WHO WAS CASPAR HAUSER?


Recent publications have again attracted our attention to a subject
which about thirty years ago was the cause of great excitement and
innumerable speculations. The very extraordinary advent, life, and death
of Caspar Hauser, the novelty and singularity of all his thoughts and
actions, and his charming innocence and amiability, interested at the
time all Europe in his behalf. Thrown upon the world in a state of utter
helplessness, he was adopted by one of the cities of Germany, and became
not only a universal pet, but a sight which people flocked from all
parts to see. It became a perfect fever, raging throughout Germany, and
extending also to other countries. The papers teemed with accounts and
conjectures. Innumerable essays and even books were written, almost
every one advancing a different theory for the solution of the mystery.
But his death was still more the occasion for their appearance, and for
some time thereafter they literally swarmed from the press. Every one
who had in any way come in contact with him, and a great many who knew
him by reputation only, thought themselves called upon to give their
views, so that in a little while the subject acquired almost a
literature of its own.

But this excitement gradually disappeared, and with it most of the
literature which it had called forth. There are a few names, however,
which occur frequently in connection with that of Caspar Hauser, to
whose opinions we shall subsequently call attention. They are Feuerbach,
Daumer, Merker, Stanhope, Binder, Meier, and Fuhrmann.[A] Of these,
Binder was his earliest protector; Feuerbach conducted the legal
investigations to which Caspar's mysterious appearance gave rise; Daumer
was for a long time his teacher and host; Stanhope adopted him; Meier