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"A Myth Becomes Reality": Kaspar Hauser As Messianic Wild Child , Ulrich Struve

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The topos of the "Wild Child" occupies an important place in the mythic and literary imagination of the West. The European climax of a long line of wild children, Kaspar Hauser was a nineteenth-century German foundling whose fate has inspired a host of novels, dramas, novellas, poems, songs, and movies, even an opera and a ballet. It has been treated by Paul Verlaine, R. M. Rilke, and Klaus Mann, by the Dada poet Hans Arp, by the dramatist Peter Handke, and by the filmmaker Werner Herzog. This article offers a brief historical sketch of Hauser's life before discussing a key …