Kaspar Hauser appeared in Nuremberg one day in 1828, unable to speak but for one sentence, clutching a handwritten note that was the only clue to his identity. The text of this note, written in broken German, appears verbatim in Werner Herzog’s 1974 film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, the original title of which is Every Man for Himself and God Against All. The film sticks to the documented facts of the Kaspar Hauser case—a legend well-known in Germany—but brings out its philosophical resonance, mostly avoiding speculation about the man’s mysterious circumstances.
When Hauser learned to speak, he was finally able to describe the first 16 years of his life, spent locked away in a windowless room removed from any human contact, tethered to the floor and unable to stand, food appearing in his cell while he slept. But the location of his imprisonment and the identity of his captor remain unknown. The film begins shortly before Kaspar’s release—his keeper gives him a few of the basics he’ll need in the outside world, teaching him to write his name, how to walk and to repeat the phrase, “I want to be a horseman like my father once was.” And then Kaspar is dropped off in the town square in the early morning to be found and taken in. All of the information on which this section of the film is based comes from Hauser’s own account, but what happens next is well documented by those who cared for him.
Over two years elapse in the film, and Kaspar gradually learns how to speak, and is brought into high society in a scene that recalls an earlier bit when he’s put on display in a circus act. At times, Kaspar’s education plays almost like a slob-versus-snobs comedy: a school teacher attempting to teach Kaspar logic is flabbergasted by his simpler, less elegant solution to a thought problem. But there’s also a beauty to Kaspar’s view of the world, as when he fails to understand that an apple lacks self-determination, and can only fall where it may.
Far more than a simple docudrama, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is, as Herzog stresses in the commentary track on the DVD, highly stylized and aims to explore the deeper truth behind the historical record—what Herzog calls “ecstatic truth.” Herzog notes that the Hauser case is unique; while there have been cases of children raised by wolves—which means that they at least belong to a social order of sorts—Hauser, for most of his life, had no idea that other human beings existed, no concept of language and no contact with the natural world. Left by his master alone in the public square, Kaspar stands, essentially catatonic, seeing everything—a cow, a tree, houses and buildings—for the first time, and the viewer is invited to look at these familiar sights from his point of view. An early shot in the film, of a field of rye undulating in the wind, expresses the often-unnoticed wonder of the natural world.
The psychological underpinnings of Kaspar’s—to put it mildly—confused state are manifold. Catatonia may aptly describe Kaspar’s demeanor in the early going, but it doesn’t accurately convey what’s going on inside. He doesn’t respond to a flame brought close to his face, or to a sword thrust next to his head. But not only does Kaspar not know what literally anything is, he missed several crucial stages in his development. The mirror stage, as conceived by Lacan, is when an infant sees itself in a mirror and recognizes, for the first time, that it has a defined physical form, and can be seen externally the way it sees other objects. Until that point, the child is essentially a formless blob, a large eye moving through the world. So the fully grown Kaspar isn’t just neurologically immobilized, but completely lacking in awareness of his own body.
Language acquisition, too, has cognitive ramifications beyond the ability to communicate. Linguists have theorized that language is acquired all at once; this doesn’t mean that a child suddenly knows every word, but that the knowledge that, for example, an apple is called an apple, leads to the understanding that every object has a name—and it is only via language that humans know that a tree is a tree, or that a car is a car. So it’s not just that Kaspar has never seen a tree before, or that he doesn’t know what it is; he can’t even differentiate a tree from anything else.
Bruno S., a street musician with an unusual, troubled history of his own—and, along with Klaus Kinski and Kurt Raab, one of the New German Cinema’s most fascinating and idiosyncratic performers—brings an incredible physicality to the role of Kaspar. His eyes bug with fear and confusion, and his uneasy gait generates a few moments of genuine, if subdued, physical comedy. The fact that Bruno S. is by no means a trained actor aided him in the role of this ultimate outsider, but the commitment he shows in the film is truly exceptional; his performance—if forced to call it that—is simply great, without needing the qualifier “for a non-actor.”
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is one of only two precious films Herzog made with Bruno S., but the director has continued to find talent and beauty in unusual places. It’s part of what defines his cinema; while many of his contemporaries imbued their films with social criticism—and this film has elements of class-based satire—Herzog is a true Romantic, strongly attracted to the natural world and the most elemental aspects of the human condition. Only his fourth narrative feature, Kaspar Hauser is a masterpiece.