No one is absolutely sure. His story has been retold by the West German film director Werner Herzog, who, aptly enough, called his film The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. Herzog portrayed his hero as finding life itself to resemble a half finished story, whose end and purpose he could never quite recall.
The facts as collected from various accounts are these: Kaspar arrived mysteriously in Nuremberg in 1828, footsore and dazed. A letter he carried from his purported guardian explained that he had been brought up in seclusion and so could not talk, but that he wanted to be a soldier. Under the care of an educationalist, G. T. Daumer, he soon learned to read, talk, and write, and tell his own story.
For as long as he could remember, he related, he had been confined in a dark cell, fed on water and black bread. Then one day this regime changed; his keeper taught him to walk, to pronounce his name, and to say that he wanted to be a soldier. Then, after walking for several days, they reached the outskirts of Nuremberg, where his keeper left him to make his own way into the city and conventional human contact.
