Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle

Kaspar Hauser had reportedly spent his entire life alone in a dungeon until an unknown man left him in Nuremburg’s town square in 1828. The young foundling, who could barely read or write, drew the attention of the public and was exhibited as a carnival sideshow attraction. Teacher Georg Friedrich Daumer then took him in with plans to educate him. The story picks up two years later, when the artistic young man is subjected to questioning by academics, clergy, and noblemen to assess his progress. An English lord expresses an interest in adopting Kaspar. But the wilful “child of nature” does not live up to their expectations. In the final analysis, he remains alien and, in the end, falls victim to violence … “It seems to me that my coming into this world was a terribly hard fall,” is how Kaspar describes the encounter with the Biedermeier-esque bourgeoisie that graced him with a respectable education. More entranced by the legends than the facts of the Kaspar Hauser case, Werner Herzog uses carefully staged camera tableaux to portray the “wild child” as a maladjusted contrarian determined to vex the immutable bourgeois order.