The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Date: May 18, 2026
Hosts: Dan and Mike (from "50 Minute Film Fanatics")
Episode Theme: A deep, conversational exploration of Werner Herzog's 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, its themes, performances, and philosophical implications.

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Episode Overview

Dan and Mike engage in an unscripted, passionate discussion about The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, approaching the film as both a strange, moving meditation on innocence and the human condition, and a uniquely structured, darkly comic artifact of cinema. Drawing parallels to philosophy, literature, and other films, they unpack Herzog's approach, the enigmatic central performance of Bruno S., and the enduring power of confronting mystery over solutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Impressions and Film Structure

• Herzog’s "Private Excitements of the Mind":
  • Mike highlights the film as a personal artistic journey, likening Herzog’s obsession with “private excitements of the mind” (02:58), comparing him to Paul Auster and David Lynch, whose works equally resist commercial sanitization.
  • The film’s episodic narrative is praised for walking “the knife’s edge of falling apart all the time” but remaining cohesive due to Herzog’s fixated vision.
    • “If you did it without the particular touch of Werner Herzog, or he was like a less obsessed individual himself, there would be no movie here.” (04:03 – Mike)
• Dan’s Reaction:
  • Dan describes the experience as uniquely unpredictable and compelling:
    • “This is like somebody telling you to watch 2001 for the first time because it’s not like anything you’ve seen before. You really don’t know what to expect, and you can’t stop watching it.” (05:03 – Dan)
• Humor in the Film:
  • Both hosts surprise themselves by noting the film’s comedy:
    • “I was, like, really laughing. There were parts where I was laughing harder at this than I have at like 95% of the comedies...” (05:45 – Dan)
  • Specifically, the humor arises from “bureaucracy” and “logic professors,” bringing up Kafkaesque comparisons, yet handled with a lightness distinct from Kafka (05:54 – Mike).

2. Thematic Explorations: Innocence and Alienation

• Innocence as Activity:
  • Mike draws a parallel to Spielberg’s E.T., calling innocence not a state, but “an activity that can be participated in” (06:48). Kaspar’s lack of socialization is rendered both horrifying and pure in a way that is more existential than pathetic.
• Alienation and Social Conventions:
  • Dan: “He’s childlike, but he’s not childish. And he keeps highlighting how different we are. And that makes everybody in the town uncomfortable.” (12:59)
  • The conversation connects Kaspar to figures like The Elephant Man, The Miracle Worker, and Pygmalion, charting how he makes the conventional world uneasy simply by existing (08:53–10:02).
• Cinema and Prelapsarian Language:
  • Mike notes, “He has a personality where things are not…like he doesn’t write his name because he’s egotistical. He writes his name because he’s curious…That’s why Casper writes Casper out of the bushes.” (10:53)

3. Key Memorable Scenes and Quotes

• Kaspar Holding the Baby (12:14):
  • Dan singles out this scene as emblematic of the film’s themes:
    • “He says, you know, with a baby, I’m so far away from everything. And he keeps trying to articulate his position here…he starts out like an infant. And we see him mature as the movie goes on, but still keep his distance…” (12:38)
• Humor of Logic and Bureaucracy:
  • The logic professor’s scene is a standout. Kaspar’s literal approach befuddles the “professor of logic”—Mike points out Kaspar’s unique logic feels more honest and less contaminated by convention (17:05).
  • “The apple stopped here because it wanted to go on the grass.” (17:05 – paraphrasing Kaspar)
• Kaspar’s Weeping at Music (18:32):
  • Mike’s key moment is Kaspar’s tearful reaction to music:
    • “Poe said, beauty of whatever sort invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. And you think, well, we encounter beauty all the time, but if we had that reaction, we would try to hide it.” (18:32)

4. Philosophical Contexts

• The hosts connect the film’s approach to Wittgenstein and Heidegger’s attempts to access pre-conceptual reality.
  • “It seems to me Caspar Hauser is saying, what if [Platonic questions] are a descent. What if I’m where I’m supposed to be and things make sense as they are?” (14:57 – Mike)
• The film is praised for embodying philosophical inquiry without becoming “overly philosophical”—instead, it remains “easy watching,” comprised of moments loosely but powerfully bound (14:57–18:32).

5. The Ending, Autopsy, and Title

• Subverting Mystery with Explanation:
  • The autopsy scene is discussed as a parody of society’s need to reduce mystery to labels:
    • “Finally, we have an explanation for this strange man.” (22:49 – Dan, paraphrasing the stenographer)
    • Dan: “You could take the brain apart with a scalpel, but you will not find the mind.” (25:44)
• Titles and Their Implications:
  • The original German title: “Every man for himself and God against all” is described as a private Herzogian riddle, almost as enigmatic as the film itself (25:53).
  • The English title, “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser,” better captures the experience of the film—“I think that more for me was like what it was like to watch the movie.” (26:44)

6. Bruno S. and Performance

• The hosts praise Bruno S.’s authentic, enigmatic performance, noting his real-life hardships and status as a non-actor. This aligns him perfectly with Kaspar’s own alien presence (26:44–27:54).
• Mike reads an excerpt from Bruno S.'s Wikipedia, emphasizing his outsider status and troubled background (27:25).

7. Kaspar’s Dream (Finale)

• Kaspar’s mystical dream about a desert caravan led by the blind, unable to recognize obstacles, is interpreted as a cryptic commentary on society and self-understanding:
  • “It seems like the experience of being a human is that you’re in a caravan. You’re not sure which way you’re going. The people leading you…have no idea where they’re going. …The legend or enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which is now woven in some way into society, that’s the beginning of the story.” (28:38–29:40 – Mike)
  • When asked, “So when does the wandering end?” Mike simply answers: “Death.” (29:43)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “He’s childlike, but he’s not childish. And he keeps highlighting how different we are. And that makes everybody in the town uncomfortable.”
  – Dan (12:59)

• “If you did it without the particular touch of Werner Herzog, or he was like a less obsessed individual himself, there would be no movie here.”
  – Mike (04:03)

• “This is like somebody telling you to watch 2001 for the first time because it’s not like anything you’ve seen before. You really don’t know what to expect, and you can’t stop watching it.”
  – Dan (05:03)

• “I think Caspar is interesting to Herzog and he’s interesting to us. And I think Herzog doesn’t...teach us some lesson about innocence or some fundamental thing, but he kind of shows you how far we are removed from seeing the world that way.”
  – Dan (13:59)

• “You could take the brain apart with a scalpel, but you will not find the mind.”
  – Mike (25:44)

• “It seems like the experience of being a human is that you’re in a caravan. You’re not sure which way you’re going. The people leading you…have no idea where they’re going.”
  – Mike (28:38)

• “So when does the wandering end?”
  “Death.”
  – Dan & Mike (29:43)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–01:43: (Commercials and Intro – skipped)
• 01:43–12:14: First takes; Herzog's method and humor; comparisons to other films and artists
• 12:14–19:29: Core moments – baby scene, logic professor, Kaspar’s tears, philosophical and emotional resonance
• 19:29–22:49: On innocence, social convention, children, and aesthetics
• 22:49–26:44: Ending, autopsy scene, the problem of "explaining" Kaspar, title discussion
• 26:44–28:38: Bruno S.’s background and performance
• 28:38–29:43: The meaning of Kaspar’s final dream, philosophical wrap-up
• 29:43–end: Closing remarks

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Tone and Original Language

Dan and Mike’s style is passionate, digressive, insightful, and intellectual without pretension. They blend literary, philosophical, and cinematic allusions with personal reflection and humor, often finishing each other’s thoughts or riffing on tangents.

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In Summary

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in Herzog’s and the hosts’ hands, becomes a potent meditation on innocence, alienation, and the limits of societal logic. Dan and Mike challenge listeners to sit with ambiguity, finding beauty and laughter in the film’s refusal to offer easy answers. The film – and the conversation about it – refuse the allure of neat explanations, making Kaspar an enduring enigma, a paradox best left unsolved.

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For further listening: Check out more episodes by Dan and Mike on "50 Minute Film Fanatics," or seek out The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser as a cinematic experience like no other.

Transcript

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[Dan]

Hi everybody. I'm Dan.

[Mike]

And I'm Mike.

[Dan]

So welcome to another episode of 50 Minute Film Fanatics. The premise of the show, as you probably know, is that Mike and I watch movies separately and then talk about them on the podcast for the first time. We don't have any pre conversations. We're trying to replicate those conversations you have as you out of the movie theater and you get in your car. You're really excited to have a conversation about somebody and I am really excited about this week's episode. Mike, what are we doing this week?

[Mike]

I'm so jazzed. It's the Enigma of Kaspa Hausa, 1974,

[Dan]

directed by Werner Herzog and with the screenplay by Herzog and Jacob Wasserman. Now this is a movie based upon a true story or at least a true legend about. Here's the idea. 1828, this 17 year old kid shows up wandering the streets of Nuremberg. He's holding a letter. Actually in the legend he has two letters, but he had been kept in darkness until then and and he kind of became this kind of like local celebrity and Herzog took this story and used it and ran with it to make this film and this meditation on the human condition and a lot of different things. So in part one we always talk about our overall take on this. Mike and I have just seen this for the first time. I'm so excited to hear what he's going to say about it. But because I picked the movie, Mike gets to go first. I have no idea what he's about to say. Mike, your overall reaction to Casper Hauser?

[Mike]

We all have things that we read and they set our imaginations on fire. And I really think that the only difference between the director and the viewer in this case is that he's devoted his life to taking the things like the EL Doctorow called him the private excitements of the mind. And I think that the beautiful thing about some people that we like, I think of Paul Auster, you know, I think about David lynch, is that they do not try to disguise commercially in any way that these are private excitements of the mind. And they often involve characters that have these private excitements of the mind. It's like it's an exploration of artistic individuals that themselves may or may not be artists. You think of someone like Nabokov, who obviously has these distinct excitements and always has some sort of artistic filter or character, but really he's talking about himself. I think it's just so beautiful to hear this story and to use that as an incredible launch pad for exactly the kind of movie that Werner Herzog makes. I mean, it's narrative, it's compressed, it's interesting, it's suspenseful in its own way, but it's a very particular kind of suspense. It's structured really as a series of episodes. I mean, you could divide it into kind of a three act structure, which it has, but in the hands of a much lesser director, that episodic nature gets really boring and it gets really stale and it gets really redundant unless you know what you're doing. I mean, it kind of seems like a bunch of random stuff sloshed together in a way. But if you did it without the particular touch of Werner Herzog, or he was like a less obsessed individual himself, there would be no movie here. It's just right on the knife's edge of falling apart all the time. But it's so tightly held together the way that he does it. It's beautiful.

[Dan]

I think very much the same. When I got done watching it and began immediately texting you, the thing that occurred to me was that if you or I recommend a movie to each other, we're going to go into that movie knowing 75% of what we're about to see, usually, right? Even though our golden rule is we always say, don't read anything about it, just go watch it. But if I say to you, hey, there's this new great collection of, like, you know, 1940s noir movies on Criterion, and there's one called, you know, the. With the Blue diamond. You should watch it. You kind of know what you're going to see, right? And if I said to you watch this thing or that thing, you kind of like, know what you're in for. It might be great. And that's not to denigrate the movie, but this thing, this is like somebody telling you to watch 2001 for the first time because it's not like anything you've seen before. You really don't know what to expect, and you can't stop watching it. I would add another quality of this movie that to all the ones you just said is that it's also incredibly funny. I mean, I was, like, really laughing. There were parts where I was laughing harder at this than I have at like 95% of the comedies, quote, unquote, I'm meant to see.

[Mike]

It's the humor of bureaucracy. It's almost a Kafka humor, but it's taken less seriously. It's sort of what fools these mortals be. But it's all about town councils and fake authority and the structure of received knowledge.

[Dan]

The overzealous stenographer might be. I mean, that's. He deserves like his own miniseries. He was awesome. I love when they're doing the source sword thrusts and he's just sitting there not moving. And you see there's like 20 people in the room. I love the logic professor. I mean, those scenes are all really, really funny. But at the same time, then you have these other things, like, you know, somebody stepped on my name and then I cried. And it's great that he's able to do that in a movie that I think people would write off as air quotes, like intellectual, but it's not. There's something really moving about this and very strange and very mysterious in very much the way that it is like the first time you see 2001.

[Mike]

There's something I think of when I think of E.T. i don't know why I keep thinking of E.T. but I say that, like, when people talk to me about Spielberg. The thing I say about Spielberg is that he makes me feel like innocence is not a state. It is an activity that can be participated in. And this movie makes me feel very much the same way. It kind of seems like a horror movie because ostensibly he's been tortured or neglected for so long. And so the movie seems like it's going in one direction and then there's a thing where innocence has to be. Innocence is like the bloom of a mind which is beginning to apprehend but is too unaware to cover itself. Like Caspar Hauser says things that are embarrassing or he externalizes his interiority, you know, if you want to put it in university terms. Because he doesn't know that you shouldn't do that. Or perhaps you should, but that's not the way people are. And that's what innocence is.

[Dan]

And if you do, you won't get. You won't get accepted by everybody. Right? And he says, the people are like wolves. The people treat me like wolves. Right? My part, my moments about the innocence thing. So I want to go back to something earlier in the beginning was that, you know, you talked about, like, that Herzog's obsessed, and that's how he presents it. And I thought to myself, you know what? Why is this movie so great? Now there's Bruno S. Who. Maybe we'll talk about him in a little bit. But his performance is great. But I thought to myself, if they made this movie today, who would they get to play Casper Hauser? And I have the perfect answer. You ready?

[Mike]

Hit me.

[Dan]

Jack Black. They would get Jack Black to play it, but it wouldn't work because he's just too naturally funny. He's like a naturally funny guy, right? That's why people like him. And, you know, he wouldn't be able to resist kind of mugging it up for the camera. But here I think that that performance by Bruno S. Is. Is as it's, you know, it is. It's enigmatic, at a loss for words. And you also said ET and that's kind of funny because the movie's very much like ET And I couldn't stop thinking of other movies. So I want to give you kind of like a little list of, like, a little rundown of other movies.

[Mike]

Can I take one off the top?

[Dan]

Go ahead.

[Mike]

It's the Elephant man. But it's the mirror image of the Elephant Man.

[Dan]

Exactly. Okay, they'll cross that one off the list. It also occurred to me as into. Some of these are silly, like Austin Powers when they wake up. Austin Powers in the beginning.

[Mike]

I get it. It is Austin Powers.

[Dan]

It's like Sleeper when he has a movie. It's like Frankenstein, right? He's created this thing. It's also like the Miracle Worker. I thought of the Miracle Worker, right? When he's eating dinner and he won't let go of his hat and he won't drink anything but water. There's a Great scene in the Miracle Worker where she has to teach her. Teach Helen Keller how to sit at the table.

[Mike]

That's way funnier.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, that's true. It's like Pygmalion. It's very much like Pygmalion. Right. I'm going to make you a member of society, and then you're going to be able to fool everybody at the ball. I certainly thought of E.T. i certainly. There were times where I thought to myself, at the beginning, I'm like, this is what I imagine Neil Young looks like on a bender, just walking around staring at different things, right? But the ultimate thing I want to compare it to in part one is what you said before about Paul Auster, is that Paul Auster, whose books you and I both enjoy, has a great novel. It came out in 1985 called City of Glass. And when I was watching this movie, and I'm sure you thought the same thing, right? I'm like, oh, this is City of Glass.

[Mike]

It's Paul.

[Dan]

Yeah. In that movie. Peter. Peter, Peter. In that movie or in that book, there's a character, Peter Stillman Jr. And you find out that when he was born, his father, who was allegedly a professor of languages at Columbia, kind of shut him off in a dark room and had food brought in every night. And the whole idea was to say, if this kid grows up not talking to anybody, would he learn God's language? And he's trying to see, can you go back to a prelapse area? Language is a whole convoluted thing in the book. But that's kind of like what goes on here. It's the same kind of vibe. You wonder why his father. Right. Did. If that is even is his father did that to him. And you never kind of really find out why. But there's something sinister about it at the same time that it's wrapped up in all these comedic scenes where he has to, like, say, like. Well, no, like how he defeats the professor of logic or what he says, well, there's no way. That room has got to be bigger than the tower.

[Mike]

It's like Stranger in a Strange Land. Also, I think the key phrase is it dreamed to me, in a way, he does speak God's language, which is he has a personality where things are not. Like, he doesn't write his name because he's egotistical. He writes his name because he's curious. Like, my daughter is curious. You know, we refer to her by various names. But now she knows that she has this outside name, and it Kind of belongs to her and she's trying to attach it to herself. And that's why Casper writes Casper out of the bushes. And there's a reason that people don't like him because he shows that there's a way of being which is unattached to self in a radical way. Which is why he says, it dreamed to me, like I saw something, but it's doing it to me versus what I would say, which is, I had a dream last night. Like it's a possession of mine. And there's something about that which is intolerable to certain of the people that he encounters in his day to day activities. Welcome back. So in part two, of course, we always talk about our key scenes. Dan, I think I stepped on you there for a second. So why don't you pick up with where we left off?

[Dan]

It wasn't a step, Michael. It was a beautiful part of the dance. So what I'm going to. My moment is going to be when he's holding the baby. And she says, do you want to hold the baby? And he's kind of. He's looking at it and there's that great moment, right? And of course that makes you realize, you know, how much he is like a baby and all these other kind of different ways. You said before that the way he speaks is almost like this prelapsarian, innocent language. And he says, there's one of my favorite lines is, it seems to me that my coming into this world was a very hard fall. And that's kind of what happens when you watch this movie. You're watching somebody being born, he comes out of a dark place and then he's kind of in this world and he's trying to like navigate his way through it. But he's holding the baby, right? He says another line. He says, you know, with a baby, I'm so far away from everything. And he keeps trying to articulate his position here. And what's great about the movie is that he starts out like an infant. And we see him mature as the movie goes on, but still keep his distance from everybody else. He's childlike, but he's not childish. And he keeps highlighting how different we are. And that makes everybody in the town uncomfortable. There's the three guys who take the chicken and they go to see him and he keeps it, pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. And you're so upset because they're mocking him, right? So I think what's great about this movie is that it makes him an object of wonder. And not of cheap pity, because it would be interesting. And that's why we like the Elephant man too, right? Is that, like, David lynch doesn't make John Merrick just an object of cheap pity. He's an interesting human being, right? He says, I'm not an animal, I'm a human being. And I think Caspar is interesting to Herzog and he's interesting to us. And I think Herzog doesn't. He doesn't like, teach us some lesson about innocence or some fundamental thing, but he kind of shows you how far we are removed from seeing the world that way.

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[Mike]

I think one of the things I really like about it is there there was kind of an obsession in the early part of the 20th century in I would say the philosophers that I feel influenced Herzogen the most to get back to pre Platonic philosophy. So if you think of Wittgenstein and he's like, most of what's going on is just category mistakes. It's just language mistakes. So if you can get past language mistakes, you can get to the foundational issues of human nature. Or someone like Heidegger who said the key problem of human life is thrown ness, which kind of goes back to the quote that you're talking about. And if you think about if you get both of their books and you get Wittgenstein's blue and brown book, you get Heidegger's Being in Time. On the other hand, it would take you 45 hours just to read them and another 45 years to think accurately. How can I, now that I've been inducted into the Western way of thought, into the Platonic mode of thought, how could I get out of it? And it seems to me like Werner Herzog found a really, really interesting way to explore both of those, but without being overly philosophical, because the movie is easy watching. It's actually, that's what I meant kind of earlier, which is it's such easy watching. It's so lightly bound together, like, momenteer. Momenteer. Momenteer, momenteer. Although in a narrative arc that anybody else could have just put something together for an hour and 40 minutes, that didn't hold. But his moments stick together. And you can watch this and understand exactly what those philosophers were getting at, which is that we're running around in circles trying to answer quote, unquote Platonic questions. And we feel like Platonic questions are an ascent. That's how. That's how they're intended to make you feel. But. But it seems to me Caspar Hauser is saying, what if they're a descent. What if I'm where I'm supposed to be and things make sense as they are? Right? Like, that's how you should feel holding a baby. Yeah, he's not a baby in a. In a pejorative sense. He's a baby. In the positive sense.

[Dan]

In the positive sense. And of course, like, everything he says does have a kind of. You said, like, you going back pre Platonic, right. Like learning about the nature of things. Everything he does does have its own logic. That's why the scene with the professor of logic is so funny. So he says, well, what would you ask him? But he says, I would say, are you a tree frog? Now, I'll admit that when I was watching that scene, I've heard that thing before, but I couldn't think of the answer. And I was like, what's the answer? What's the answer? And I was like the old maid who's like, I don't know the answer either. And I thought, oh, if it was a sunny day, you can say, is it raining? And then you'd be able to do it, right? But of course, the professor says, no, no, no, you have to do the double negative. You have to do it by. You have to do it by logic. And of course, we're like, well, there's other ways to do that. And Casper has a logic that he sustains throughout the movie. Like, for example, when they're talking about who's throwing the apple and I can make the apple go. He wants. And he goes, no, no. The apple stopped here because it wanted to stop here. The apple stopped here because it wanted to go on the grass. And when he makes an argument that the room is bigger than the tower because I'm inside the room, that makes perfect sense. Now we know that the tower is bigger than the room. But like. And. And like you said before about Heidegger and about Wittgenstein, like, you could read those books and try to move back and imagine what it will be like to see the world that way, right? But we can't. Like, it's too late for us, right? But you're watching somebody who's actually doing it, and you can't get. It's. There's still a distance between you and him. And that's what's fascinating about the movie. That's why he is an object of. Literally an object of fascination.

[Mike]

It's a working narrative model that works better than the standing philosophical models. But at the same time, it's an enjoyable film. You would never. You wouldn't describe it to somebody that way. You would only unpack it if somebody said, I found that really moving. Or like, when he held the baby and cry. Like, my moment just to give it out there is when the guy's playing piano and you see the tears for the first time. And you think, it reminds me of Poe, who said, beauty of whatever sort invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. And you think, well, we encounter beauty all the time, but if we had that reaction, we would try to hide it. And it just reminds me that so many things that seem to make sense are merely conventional. And that's what this movie is about. Someone who's not even trying to subvert conventions. He kind of waltzes over conventions because he doesn't understand them or where they are, and yet somehow seems to operate.

[Dan]

And that's the charm of children, is that, you know, kids say the darndest things, like, the kids don't understand conventions, but eventually we expect people to. To grow out of that. And Casper, it's not that he refuses. He can't.

[Mike]

And, you know, anytime you join a new company and it's so obvious to you what the answers are, you're like, why don't you just do that? Somebody says, because that's how we've always done it, right? And when somebody complains about you, they're just like, give it time. Eventually he'll see it the way we see it. Because you assume that the weight of convention over time will shape you just like gravity into the form that you're supposed to take.

[Dan]

So let's build on your moment for a second. Your moment is that you said when he's playing the piano and he starts to weep, right? That is a natural thing. I know that quote from Poe. We'll have to look it up and put it in the notes or something. But that's a natural reaction, and that's. There's nothing wrong with that. Right? But of course, as an adult, everything about you would tell yourself to not. Not let that out. Like, you're not supposed to, like, show those emotions. Or if you do, like, it's got to be in a very controlled kind of, like in the dark of a theater or a place like that.

[Mike]

You'd ask yourself a question, which is, why am I having that reaction?

[Dan]

Right? Which is actually a good question. Because it's mysterious, right?

[Mike]

But that. That's. That's what's enigmatic about Casper Hauser is that you're having that reaction because that's the appropriate reaction right now.

[Dan]

Why you have that reaction. Like, you and I do this all the time. Like, you and I are art junkies, right? So you and I know what it's like to watch, I don't know, like a. Watch even a movie that's not, quote, unquote, sad, right? We're watching, you know, something beautiful. Like, for example, like, you know, like, let's go Home, Debbie at the end of the Searchers or something like that. You know what I mean? It's not a, quote, a tearjerker movie, but you kind of get choked up. Like, your reaction to the aesthetics or the beauty of it get you choked up. Now, why we do that as people is very, very mysterious. And you could write volume after volume on that, right? But it's cool about the movie that you see it and the movie makes you real. How strange that is. But it's. But I think. Right. Is in the movie saying, like, it's not strange at all. It's human.

[Mike]

And it's very risky when you're talking about aesthetic function in the middle of something that is aesthetically functioning. The results should be Brechtian. It should be to knock you out of it.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Mike]

But the beautiful thing about Casper Hauser is that that moment is so perfectly blended in that it is enlightening without being disruptive.

[Dan]

Yeah. There's nothing meta about this.

[Mike]

Correct. Welcome back. So in Part three, of course, we always talk about the title or the ending or the key takeaways. And I Feel like you could just keep talking about this movie for another

[Dan]

six hours, another season. And there's plenty to talk about about all those three things you just said. So we'll get to the title in a minute. Let's talk about the ending. We get Casper's dream before he's dying, and we'll get into that a little bit. Then we get the autopsy, which is really interesting, right? And then we'll talk about the real title. So I want to talk. I want to talk about the autopsy for a moment, which I think is great, is that, you know, it's like the fake explanation, right? And the joke is on all of them. The left lobe of the liver is enlarged. And you watch them take apart his brain, which is so disturbing that they're cutting open his brain. Oh, a deformity of the cerebellum. And as they're walking away, the little stenographer who's great has that great self satisfied air, and he says, finally, we have an explanation for this strange man.

[Mike]

When you watch a detective drama, as I'm sure you do, we've talked about and I love and I'm addicted to. And there's an autopsy. When does the autopsy happen? In an hour episode.

[Dan]

Minute seven.

[Mike]

It has to. And minute seven is even late. Why is minute seven late?

[Dan]

Because you need the clues to establish or to find the odd things about the murder.

[Mike]

And because it's. It's a disgusting thought that someone that you know, that you consider to be a human will be chopped apart into tiny bits. But if, when you're in clue mode, it gets easier. That's why detectives, you know, stay in clue mode. And they're all famously detached, right? Like, they'll never make a detective show about, like, man, that guy's just like too well adjusted and friendly, you know, he's always like, listen to jazz and day drinking and you know, all the things that television detectives do. Because it would be too psychologically overwhelming to see all the people that, you know, cut up into pieces. But like, how tempted would you be if you made this movie? You'd be so tempted to just have it end on the dream. You know, you've got that Arabian fantasy and then you're like, directed by Dan. But Werner Herzog is so brilliant. Because society gets exactly what they've wanted the whole time is they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you for playing the piano and all the cute stuff you do and the carnival and whatever, but can you come here so I can cut you apart and find out why you're so different than me.

[Dan]

Didn't you think, didn't you think that the dream was going to be roll credits?

[Mike]

Absolutely, I did.

[Dan]

Absolutely. I did, too. And I'm so glad to hear that because you have a history of always said you, you knew every if. For those of you who don't know this, Mike has never. There's never been a plot twist that Mike didn't see coming before he even pressed play. So it was good to know he was at least surprised by one thing ever in our 300 plus episodes.

[Mike]

It can't be perfect.

[Dan]

So when you get that autopsy and you just see that toe with the sticker on it, you know there's foot with the sticker and you know you. And then you see him. They don't just take out the brain. You have to see them cut the brain apart. And when that little, little guy walks away, it says, you know, finally we have an explanation. It's so, it's so horrifying. And of course, just like you said, it's like, fine, now you have your little answer. But of course I'm like, yeah, that's exactly how people act with people they don't understand. Oh, what's the matter with Billy? Oh, he's got add. Okay, that explains everything. What's the matter with you? Oh, I have a phobia about blah, blah, blah. All right. People love to stick labels on themselves now, right? And there's a lot of writing about this now by psychologists about how it's become cool to have a label. It's become cool to have some kind of issue with yourself because then you can kind of use it to explain a lot of things that are very difficult to explain in your life. And that at the end, and he walks away and the town's going to go on. But of course, we can't walk away because we're so shaken up.

[Mike]

Which is why the English title, we'll get to the German title, but the English title is not the Body of Casper Hauser. It's the Enigma of Casper Hauser. Right? You could take. You could take the brain apart with a scalpel, but you will not find the mind.

[Dan]

Right, exactly. So. So that's about the end. We also have the dream and we also have the original German title. So, Mike, where you want to go with this?

[Mike]

What's the original German title?

[Dan]

Every man for himself and God against all.

[Mike]

That's. That's one of the private excitements in the sense that you can dig into that title all you want, but all you're going to get is the Enigma of Werner Herzog.

[Dan]

Yeah, exactly. Because of course, you know, you can. And I could see why people would watch this movie and say, well that's, you know, Casper Hauser. He goes through the journey of humanity, right? Some kind of quote unquote father puts to kicks him out. And then you're thrown into the situation, you don't really know what's going on. You try to be a good person, it's not good enough. And then out of the blue someone stabs you and that's it. And you become, you become, you know, on a slab. So it's certainly, you know, that title is very, very grim and it suggests, you know, an obvious grimness to what happens to Casper. But I actually like the Enigma of Casper Hauser better because I think it is, I think that more for me was like what it was like to watch the movie.

[Mike]

I think it's difficult to think about either the title or anything else without talking more closely about the performance from Bruno S. Who my understanding was that he was a street musician. And so he's not like Klaus Kinski or somebody. He's somebody that carries with him no associations, which of course is who Caspar Hauser is.

[Dan]

Right. And apparently he has a long, you know, there's a long story about was, you know, Herzog exploiting him because Bruno ETZ had this really, really troubled life when he was growing up and all kinds of terrible things happened to him. But Herzl, you know, spoke very highly of his performance and how could you not?

[Mike]

Have you ever read his Wikipedia?

[Dan]

No.

[Mike]

Schlichtenstein was often beaten as a child and spent much of his youth in mental institutions. He was a largely self taught musician who over the years developed considerable skill on the piano, accordion, glockenspiel and hand bells. He was known for playing in back gardens, performing 18th or 19th century ballads on weekends, sustaining himself financially working as a forklift driver at the car plant.

[Dan]

Well, as you can see, we go from the high to the low in this podcast. You know, nothing is beneath us. But let's get back to the movie and not your, your invitation of its director. What do you make of the dream? So he says earlier that, that he has stories but the story's not finished and you have to have a finish to a story. So he tells his dream about this caravan out in the desert and he says it's being led by a blind man. They're out there, they start to see some mountains. The people in the caravan complain, say oh my gosh, there's all these mountains here. The blind man then takes up a handful of sand and tastes it, and he says, no, those mountains are just in your imagination. We're gonna keep going. And Casper says, eventually, they get to the city, and that's where the story begins. And then he says, characteristically, I love this part. He says, thank you for listening. What do you make of that dream?

[Mike]

Like, it's easy to overanalyze, but it seems like the experience of being a human is that you're in a caravan. You're not sure which way you're going. The people leading you. The person leading you, it seems, which is, again, a society and its assumptions and its conventions have no idea where they're going. And then when you have a faculty that they don't have, and you say there is a hardship or there is a difficulty or we should rethink this plan or I don't like this convention because I have an additional faculty you don't have. Of course. What do they say? They do something ridiculous and they say, no, no, no, you don't understand. But I think that the idea is that the legend or the enigma of Casper Hauser, which is now woven in some way into society, that's the beginning of the story. The wandering is not life. Wandering. Life begins after the wandering.

[Dan]

So when does the wandering end?

[Mike]

Death.

[Dan]

Thanks for listening, everybody. We hope you enjoyed our conversation about the enigma of Casper Hauser. You can find all of our past episodes on Spotify or Apple. Wherever you get your podcasts, please consider leaving us a rating. They really help the algorithm help people find our shows. You can also find my stuff on substack at pages and frames. And, Mike, you can find your stuff

[Mike]

where I'm TheGremblers Almanac.

[Dan]

Thanks for listening, everybody. Let us know what's up to watch next. We'll see you next time.