"We meet him as a Gumby-like figure, asleep on a dirt floor, with only a jug of water and a toy horse. He has no idea how he got there. When he's around seventeen years old, Kaspar meets his captor, rendered in the book as a shadowy, hatch-marked father: "The Man in Black." The man teaches him to write his name; he teaches him to take a few fumbling goose steps outside."
"It takes a while for the world to figure out who, or what, Kaspar is. "He's a madman! An imbecile! A half-savage! An impostor!" policemen guess, before locking him up. He becomes a curiosity. He gets passed from one custodian to another, including scientists and aristocrats, all around Europe. He falls in love with nature, and paints sought-after watercolors of flowers and fruit."
Kaspar Hauser is discovered asleep on a dirt floor with only a jug of water and a toy horse, unaware of his origins. At about seventeen a shadowy figure teaches him to write his name and to take tentative steps outside, then abandons him in Nuremberg with a note promising him to the military. Authorities label him mad and lock him up, and he is shuffled among custodians, scientists, and aristocrats across Europe. He becomes a public curiosity, awakens emotionally through encounters with nature, produces admired watercolors, and lives a life marked by persistent mystery and tragedy.
Read at The New Yorker
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