Caspar Hauser

Ok, the time has come for the story of the Baden dynasty and Caspar Hauser. As told through a few choice snippets.

[Margrave Charles Frederick] was already an elderly man (...) when he felt the desire to have a companion during his declining years. This old man's whim was potentially dangerous, and Princess Amelia, the wife of the hereditary prince, was worried. Since the death of her mother-in-law, she had occupied first place at court and had no intention of yielding it to a newcomer who, during the old sovereign's lifetime, would take precedence over her. Only someone who has not been a hereditary princess can fail to realise how painful such a humiliation can be!

Indeed. I have, once, so I know exactly.

Princess Amelia went in search of a ncie girl, someone beautiful but unobtrusive, who would know how to charm the margrave's old age, but discreetly. She thought she had found the very person in one of her maids of honour, Luisa Geyer von Geyersberg [I am not making this shit up]. In the absence of great beauty the girl had spirit - especially a spirit of intrigue - and she revealed it by rapidly captivating the heart of Charles Frederic (...) It was decided that the children born of this marriage should have no other righrs beyond bearing their mother's name (...) [and] would only be called to succeed if the Baden line became extinct. In fact, there was little chance tht this would happen (...) Two years passed which apparently justified this assumption, and then, in August 1790, the [countess von Hochberg - formerly von Geyersberg] gave birth to a son, Leopold von Hochberg. From that moment there was no holding her: a second son, William, was born in 1792, a third, Alexander, in 1794, and in 1795 came a daughter (...)

In 1812 [the legitimate descendant of Charles Frederick] Grand Duchess Stephanie gave birth to a son, and the rage of the countess von Hochberg, on seeing the crown recede from her sons' heads, reached its height. It was then (...) that she had the utterly fantastic idea of stealing the new-born child and using it as a pawn in the game (...) The plan was crazy: she ran every risk of being caught (...) but through a strange combination of circumstances, the first part of [it], at least, was successful. Thanks to accomplices in the palace, she succeeded in substituting for the royal child, who was only a few days old, another child born the preceding week to a poor family in Carlsruhe (...) Unfortunately for the countess, her plan did not entirely succeed. In fact, no sooner had he been placed in the grand ducal cradle than the plebeian child was seized with convulsions and began to howl. This woke the girls who were looking after him. In the uproar this sudden illness caused, nobody noticed the exchange. The doctor summoned to the child could not have realised it since it was not he who had delivered the grand duchess (...). The child died the next day and suffering had changed his little face so much that not even his father could have guessed that he was not his (...) The court went into mourning and the countess von Hochberg found this grand ducal baby highly embarassing. It was a bad moment to suggest his return in exchange for the elevation of the Hochbergs to the rank of princes of Baden.

In short, the child was given to a peasant family, under the supervision of countess von Hochberg, who later had a falling out with her sons, for whose titles she fought so bravely, and decided to divulge his identity to the legitimate Baden branch. The legitimate Baden branch reacted by incarcerating the boy in some fortress, where he lived in total isolation for a few years, before being released by his jailer - who got fed up with playing nanny - into Nurnberg. A veritable caveman, who ate with his hands and knew only a few broken words of Franconian, but nonetheless bore a letter of recommendation adressed to the captain of the guard. Needless to say he became an instant celebrity. I was very surprised to find that I'd actually heard of Caspar Hauser before reading that story. It's weird, the places pop attaches itself to culture sometimes.