Kaspar Hauser

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the life and death of Kaspar Hauser still raise questions today. Born into the aristocratic house of Baden, then imprisoned and cut off from all human contact as a child, in 1828 Kaspar appeared on the streets of Nuremberg at the age of fifteen, incoherent and underdeveloped. He went on to display great purity and spiritual maturity during the short time he spent in the company of others, until his brutal murder at the age of twenty-one.

Who was this young man who spent almost all of his childhood in isolation? Why was he locked away? Where did his life begin? In the last month of his life, Rudolf Steiner identified the matter of Kaspar Hauser’s origin as one of the great questions of history. In this fascinating book, Terry Boardman conducts a phenomenological and historical enquiry into Steiner’s question and tries to answer it mostly in terms of Kaspar’s spiritual origin and less in terms of his genetic roots.

Kaspar Hauser’s life represents a moving triumph of the human spirit over darkness and adversity, which has both historical and contemporary relevance. The text, along with powerful and provocative illustrations by David Newbatt, offers an interpretation of the phenomena surrounding the life of Kaspar Hauser while shedding light on his spiritual origin and mission.

This book is an important addition to the literature on the mysterious figure of Kaspar Hauser.