Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #21 (22 May 1847).
This singular document Herr Cuno communicated to Feuerbach, the President of the Court of Appeal, because he believed him to be prosecuting the history of Hauser. What must we think of it? Many things. The letter being written in Latin, and Latin of its kind, seems to indicate the author of it to be a country clergyman. Further, the writer being closely watched was to account for the singular choice of the vehicle of publication. The bottle had probably not been carried far, but flung out of the house window into the flood, which is stated to be on the Rhine. The place, Lauffenburg, points to the Upper Rhine Lands of Baden, for in Switzerland there is no throne, The date agrees with the government of Karl, and if Hauser was really the elder prince, then his underground dungeon was unknown to his father.
Now, Engesser was a parish priest in the Upper Rhine Land; had he a hand in this, and thereby laid the foundation of his rapid fortune? In this case, he must have been too wicked to have written this document. It must have been some subordinate clergyman who had been made prison assistant; whose conscience oppressed him; but who was too closely watched to allow him to fly, and who hoped to help his charge by this scheme. If that charge was Hauser, he was then only four years old.
Or, perhaps, it was a chaplain, who by chance was brought there upon the trace of his superior clergyman. It would be interesting to learn whether, about this time there was not a sudden death in the neighbourhood. The inhabitants of Lauffenburg should recollect, and if any such fact occurred, send the account of it to the Swiss newspapers.
I learn further, that some days ago the Dorfzeitung contained the intelligence that the father of Hauser had been discovered to be a Catholic priest. I am generally on my guard against such reports, because of late there have been obviously manifold attempts to lead the public mind from the track; but in this case, perhaps, the last news may link itself to the first, and may locate Hauser's dungeon in some parsonage on the Rhine, near Lauffenburg, if, on the appearance of the paragraph in the Vossich Gazette, the youth had not been conveyed elsewhere.
Here I send my little volume into the world, with a greeting to my friends. I must hide myself like a thief, in order to complete and print it. The Baden government has recently made inquisition after me, and the Strasburg police in consequence have been actively on the alert to discover me. As I have, since my abode on the French frontiers, held myself aloof from political correspondence, and concealed my retreat even from my most intimate friends, I may certainly believe that my regular and retiring behaviour can have drawn no increased surveillance of the French police upon me. And what can the Baden government want with me? A respectable and trustworthy person, who neither knew of the conversation in Rebstock alluded to in my preface, nor of my pamphlet, assured me that it was on account of a brochure, which this government was anxious to prevent me publishing. In this case the Baden government could not surely be aware that I meant to give forth the history of Hauser merely in the form of rumours, timidly and in doubt. Are mere rumours of such consequence that people should give themselves so much trouble about them?
I have thus printed pretty fully the contents of this singular little volume, which has so long kept, and still keeps, the Baden government in such uneasiness. Mere rumours, nay, the slightest rumours, on this subject, put it into the greatest alarm. The story of Caspar Hauser had been read by us in England, and was partly forgotten, when, during our residence in Heidelberg in 1841, there was a sudden muttering in society of some circumstance which had taken place there. It was this. The police had waited on three citizens, and demanded their attendance at the police-office. There as many letters were produced, addressed to these gentlemen respectively, each announcing that a copy of the pamphlet now translated in these pages, and containing also an essay on Schiller's "Robbers," full of allusion to its subject, had been forwarded in a certain parcel to a certain Herr Trübner for each of them. These letters had been intercepted at the post-office, and the parcel in question, on its arrival, also had been intercepted at the parcel post, and the said books taken out, and were now produced. The three gentlemen were now strictly questioned as to their knowledge of, and connexion with, the senders of these books. They pleaded ignorance, but were not entirely dismissed without shrewd suspicions; and the books and letters were taken care of.
This circumstance, in a little gossiping place like Heidelberg, where the police is strong and active, but tittle-tattle is still more strong and active, created, as may be supposed, a most lively, deep, and universal, though whispered, sensation. It was to us a matter of no little surprise how so strange an interest could attach to the story of Caspar Hauser, but particularly why the government treated a knowledge of it as a criminal matter. The love of talking on a prohibited subject was in our favour, and we soon were let into the whole mystery.
We found the belief of Caspar Hauser having been no other than the eldest son of the Grand-Duke Karl, afixed and most extensively diffused article of faith in the public mind, and not the less so in the higher than in the lower classes. All the suspicious circumstances above mentioned were detailed to us—the bad character of Ludwig, the sudden deaths which had cleared his way to the throne; the worse character of the Margravine of Hochberg, his step-mother, and supposed to be something even nearer to him; the fate of the Grand-Duke Karl, and, the deaths, so called, of his two sons, while his daughters all lived; and then the mysterious story of Caspar Hauser; all were put together with matters that gave a strange verisimilitude to the relation. All that had been alleged of Caspar Hauser's being the son of a labourer, and then of a priest, would not satisfy public belief. They felt that the care and expense of seventeen years' so peculiar incarceration implied a victim of a higher station. The fame of the old Margravine von Hochberg was terrifically evil: her name was accompanied by muttered curses. There was no doubt whatever in the public mind that the Major Hennehofer was THE MAN spoken of by Caspar Hauser as his keeper, and who was, after two attempts, finally his murderer. It appeared clear that the party which had doomed Caspar Hauser to so strange a confinement, had believed that he would never be able to tell tales; but when they found that he had acquired languages, and that public curiosity was excited about him, they became alarmed. He was pursued and killed by the man; the man escaped readily, and was never discovered. The Baden government betrayed no eagerness to find him, or to dive into the mystery. When suspicion turned strongly upon this Hennehofer, he was never brought to any inquiry by government, but continued to live under its protection, and does so continue to this day. He lives in his castle in the Upper Rhine Land, leading a gloomy and secluded life. The public has always looked on the widow of the Grand-Duke Karl, and supposed mother of Caspar Hauser, with great regard, attracted not only by her talents and virtues, but by her ill health, and supposed secret sorrows. It believed, and believes, that the wicked old Margravine, as they call her, and her paramour Ludwig, had resolved at all costs that the children of the Frenchwoman, Stephanie, adopted daughter of Napoleon, should never sit on the ducal throne of Baden.
And what course did the reigning family of Baden take to get rid of these dark suspicions? Did it invite inquiry; bring them to the light and disprove them? No! It has, from the first moment of their spreading, regarded them with the utmost apparent alarm and anxiety. Every means has been employed to stifle and suppress the report. The police has every where the strictest orders to keep it down—to watch for and seize every book or writing on the subject. In fact, if the reigning family be innocent, it has adopted every means calculated to convince the public that it is guilty. It has adopted every means that guilt could instinctively adopt.
In the meantime, the Court of Bavaria, on the murder of Caspar Hauser, had instituted an inquiry, which went on for some time under the management of the acute and celebrated President of the Court of Appeal, Anselm von Feuerbach, and at length terminated with an abrupt announcement in the report of the judge in the words quoted above, that "there are circles of human society into which the arm of justice dares not penetrate."
Such a termination, accompanied by such an announcement, was not calculated to set the public mind at rest. It only went on questioning, and putting things together with a more insatiable avidity. What increased and sustained this avidity was, that Lord Stanhope, who had evinced so much interest in Hauser while living, after his death was invited to the Court at Carlsruhe, and speedily professed that he regarded the whole history of Hauser as a hoax, or something of the kind, and manifested no further care about him. Not so with the sagacious and persevering Feuerbach. He pursued his own individual scrutiny into this mysterious history with enduring ardour, and it was said had made curious discoveries, and was likely one day to publish them. Feuerbach died suddenly, as has done almost every one who, in Germany, has been rash enough to trouble himself about this matter. We have conversed with connexions of the judge, and they seemed to entertain little doubt of the nature of his fatal disease.
The books about Caspar Hauser were strictly prohibited throughout Baden. The portraits of him were considered to bear a striking resemblance to the reigning family. All talk on this subject was secret; and the greatest vigilance on the part of the police made every one who had a copy of Hauser's history hide it carefully.
There was a lady, who came occasionally to our house, whom we unexpectedly found very open on the subject; but not being able to answer certain questions, she said she would ask her father, who knew a great deal about it from a friend at court. The next time we saw this lady we asked the result of her inquiries. Her countenance fell at once. She said that she had done very wrong. Her father had reprimanded her very severely; for this matter was by no means to the honour of the reigning family; and should, least of all, have been exposed to foreigners.
Thus this opening was as suddenly closed as found. We learned nothing more from this informant, than that there were many things of strange character about the history of the Baden family, and that a great sensitiveness reigned throughout the palace on these subjects.
So great was the jealousy of any discovery of an interest in the story of Caspar Hauser, that we never could procure a sight of the book we have now quoted from more than one person in Germany; and a second loan of it was declined, lest no good might come of it. We tried Hamburg and other large cities, but in vain. On our return to England, hearing that the work was published in Paris, we commissioned a German physician there, a warm friend of ours, to procure a copy. He sent us word that all his exertions to that end had been in vain. The shop was speedily shut up after the publication there; the publisher had disappeared; and it was believed that the Baden government had taken care both of him and his dangerous stock.
We learned, however, that the author of the book was living in England. He had been obliged to make a rapid retreat not only from Germany, but from the continent, in consequence of this publication, and has continued to reside in England ever since, as his only safe retreat. The author, however, did not possess a copy of his own book; and it has not been without a most unremitting research that we have at length procured it.
Some time ago we received from the author the following letter, which will open up a new and unexpected connexion of the history of Caspar Hauser with the politics of the continent. It is full of matter of singular importance.
Sir,
I have not forgotten the permission you gave me in a letter some four months ago to call on you; but it is now my turn to ask you whether you still take some interest in the subject of Caspar Hauser? His mother, the Grand-Duchess Stephanie is here, and something serious might be done. I have documents in hand never printed before, and the discovery or detection can be pushed forth several steps more. A new book would now be in time. The only misfortune is this—I know it from my own experience, to what persecutions a man is exposed by interfering in this subject; and I should under no circumstances advise you to publish even a translation under your name, if you wish ever to return to Baden; and then secondly, there are so many new statements to be made, which nobody but myself can take under his responsibility. I intend, under all circumstances, to publish a new book on Caspar Hauser; but, as it would be quicker done and better, if I had your co-operation, consider whether it is worth your while to undertake the thing. Many things will only be translations in it, and it is only the new information I must work out myself.
As you have some knowledge of Baden and the subject of Caspar Hanser, I may be brief enough in laying before you the plan of the book as I have conceived it. The book is to contain a full information of all that is known until now to the public, and also to me, concerning Hauser. In my new statements certainly I appear as a witness, and for this reason I should distribute the matter in the following way:
Introduction.—A short sketch of my own life, with a view of showing the way in which I got connected and acquainted with the principal actors of the tragedy, also throwing new light on their doings and character. The sketch is limited to this point—elucidating the subject of C. H.
The book itself would contain a review of the principal publications on C. H. that have appeared; and lastly, my new statements and unprinted documents, There would be for consideration:
1. Feuerbach's little work on Caspar Hauser, as containing all the principal incidents in the life of C. H. from his first appearance at Nuremberg, to the first attempt on his life. As to the authors of the crime, Feuerbach hints bravely that a court and priests (the priest Engesser) were implicated in it. The book being already translated into English, extracts would be sufficient principally referring to the facts, leaving the proofs aside. (In my possession.)
2. The little work of the Earl of Stanhope on Hauser. From this must be taken the relation of the end of C. H., and as he represented him as an impostor, his assertions must be disproved. (I can get it.)
3. The little pamphlet I published myself at Strasburg, 1834, wherein first the family crimes of the grand-ducal family were drawn to the light. (I can get it.)
4, A second article of mine, which appeared in a German paper, "Deutsches Leben," of which I published four numbers here in 1834. (I can get it.)
These two productions of mine must be translated and given in whole, because they had their history; inciting the court of Baden to important steps, and serving, by a strange accident, as a trap in which the principal culprit "Von Hennehofer" was caught. Of this immediately after having despatched two other publications.
There appeared in Switzerland a little book on Hauser, with the name of Paris on the title; this is probably the work you meant when you wrote to me. Besides some generally known notices, it is merely an amplification of my own pamphlet, in which the author has drawn largely on fiction. The book, however, is useful, as the subject is complete, and reads like a novel. (I can get it.)
A real novel, however, appeared under the title Caspar Hauser, at Stuttgart, by a friend of mine, Sieboldt, which is partly made up from real facts, and in this respect deserves consideration. (I have it in my possession.)
We come now to the subsequent events.
When my pamphlet appeared, the Baden government took the most extraordinary measures to suppress it. But the strangest events happened after I had already left Strasburg for Paris.
I was hidden at Strasburg because the French government wanted to induce me not to print the pamphlet. Some of the Germans, however, saw me occasionally; amongst those was a man I had only seen once or twice without taking much notice of him. His name was Sailer, he is a native of Wirtemberg, where his father was deputy, and by profession an apothecary. To this Sailer a friend of mine had given the manuscript of the Preface, in which, after it had been printed, I had wrapped some tobacco for him. My friend, without my knowledge, had given that mannscript to Sailer. Sailer soon afterwards departed for Kippenheim, where he had an uncle, and in the neighbourhood of which Hennehofer, minister of foreign affairs in Baden, under Ludwig, lived. He heard of the manuscript of a Preface, in which mention was not yet made of the real subject, and asked it from Sailer. From this moment, willing to employ him as his spy, he cultivated his acquaintance, and after the pamphlet had appeared, he really sent him to Strasburg, which I had already left. But arrived there he discovered his mission immediately to a friend of mine, who wrote down everything he said he had heard from, or been told by Hennehofer. What he said rendered the guilt of the latter glaring, and I learned several new facts of importance. All these discoveries were sent to me to Paris.
In the summer of the same year I published here the above-mentioned periodical, "Deutsches Leben, Kunst and Poesie," in the second number of which I began a paper on Caspar Hauser, a condensation and criticism of what I had said before, but also containing a new matter of importance, the dispute of Baden with Bavaria about the Palatinate.
Though this matter belongs to details farther on, I will state it here as showing you at once how the affairs of Hauser enter into the politics of Europe. The Palatinate formerly belonged to Bavaria, and the Breisgau, or South of Baden, to Austria. In 1813, when Baden had not yet separated from Napoleon, the two powers concluded a treaty at Ried, in virtue of which Bavaria ceded to Austria the Tyrol, under a promise of indemnification by the Palatinate, and a yearly payment of 100,000 guilders by Austria until Bavaria should be in possession, paid to the present day—whilst on the other hand Austria coveted the Breisgau. These designs were, however, frustrated by the accession of Baden to the allied army and the protection of Russia. There remained only one chance: the Grand-Duke Karl, husband to Stephanie, had at that moment no male children; and the same was the case with the only two remaining heirs, his two uncles. If he, therefore, died without male issue, the reigning family became extinct, and then both Austria and Bavaria could renew their pretensions. Thus both powers were interested in the extinction of the family.
Of these two uncles, the younger, Ludwig, grand-duke (1818—1830), who was very ambitious, had likewise no chance of reigning unless his nephew died without male issue. He was, moreover, much in want of money, and had a personal spite against Stephanie. He it was who, through the Reichsgräfin, Geyer von Geyersberg, the mother of the margraves and the reigning duke, put the two male children of Stephanie out of the way. This was long known in the country; but the elder one, Hauser, who was believed to have been murdered like his brother, was saved in a strange way. It is almost certain that this was not done with the knowledge of Ludwig, but rather by his confederates, who in the child wished to preserve a weapon wherewith to frighten Ludwig, when on the throne, into a compliance with their wishes. Here Austria got in by obtaining knowledge of the secret, and forced Ludwig to a great extent to reign according to her own wishes. The same threat of exposing him was also employed against the reigning grand-duke. For this I can quote now an English authority for you, namely, extracts from the French papers, with the editorial observations in the Chronicle, then the organ of the ministry, number of October 28, 1839. But there being a slight mistake in it, I will place here the fact as it is.
Papers referring to Hauser and the crimes committed against him were deposited with Rothschild and the Baden ambassador at the Diet; von Blittersdorf, a creature of Metternich, had the impudence to tell the grand-duke either to buy off the papers with two millions of a or to run the risk of having the thing published.
The grand-duke, frightened, laid the affair before the council of state, who advised him not to pay; but he was so full of fear that he paid the money from his private purse. Not satisfied with that, he was forced also to make Blittersdorf his minister of foreign affairs,—(it was the period of the Syrian question, when a war against France was possible, and Austria, consequently, interested to have a creature of her own master of the policy and army of Baden). The grand-duchess, aware of the disappearance of the money, and the part Blittersdorf had taken in the transaction, openly showed him her indignation. Then they took this revenge; the Jewish banker von Haber, who had acted as the agent of Austria, near Don Carlos, slandered her, openly boasting of having enjoyed her favours. Julius von Goeler then reproved him, and denounced him to the magistrate (vor Amt), but the thing was quashed. It was the same Goeler who in 1843 (October) refused to admit Haber at the ball given in honour of the Prussian grand-duchess, Helena, at Baden-Baden, for the reason assigned, and thus gave rise to those two famous duels: in the first of which both Goeler and his antagonist, a Russian officer, were killed; and in the second, the Baden artillery officer, Don Sarrahaga, by the hands of Haber. But to the Goelers, whom I know intimately, belonging to the highest nobility of Baden, the first result was, that the Austrian party was overthrown, and Blittersdorf driven out of the ministry. The thing, however, had created such a scandal, that the grand-duke also repudiated his wife, a daughter of the ex-king of Sweden, Gustavus, as blasted in her reputation. This again was answered by her brother, the Prince of Sweden, in the service of Austria, who had married a daughter of Stephanie, now here in England, from whom he also separated as being a princess of Baden. There is already plenty of other scandal, but what I cannot explain here; through Austria, also, the Jesuits were introduced into the business of Hauser.
To return now to our real subject: I said, then, above, that Sailer had been sent by Hennehofer to Strasburg as a spy, with an order of finding out "from whom I had received my information," and then exposed his secrets. For the moment I could not make use of the discoveries, valuable as they had been. But in the same year, 1834, towards the end of it, when arrived here, I published the above-mentioned German paper. Sailer was at that moment at Strasburg; and now Hennehofer, by pay, and under the greatest promises, succeeded in persuading him to suppress the numbers that were sent to Strasburg, and prevent their circulation in Germany. To a great extent this was done; but Sailer, now still more in possession of the secrets of Hennehofer, used his position to extort money from him, and thus lived at his expense until the end of 1835. At that time Sailer was at Zurich, and there a political murder was committed against a Prussian spy, named Lessing, (see Conversations-Lexicon der Neuzeit, s.v.) and Sailer, like many others of the German refugees was arrested. In searching his house the whole series of the letters of Hennehofer to Sailer was discovered, and Sailer himself by the judge examined on the subject of Hauser. Both his deposition and the letters of Hennehofer have since been printed in Schauberg artenmässige Darstellung der über die Ermordung des Studenten Lessing, geführten Untersuchung, Zürich, 1837; and created an immense sensation; (I have in my possession the leaves of the book referring to Hauser;) but strange as is their nature already, without the letters in my possession not yet printed, the importance of the discovery cannot be fully appreciated.
This would form a new topic, and the most interesting part of the book.
The conclusion would consist of those diplomatical admixtures hinted at above—chiefly based on some despatches of Metternich, to be found in the works of "Genz," and "Kombst's Bundestag."
Excuse me, Sir, for having troubled you with these lines, but the interest you appeared to feel in the matter encourages me now to bring the subject to your remembrance, when the right moment of doing something is come.
I hope I have written enough to enable you to judge whether there is a possibility for you of taking the direction of this work, without the responsibility of your name.
To count from next Saturday I shall be glad to meet you at your house at any time you may be pleased to fix. The morning would be the most agreeable for me.
In case, however, it should not suit your convenience to enter into the enterprise—of which the above is only an outline, subject to any alterations suggested by you—I beg you to accept these lines as the homage of a German to one of the first German scholars here, and a man who has done so much to spread a true knowledge of Germany and its customs amongst his compatriots.
Yours, etc. J. H. G.
Such is a brief outline of this most singular story. What further light the inquiries of persevering Germans may throw upon it remains yet to be seen. At present the evidence is but circumstantial; but whether the fact be, that Caspar Hauser was the Hereditary Prince of Baden or not, there is a mass of evidence that makes it one of the most curious questions, not of the age only, but of history in general. The circumstance, that no ordinary cause could have led to so singular and long-continued immurement of a boy, and that the alarm manifested on his acquiring language, and exciting the inquiry of the public, demonstrated that no ordinary causes did lie at the bottom of it, and that parties of no ordinary station or power were vitally mixed up with the mystery;—these things, combined with the trembling anxiety of the Baden government whenever the mystery was touched upon, will, should nothing further come to light, leave firmly on the public mind of Germany a strong opinion on the subject. Men of known sudden elevation under very suspicious circumstances, still living with all these suspicious circumstances under the protection of the government;—the fact of one of these men, suspected of having been the most active instrument in Caspar Hauser's fate, being the first to pounce on any one who dares to utter a syllable on the subject—the agreeing dates of things—the inroads of death on certain lives, and as if purposely to serve the views of certain ambitious parties—and finally, the constant, active, and continued suppression by the Baden government of all whisper of this history,—make the subject one of singular interest as a literary topic, and as such we have thrown it before the English public.