Kaspar Hauser
2002
Directed by Gabriela Wengler
Customer: ZDF/ARTE
Story
On 14 December 1833, a 21-year-old man is approached by a stranger in the garden of the palace of Ansbach and dealt a knife wound to the chest. He flees home and dies from his wounds three days later, without saying a word about his aggressor or aggressors.The dead man was Kaspar Hauser, who as a "wolf´s child" had caused quite a stir at Europe´s royal courts. Kaspar Hauser, the youth without a past, became one of the 19th century´s most celebrated mysteries. Who was this man? And what turned his case into such a sensation? SPHINX sets out to investigate the crime. What really happened? The year is 1828, at the time of the Biedermeiers. A totally bedraggled youth turns up in the middle of Nuremberg, a bastion of the steadily growing bourgeoisie. He is Kaspar Hauser, healthy and unharmed, but with the mental age of a small child. A guardian appointed by the court taught his ward to speak, read and write, but his origin remained a mystery. The case of Europe´s child has in the meantime inspired over 1000 publications and numerous novels. The traces take SPHINX to the princely courts of the Biedermeier age, as well as to Ansbach, Nuremberg and to long forgotten castles of the Rhine. With specimens and handwriting analyses and with the help of modern gene analyses, SPHINX comes a step closer to solving the mystery of Kaspar Hauser and his origin.
