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Dana Schwartz
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Dana Schwartz
Hey, this is Dana Schwartz. Just one quick note of housekeeping. If you are listening to this on release day, today is also the release day of my brand new book, the arcane arts by S.D. coverley South Dakota. Coverley is the pen name I use for me and my friend and co writer Dan Fry. It is a magical fantasy book about a grad student and her professor studying illegal, forbidden magic and solving a murder mystery while they do it. If that at all interests you, please pick up a copy of the Arcane Arts. We had a great time writing it. I really think. If you like this podcast, I think you'll enjoy it. That said, let's get into the episode welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised. On May 26, 1826, a cobbler named Georg Leonard Weichmann was walking through the town of Nuremberg. Even though it was the afternoon, the city was sparse, almost abandoned. It was a holiday, and many of the town's residents were off in the countryside enjoying the nice spring weather. But something caught Vickman's eye as he walked a young man, maybe a teenager of 16 or 17, stumbling awkwardly down a nearby hill. The boy was stocky, with an unusual lumbering gait and blue eyes that seemed to Venkman almost vacant. The boy shouted a phrase that can be translated to hey lad, a casual greeting that masters would use to greet their apprentices, oddly casual for a teenager to use toward an adult man in his 50s, which Vegman was. The boy also called out the name of a street, and generously Vegman agreed to help the strange, vagrant boy to his destination. It soon became apparent that this boy only knew a few phrases which he repeated over and over. One of those phrases was, I want to be a cavalryman like my father was. But where had this boy come from? A wandering stranger who stumbled out of the forest and into Nuremberg. Eventually Vegman brought him to the police station, and more of the boy's story would emerge. The boy's name was Caspar Hauser, and according to him and the letters he had been carrying on his person, he had lived his entire life up until this point in a solitary cell, raised entirely alone, in isolation. A man wearing a mask had given him water and bread every day. On occasion the water would be more bitter than normal, and Kasper Hauser would awaken the next day to find that his hair and nails had been cut and his straw had been changed. That was the extent of his human interaction. He didn't know the difference between night and day. The story was astonishing, and almost immediately Kasper Hauser became famous around Europe, a strange, savage boy raised in conditions of such enthralling cruelty, under such mysterious conditions, philosophers from the 17th century on, had become fascinated by legends and stories of enfant savages or children who were raised by animals. For what those stories might reveal about humanity, what was it that made us human? Was it something inherent inside of man? Or was it something learned? There were also religious implications to these stories. Would a child raised by animals understand or know God? Would he be innocent of all of the sins of man, forever childlike beyond the salaciousness of his alleged origin? From the moment Caspar Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg, he became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that had been captivating Europe for a century. A living experiment, as Martin Kitchen wrote in his book Caspar Europe's Child. Here was a blank screen on which could be projected the fantasies of those with whom he came into close contact. Here was another of those wild children who people ancient mythology and who had appeared infrequently in Europe since the 14th century and had excited philosophers and medical men to speculate on the nature of men. But of course, given just how salacious and mysterious this foundling child was, there was also going to be rumors. Why had this boy been hidden away for so long and under such extreme conditions, if not because those in power had a reason for doing? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale, that a lost orphaned child might be something more than he first appears. But the rumors began swirling. Caspar Hauser, they said, wasn't just a lost child. He was a lost prince. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. It's a fantasy, I think, that everybody has probably had at least once, a fantasy popularized by Sigmund Freud, that your parents secretly adopted you and that your real parents are wealthy, powerful, royal. And so maybe it's inevitable that when a boy stumbled into Nuremberg under mysterious circumstances, the questions would begin swirling about who he really was and where he came from. When Casper Hauser first appeared, his walk unsteady and his language limited, he carried with him two letters. The first was purportedly written by his mother, announcing that his name was Caspar. He was born on April 30, 1812, and that his father, now deceased, had been a cavalryman of the 6th Regiment. The second letter was from Caspar Hauser's mysterious caretaker, or jailer, the masked man that Caspar recalled had brought him bread and water. The letter was addressed to Captain von Wessening, commander of the 6th Cavalry Regiment. It read, I am a poor laborer with 10 children of my own. I have enough to do just to keep them alive. His mother asked me to bring up the boy. I raised him as a christian and since 1812 I have never let him go a step away from the house, so no one knows where he has been brought up and he himself does not know the name of my house, nor of the place. You might ask him, but he can't tell you. Ah. So anyone trying to figure out where Caspar had come from would be hitting a dead end there. The letter continued, saying that Captain von Wessening could take the boy into his regiment or hang him by the chimney. The sort of cruelty one might expect from a man who kept a child imprisoned in a cell his entire, entire life. When the people of Nuremberg asked Caspar more questions, trying to get any more information from him, he only repeated, I want to be a cavalryman as my father was, or don't know. He could also say horse. Caspar was delivered to van Wessening's stable, but the captain was understandably confused and put off. A servant offered Caspar beer and meat, but he refused. He did, however, accept water and bread. He was brought to the police station, where they determined that Caspar was able to write his own name and had basic familiarity with Christian prayers. His clothing was awkwardly sewn and ill fitting. His boots were too small. The initial K was sewn into his jacket and his handkerchief. Among his personal effects were a rosary, a worn out key, a prayer book, a few religious tracts and most odd of all, allegedly, a folded envelope of paper containing a bit of gold dust. But Caspar had no papers and given that he couldn't reply meaningfully to any questions, it was assumed he was a vagrant and he was sent to prison, although it was specified that, given his strange circumstances, he would be locked up with decent prisoners instead of the other random vagrants and beggars. Kasper Hauser spent two months in prison in the castle in Nuremberg, during which time he became a tourist attraction, with visitors stopping by in order to see the intriguing foundling. Raised in isolation, Caspar seemed to be making remarkable progress with regards to his physical condition, where he had been awkwardly lumbering when he first appeared, seemingly barely able to walk, he had been able to climb more than 90 steps up to his cell without a problem. Gradually, more details about Caspar's life would come to light. Although notably, Caspar had no ill will toward his captor, nor anger about how he was raised. Apparently every morning when he woke up, he would find a loaf of black bread and a pitcher of water. He had only two wooden horse toys and one wooden dog toy to play with. And a wooden lidded container that he used as a commode. His door was bolted on the outside and wood was piled against the room's small windows so that he never saw sunlight, never learned the difference between night and day. One day, Caspar had been given a sheet of paper and a pencil, and his anonymous captor reached into the dungeon room to teach Caspar how to write his own name. He also taught him how to walk a few steps and taught him the simple phrases to repeat that he had said when he had first arrived in Nuremberg. And then Caspar Hauser, approximately 16 years old, was released into the wilds of human civilization. The people of Nuremberg could barely believe how cruel and strange this boy's saga had been. The president of the Bavarian Court of Appeals, a man named Anselm von Fuhrerbach, took a particular interest in investigating the case. And the city of Nuremberg itself formally adopted Kasper Hauser. With donations raised to pay for his care and schooling. Caspar was placed in the household of a man named Friedrich Dahmer, a schoolmaster and philosopher. Dahmer, understandably fascinated by Kasper, began to treat him like a science experiment. Kasper Hauser's physical condition continued to improve. He allegedly grew 2 inches in a single month. And according to Dahmer, his senses were astonishingly acute. He had an animal like ability to see in the dark, to make out impossibly faint sounds, and to taste if his water had been diluted with even one drop of something else. Despite attempts to feed him a more varied diet, Caspar only wanted bread and water, and only after a few months was he able to eat small amounts of meat. Occasionally he would suffer extreme convulsions. Caspar continued to learn remarkably fast. Soon he was able to write and speak, identifying jokes even, and Dahmer discovered he had a talent for drawing. Dahmer was also interested in using Casper for homeopathic experiments and experiments with animal magnetism, a popular idea in 19th century Germany. He was given homeopathic tinctures, some of which made him sick. And he was frequently waved over with magnets and fed magnetized water, although personally I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to accomplish with that. As Kitchen wrote, he was used as a guinea pig by cranks and amateurs who gained nothing from their experiments. He was so frightened of these experiments that it was impossible to tell whether the often violent reactions were caused by the homeopathic medicines or by sheer terror when he was ill. The medicines he was given made him feel worse, and it seemed to him that the medical profession devoted its efforts towards torturing their unfortunate subjects and making the healthy sick. All the while, the mystery of his origin and his true identity continued to be the center of conversations around Nuremberg and all across Europe. Kasper Hauser, the abused, imprisoned child who escaped his mysterious confinement with an innocent, almost animal like naivete. And who now, among humanity, was making enormous strides of progress. I mean, how could the writers resist? Was he really just a random foundling? It seemed unlikely. Why had there been such an effort to keep him hidden? If not for the fact that Kasper Hauser was secretly someone important? Consider the fact that he had been confined and imprisoned, but otherwise kept in remarkably good health and in hygienic conditions. No masked man had been identified and there were no leads as to where Kasper Hauser had actually come from, despite large rewards from police for any information. Surely, people whispered that was a sign that this was the work of rich and powerful people, able to cover their tracks so completely that they would never be caught. And despite the fact that he had barely been able to write his name, Kasper Hauser was by this point fluent and quick to learn. There seemed to be something innately extraordinary about him. This was no ordinary boy, people believed. It seemed obvious that he was someone special, someone noble, someone royal even. But why had he been imprisoned and hidden away? And by who? And if he wasn't merely Caspar Hauser, then who was he? Charles, the Grand Duke of Baden, hadn't been happy about the fact that he had to marry Stephanie de Bornay. But Napoleon's France was becoming more powerful and Stephanie was Napoleon's de facto adopted daughter, a relative of Napoleon's wife, Josephine. And so the Grand Duke married her. And despite the fact that the two didn't really get along, they managed to have five children. Unfortunately for them, none of their surviving children were male heirs. And so, after Charles the Grand duke died in 1818, the Duchy of Baden went to his Uncle Louis I. But maybe things weren't quite as straightforward as they seemed. Charles and Stephanie had had a son, an infant Prince, born on September 29, 1812. But the baby boy died after only a few weeks. But had he? When Kasper Hauser appeared on the European scene, rumors began to spread that the current duke, Louis Mother, had schemed to put her son on the throne by stealing away the rightful prince and replacing him in his bassinet with a sickly commoner. Was Kasper Hauser the missing prince? With those rumors, in the words of Kitchen Caspar Hauser wasn't just a symbol for primitive beauty and the purity of man's animal nature, but of the perfidy of the royal family, especially among the German radicals of the 19th century century. To those who had already hated the nobility that they saw as corrupt and indulgent, it seemed perfectly in line with their cruelty that they might steal away a baby and torture him in isolation for a decade so that their own son might inherit a throne. Supporting Caspar Hauser as a missing prince became a way to attack and dispute, delegitimize the current regime. There were other theories about who Kasper Hauser was, if he was a noble, maybe he was the son of a Hungarian countess or an English royal. But something about his appearance and the peculiarity of his case led many to believe that something nefarious was going on, especially after the attack on Casper Hauser's life. In October of 1829, while living with the teacher Dahmer, Casper Hauser and his guardian had gotten into some small disagreements. Caspar was indulging in the dishonesties of a child skipping school and not telling the truth about it. Dahmer was also getting a little frustrated with his quote, unquote scientific experiments on Casper, seeing that the more Caspar adjusted to civilized society, the more he seemed to be losing whatever mystical quality he had had in the first place. One day in October of 1829, more than a year after Caspar had first arrived in Nuremberg, Caspar and Dahmer had quarreled After Caspar had been caught playing hooky. The next day, Dahmer returned home to a startling scene. Caspar had a large gash on his forehead. It had dripped blood all the way from the outhouse through the first floor of the house. According to Caspar, a hooded man had attacked him in the outhouse, shouting, you still have to die before you leave the city of Nuremberg. And though Caspar wasn't able to see the man's face, he knew it was the man who had kept him captive all of those years, the mysterious man who had brought him bread and water and taught him how to write his own name. The incident garnered sympathy among Kasper's supporters and renewed public interest in his case. One person who found himself fascinated by this strange story out of Germany was a British nobleman named Lord Stanhope. Stanhope was the nephew of Prime Minister William Pitt, but his immediate family was notably eccentric, and he himself was a much remark upon Germanophile. Stanhope met caspar Hauser in May 1831, and he became obsessed. The sort of flair of quick intimacy that Sometimes happens among new friends. Stanhope declared that there was no doubt in his mind that Kasper Hauser was in fact of noble birth, and he began to shower him with expensive presents. He gave Caspar a life annuity of 500 gulden and 100 golden as pocket money, which I'm sure was something of a weight off of the shoulders of the town administrators of Nuremberg, who had up until that point been paying for Caspar Hauser's upkeep. Within no time at all, Stanhope and Hauser were calling each other by their first names, so close that some speculated that the relationship was sexual in nature. Stanhope got it into his mind that Kasper Hauser's true mother was a Hungarian countess, and so he took Caspar on a trip to Hungary to see if anything might jog his memory. Though Hauser seemed to recognize a few Hungarian phrases, the trip itself did not prove anything, and ultimately it was a failure. And in failure, the eccentric, impatient Stanhope found that Hauser now left a bad taste in his mouth with the same speed that had characterized the beginning of their friendship. Now Stanhope turned against Kasper Hauser. This wholesome, wide eyed innocent was now clingy and annoying. And though Stanhope had promised that he would take Hauser with him back to England, he changed his mind and instead deposited the young man in Ansbach with a schoolmaster and under the patronage of Anselm von Furrerbeck, that legal scholar and president of the Bavarian Court of Appeals. I had mentioned earlier, Stanhope wasn't alone in souring on Kasper Hauser. There were plenty of people who saw him as a sideshow distraction or else an abject fraud. To quote Kitchen. Again, many resented his fame, found his character unattractive, commented bitterly on his arrogance, his mendacity, and his absurd pretensions to gentility. It was grotesque to people of a conservative bent that this somewhat ridiculous figure should be the darling of assorted radicals, devotees of alternative medicine and practitioners of experimental pedagogy. The anti Hausserians saw the whole fuss as further evidence of the absurdity of radical pretensions and as an underhand attack on the established order. But was it possible he wasn't just pretentious and absurd? Was it possible he was a complete fraud? Had he stabbed himself shallowly in the outhouse in order to garner sympathy? Was it possible Kasper Hauser had never been imprisoned at all, never raised in his strange isolation? After all, there was no proof of it. No criminal had been caught. It seemed that Kasper Hauser was simple minded and innocent to some degree. But he also had a mean edge and he could be vain and prone to small self aggrandizing lies. Although even his sins could be explained away by his most ardent supporters. See, See how even a short time among the so called civilized society corrupts the pure and innocent among us. The schoolmaster that Kasper Hauser was living with in Ansbach was named Johann Meyer. Meyer seemed uninterested and unwilling to indulge Hauser's behavior when he acted out. And he found the young man a job at a local law office doing menial work as a copyist. As a side note, it is extraordinary to imagine, just from a psychological development perspective, that if Kasper Hauser did in fact live his entire life in isolation, that five years after re entering society he would be capable of working a standard administrative job. But he was. Even so, Johann Meyer and Kasper Hauser didn't get along and on December 9, 1833 they had a fight. Less than a week later, Kasper Hauser would have his final adventure. The last mysterious piece of the puzzle in his mysterious life. On December 14, 1833, Kasper Hauser stumbled back into Johann Meyer's house, bleeding from a slash across his chest. While he gasped for air, he managed to explain what had happened to him. A stranger had found him in the Endback court gardens, had handed him a purse, and then when Caspar accepted it, had stabbed him. As Caspar bled in Meyer's house, he tried to explain that they needed to find the purse. He had dropped it somewhere in the gardens. But Caspar was going pale. He managed to mutter a few more phrases that were impossible to make out, and then he fainted. Six days later, Kasper Hauser died. He had been murdered. His exit from German society was as mysterious as his entrance. Policemen trawled the court gardens and found what they assumed to be the purse from Hauser's story with a penciled note written in backwards mirror writing. When translated, it read, In Germany, Hauser will be able to tell you quite precisely how I look and from where I am. To save Hauser the effort, I want to tell you myself where I come and then there's a blank space. I come from. From blank space. The Bavarian border on the river. I will even tell you the name MLO who had written this note and what did it mean? Was Kasper Hauser secretly a noble that needed to be done away with before the truth about his origin was revealed? Was the man that murdered him the same man who had kept him prisoner. Surely his violent murder proved that he was someone that those in power were trying to quiet. There was no real consensus at the time. The alleged murderer was never found and no more details came to light. His headstone read, here lies Caspar Hauser riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious. 1833. But was he actually a missing prince? Even in the 19th century, plenty of people pointed out that it was unlikely. Otto Mittelstadt wrote in 1876 about how impossible it would have been to reasonably swap out the Royal Baden baby. He wrote, quote, the baby's father, grandmother and aunt with the 10 court physicians, the nurses and others would have seen a swap in death. And it is too absurd to suppose on no authority that they were all parties to the plot, end quote. There were enough inconsistencies in Hauser's story to wonder, even if he had ever been captive at all in the manner he described. Was Kasper Hauser a hoax? He was well developed physically and relatively capable cognitively in a way most people today would find implausible for someone who had been raised for years in a single room with no human interaction. As for his mistakes, serious injuries, his stabbings by a mysterious man who was never caught, Did Hauser actually do them to himself? For sympathy, for attention? To bring people around to his side to make himself feel important, for people to pay attention to his story again? Today, some historians believe that Caspar Hauser's death was actually a true tragic accident, that he invented the story of the masked man and the purse in the garden, and that he had written and folded the mirror code letter and then stabbed himself, but made a mistake and accidentally went too deep with the knife. A 2023 study indicated that Kasper Hauser had the mark of having received a cowpoxy vaccination to prevent smallpox, which was mandatory in Bavaria since 1807. A mark from a vaccination indicated that he had in fact grown up not in isolation, but in contact with other people. A much publicized DNA test of the mitochondrial DNA from Casper Hauser's blood stained undergarments by the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1996 proved once and for all that Kasper Hauser was not in fact a member of the Royal House of Baden. Although, of course, those who still believe that he was a prince find ways to claim that the test was either mistaken or corrupted. We'll probably never discover the truth behind the strange story of Kasper Hauser. His story acquired an importance which in no way belonged to it. Stanhope wrote. After he was disillusioned. And yet Kasper Hauser has captivated audiences for literal centuries. You might be familiar with the Werner Herzog film about him. The most likely version of the story, if you had to ask me, is something somewhere in the middle. Maybe Kasper Hauser was a boy from the countryside who was treated very poorly, even abused. Maybe he was the illegitimate son of a woman whose family hid him in shame. Maybe he was born with some disabilities that would have been treated with care and sympathy. Today, when he was 16, whoever had been feeding him had dropped him off to fend for for himself. And from there this young man became both victim and benefactor to the desires of a rapacious public who saw in him whatever they wanted to see. He was a perfect innocent. He was a science experiment. He was a philosophical riddle for gossiping about after dinner. He was a manipulative liar. He was an example of the system's depravity. He was a murder mystery. He was a prince. In the end, maybe he was just a person. That's the story of Kasper Hauser, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about another murder that led to even more questions in this mysterious case. From the world of Jane Austen comes BritBox's new original drama, the Other Bennet Sister. It's a fresh spin around the ballroom for one of Jane Austen's most unassuming characters, Mary Bennet, the seemingly unremarkable middle sister in Pride and Prejudice. While the Bennet sisters are admired for their distinct qualities, Mary was the one sister who stood on the sidelines, awkward, anxious and overlooked. But in BritBox's new drama, Mary is finally brought into focus. Thoughtful and perceptive, she navigates a world that rewards charm over intellect and where independence comes at a cost. 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Dana Schwartz
mentioned Anselm Ritter von Furbeck in this episode. He was a German administrator and legal scholar who was particularly interested in the Casper Hauser case from a legal perspective. He was a reformer of the Bavarian penal code and he was a staunch defender early on of Hauser. He wrote a book about Hauser in which he used him to argue the point that the isolation and abuse he endured was tantamount to a crime against the human soul. On May 29, 1833, Feuerbach died on a journey to Frankfurt. He was only 57 years old and the circumstances of his death made it ripe for gossip and theories. After all, he was a prominent and public advocate for Kasper Hauser. Maybe someone had poisoned him. There is no proof that he was poisoned, and a little ironically, he had actually come to the conclusion conclusion before his death that Casper Hauser was in fact a scheming fraud. But his death still became fodder for those connecting the dots in a vast conspiracy. Casper Hauser himself was killed only later that year. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Nobleblood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffe, Natasha Lasky and me, Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Noams Griffin, with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali and executive producers Aaron Menke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Dana Schwartz
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Noble Blood – “Kaspar Hauser Came to Town”
Hosted by Dana Schwartz | Release Date: May 19, 2026
This episode of Noble Blood delves into the mysterious and tragic story of Kaspar Hauser—a teenage boy who emerged in 1826 Nuremberg, claiming to have been raised in solitary confinement. Host Dana Schwartz explores the layers of speculation, conspiracy, and philosophical fascination surrounding his case: Was he a lost royal, a tragic victim of abuse, or an elaborate fraud? The episode examines how Hauser’s bizarre life and death became a touchstone for 19th-century anxieties about identity, society, and the nature of humanity itself.
Initial Discovery (03:21–05:10)
Sensational Claims of Captivity (05:11–08:49)
"From the moment Caspar Hauser stumbled down the hill into Nuremberg, he became a symbol for the big philosophical questions that had been captivating Europe for a century—a living experiment."
—Dana Schwartz (06:41)
Investigation and Foster Care (10:10–13:23)
Scientific and Pseudoscientific Intrusions (13:25–16:30)
"He was used as a guinea pig by cranks and amateurs who gained nothing from their experiments... It seemed to him that the medical profession devoted its efforts towards torturing their unfortunate subjects and making the healthy sick."
—Dana Schwartz quoting Martin Kitchen (15:15)
Royal Conspiracy Theories (17:10–21:36)
Assault and Renewed Suspicion (22:06–24:48)
“Now Stanhope turned against Kasper Hauser. This wholesome, wide-eyed innocent was now clingy and annoying... The same speed that had characterized the beginning of their friendship.”
—Dana Schwartz (27:51)
"His exit from German society was as mysterious as his entrance. Policemen trawled the court gardens and found what they assumed to be the purse... with a penciled note written in backwards mirror writing."
—Dana Schwartz (32:58)
"His story acquired an importance which in no way belonged to it."
—Stanhope, quoted by Dana Schwartz (35:19)
On Hauser’s Symbolism:
"He was a perfect innocent. He was a science experiment. He was a philosophical riddle for gossiping about after dinner. He was a manipulative liar. He was an example of the system's depravity. He was a murder mystery. He was a prince. In the end, maybe he was just a person."
—Dana Schwartz (35:40)
On Public Fascination:
“Why had this boy been hidden away for so long and under such extreme conditions, if not because those in power had a reason for doing it? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale, that a lost orphaned child might be something more than he first appears.”
—Dana Schwartz (09:17)
On Modern Historical Evidence:
“A 2023 study indicated that Kasper Hauser had the mark of having received a cowpoxy vaccination to prevent smallpox, which was mandatory in Bavaria since 1807... A much publicized DNA test... proved once and for all that Kasper Hauser was not in fact a member of the Royal House of Baden.”
—Dana Schwartz (34:00)
Tone & Language:
Dana Schwartz maintains her signature blend of historical detail, dry humor, and empathy for her subjects. She invites the listener to weigh the evidence, acknowledging both the lure of the romantic legend and the plausibility of a sadder, less mythic reality.
Summary Takeaway:
Kaspar Hauser’s life is a historical Rorschach test—interpreted as a symbol of innocence, an indictment of aristocracy, or a cunning fraud, depending on the observer. Schwartz deftly shows how Hauser’s story reflects not only his own mysterious fate, but also the fears, hopes, and speculations of an entire era.