LOST PRINCE: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

In 1828, a sixteen-year-old boy who had been kept in a dungeon his entire childhood turned up in Nuremburg, unable to talk and nearly unable to walk. Kaspar Hauser became a household word in Europe within a few years, but his origins remained an unsolved puzzle. He was mysteriously murdered in 1833.

Now Jeffrey Masson, whose work on the reality of child abuse in Freud's time created an explosion in the world of psychoanalysis, has discovered the earliest document on the Kaspar Hauser story, and on the basis of this and other previously unpublished documents he has translated one of the great works of German literature, Anselm von Feuerbach's story of Kaspar Hauser, into English for the first time. Accompanying this translation is an essay in which Masson explores the many curious issues raised by this case. Who was Kaspar Hauser, where did he come from, and why was he killed?