitants, was the place where Kaspar Hauser was incarcerated.
It is fascinating to speculate that whoever was responsible for the crime had not counted on Kaspar dreaming something from a real past that could alert somebody to the secret. Nor had anyone reckoned with the idea that Kaspar would learn to draw. It was only as he made this sketch that he began to recognize that he had a talent for drawing. One of the first, if not the very first, tempera drawings he made, on April 22, 1829, was of a plant. There was always something a little bit mysterious about it, since it did not seem, like almost all the other drawings of plants Kaspar made, to be based on a model. Only very recently, in 1987, did it occur to anybody that this drawing bore a striking resemblance to the window in the dungeon of a castle in Pilsach (owned during Kaspar Hauser’s life by Karl Ernst Freiherr von Griessenbeck, 1787-1863). In fact, a few years ago, the current owner of this very same castle, while doing renovations, found a white toy wooden horse of precisely the dimensions described by Kaspar Hauser.
It is difficult to say if these dreams are entirely authentic. Freud was once asked: “Can a man be held responsible for his own dreams?” His terse answer was, “Whom else would you hold responsible?” This wonderful witticism is immediately convincing—until one thinks about it. Then it is hard to avoid the recognition that somebody else is always responsible for one’s dreams. Kaspar Hauser, like the rest of us, was undoubtedly set to dreaming by experiences imposed on him from without. Can another person, though, be held responsible for one s own memories? We should bear in mind that we do not know what Kaspar Hauser actually dreamed, since there are a number of restrictions: Evidently he told Daumer only what he thought his teacher would be interested in (no free association reigns here). Moreover, we do not know how much of what he actually told Daumer was preserved. We are restricted by what Daumer remembered, and then further by what he chose to write about in his diary. And even in that writing there were bound to be distortions and falsifications, because Daumer was keeping the diary for a specific purpose. He was not the dreamer. And his own ability to express himself was imperfect to say the least. Nonetheless we cannot rewrite history and demand different texts. Kaspar Hauser was happy and eager to recount his dreams, and they seemed to flow from him. But these were only dreams he had after he was in Daumer’s house, it seems not to have occurred to anybody to ask him if he ever dreamed while in prison. Or whether he dreamed now about his time in prison. The dreams he did have and remember and retell are nevertheless of genuine importance and cannot simply be dismissed as having been dreamed sur commande, as it were. For one thing, we have Daumer’s assurance, in his later book8 (responding to criticisms of his earlier work), which I am inclined to believe:
I never caused, influenced, or led Hauser to his remarks about his dreams, visions, apparent memories from his unknown former life. In no way can they be regarded as my production. Actually, part of the time I paid too little attention to such remarks. An example would be the castle he dreamed about, which he considered to be a recollection. Friends have correctly criticized me for this.
Here Daumer has an important footnote that reads:
On page 30 of my book Enthüllungen I remarked: In the beginning I gave the matter no importance whatever, and thought that Hauser was just indulging in fantasies, until, with the help of my friend, professor and former councillor of state von Hermann, who saw into these things more deeply than I did, I came to believe that Hauser could not possibly have imagined something of the kind, and that this castle must surely exist somewhere. President Feuerbach very definitely realized this to be true and said so.
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