Thematic Analysis of The Movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder Für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle, translation: "Every Man for Himself and God Against All”) is film made in 1974 by Werner Herzog. It tells the supposedly real story of a teenage German boy who spent the first sixteen years of his life isolated from all human contact and was suddenly released into the streets on Nuremberg in 1828. The history of the real Kaspar Hauser remains a mystery to this day, with speculation about his possible belonging to a royal house -particularly to the ruling family in Baden- and others arguing that all of it was a fraudulent scheme orchestrated by himself. There is obviously a great influence of the expressionist and alternative style of the director in the film, but the fact is that the film follows the documented facts of a historical figure very closely.

The first part of the movie depicts how Kaspar’s life was before being released. His only social interaction was with his “supposed” jailer, who was responsible for Kaspar’s very basic nourishment and very poor abilities to express few sentences and write his name. But the main concept deal with the initial assimilation of Kaspar Hauser into the Nuremberg society. When Kaspar is found in that square in Nuremberg, besides of the clothes he was wearing, the only thing he’s carrying with him is a letter addressed to the Captain von Wessenig, in which the author (Hauser’s jailer) explained the boy had been born in 1812, he had been put into the author’s custody and finally stated that the boy would have liked to become a cavalryman “like his father”. This letter is read just after he was taken to the police for examination. After being found relatively harmless, the local jailer decides to bring him into his home. At this point of the movie, there are a few interesting things that occurs almost all at once;

1) The children of the jailer begin, kindly, to teach Kaspar about some basic instruction, like pronouncing some words, phrases and so on. This point can be analysed from a sociological point of view as a form of “innocence” in the children, who haven’t been properly contaminated by the collective unconscious of the society they live in; due to the treating of Kaspar as a regular child instead of as an outcast, which occurs later in the film.

2) The jailer’s wife let Kaspar hold her newborn, to what he replies with ‘mother, they have taken everything from me. ’ In this part of the film he cries, he hasn’t felt typical emotions (tenderness, sadness, joy, etc…) nor experienced any of the situations faced until his introduction to society. This phrase refers to the separation that he has had during all his life from everyone and everything; and now realizes the profound void which marks his existence,

3) Some locals begin to torment Kaspar, while he’s at his cell, with a chicken. This moment could pass unnoticed, but there are two relevant facts: First, the antagonism of the locals towards another human just because he doesn’t share the same social forms and norms (we can also see this social alienation in the scene when he’s taken to freak show, because his stay in the cell “can no longer be supported by the community”). Second, -as stated before with other emotions- this is probably the first time that Hauser has felt fear in his life.

After his public exhibition in a local freak show, Hauser is taken home by Mr. Daumer, the schoolmaster. In two short years, in the words of the character aforementioned, Kaspar has learned many of the social norms in German society, but apparently he still can’t get a grasp of the meanings behind these interactions. His thinking process is very rational and neutral when it comes to analysing social conventions that current society is used to. Many of his questions often leave his interlocuteurs speechless, such as: “Why can’t I play the piano like I can breathe?,” “What are women only good to knit and cook?” or, for example, being unable to understand the meaning of God or religious education. On the other hand, even though his logical thinking is tested and rejected by the professor in mathematics and logic, it personally felt like he did a good induction to the problem even if it wasn’t done by the established logical rules. The explanation behind his early incomprehension to the social rules is that, to this point of the movie, he hasn’t completely gone through the process of internalisation – as in the acceptance of a set of norms and values set by others in the society–; therefore, it’s almost impossible for him to seize this kind of concepts.

The words he exchanges to his caretaker, describing the dungeon he lived in, is one of the most interesting parts of the movie “I look in every direction -left, right, to the front and to the back- and there’s only room. The room is bigger than the tower!”, revealing the relativity of personal perception regarding different experiences, in this case of the space he lived in. Whereas, –evidently– the tower is bigger than room where Kaspar Hauser was confined when he was found, the room –to his understandment– was basically his world. Just like the other dungeon where he lived for the first sixteen years of his life. This is a remarkable sociological inside that leaves space to open questions such as how much the personal perception and understanding of things of an individual, life, existentialism, etc. , would change if his primary and secondary socialisation were completely different from the ones the person has. As the films develops, Hauser seems to progressively adapt to the society he’s been thrown at, to the point where there’s a noble who offers to have Kaspar as a protegee. However, Hauser feels very intimidated about the the stylized manners of the nobleman and the latest finally decides to withdraw the offer.

Again, we can see how the protagonist is treated like a freak, even like an exchangeable good…which at the end might not be worth the trade-off. The final acts depict how Kaspar Hauser is attacked two times by his early jailer –the movie shows a man similarly dress to Kaspar’s assailant–, the second attack being mortal. Before dying, Hauser had two deliriums. The first one was about a messy amount of people climbing a mountain, apparently looking for something, and at the top of it was the death waiting. The second one was related to a caravane of people in the desert who are guided by a blind leader to the a city in the North. All of this could have been the way of Herzog to portray how societies are wandering, lost, towards an uncertain and fatal destination, with no guidance, without apparent sense of belonging. Always moving, always seeking for something.

The last scene of the film is a grotesque image of when they perform the autopsy on Kaspar’s body and they take the brain out, mentioning that "its shape is rather unusual" and that Kaspar had an overdeveloped brain. The report is filed. And his death is summarized as a series of procedures and routines of our conventional society, undercovering the most underlying conditions of alienation subjected by society, earmarking topics as delicate and sacred as the end of a human life. To sum up, the film pictures the story of Kaspar Hauser, an individual who has never been socialised. The director never doubts of the veracity of the story, rather gives an image of complete empathy, and even pity, for a man who struggles to survive all alone in a the world who’s not his own. Even the title of the movie -in german- is particular. Personally, it does not feel like Herzog wanted to depict a God in the movie, more the contrary.

We live in a world with no God, wandering without a clear guidance, and seeing that there is no supreme entity at all, we’re all God, therefore… where we are against us all. Other of the central themes in the film are the consequences of his isolation, lack of socialization and the profound alienation that, consequently, Kaspar Hauser experiences in the world he lived. There is a clear correlation between what’s considered and treated as “human” and the social norms of our rational societies. But ultimately the film explores our existencial misunderstanding of the vast, complex but ultimately hostile world we were thrown to at birth.