The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Werner Herzog's masterful German film The Engima of Kaspar Hauser tells a historical true story about a young man barely able to speak and walk, who mysteriously appeared in town square early one morning during the year 1828 in Nuremberg, Germany. The townspeople found him clutching the Bible in one hand and an anonymous letter in the other which explained that he had been held captive in a dungeon his entire life, and only recently was he released, for reasons unknown. After the townspeople exhibit him in a sideshow attraction, this strange young man is taken in and studied by a psychologist, who tries to educate and civilize him, and throughout the years this man will learn to read, write, and even play the piano. Herzog slightly blurs the line between what is fact and what is fiction, and he seems to care less about the accuracy of the story itself and more about the transcendent power of it's images. 

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is not so much a linear screenplay but a series of striking dream-like behaviors and images which act on the emotional core of the mentally challenged character of Kasper, and of the strange offbeat character's that seem to inhabit the town of Nuremberg. These dream like sequences that at first might seem unrelated to Kaspar in fact reflect his emotional struggles on perfecting the teachings of 19th Century German high-society customs and manners. The striking images that Herzog presents to us, like a desert caravan led by a blind man, a stork getting eaten by a worm, or a line of penitents struggling up a hillside, are the exact pieces in a puzzle that are needed to solve the mystery of this ambiguous stranger; even if we know the mystery is in itself unsolvable. What makes The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser such an intriguing and enriching experience is Kaspar's increased intellectual development which brings into play questions of language, growth and education and how it can shape our thoughts and feelings as we grow as a person.