The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, "Every Man for Himself and God Against All") is a West German film from 1974 directed by Werner Herzog.
It's dramatization of the story of real-life feral child Kaspar Hauser
. The story begins in 1828. A mannote is kept chained up in a cell. He appears to have been kept there his whole life and to have never heard any language, as he can only communicate with grunts and he can barely walk. A man clad in black, who is apparently Kaspar's caretaker, liberates him one day. He teaches Kaspar to say the single German sentence "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was." He gives Kaspar a letter of introduction to the commander of the local cavalry regiment. Then the man leaves Kaspar alone in the center of Nuremberg.
The story of the Wild Child soon attracts a great deal of attention from around Europe, and Kaspar becomes a sensation. Kaspar learns to read and write under the tutelage of a local academic, Professor Daumer. However, an unknown someone is out to kill the mysterious young man.
This film provides examples of:
- Based on a Great Big Lie: Or more accurately, based on a scam and myth. The real-life Kaspar Hauser is believed to have been a con artist and fraud. This film presents his story as true.
- Blind Musician: One plays the piano for Kaspar. Prof. Daumer points out that the musician is blind and lost his family in a fire, but he doesn't feel sorry for himself, and neither should Kaspar.
- Character Tic: Kaspar learns to speak, but when he speaks, his cadence is oddly formal and rigid. Even more noticeably, when he talks he presses his thumb and forefinger together and gestures in rhythm with what he's saying. One of the theologians debating God with Kaspar gets irritated by this and tells him to stop.
- Cutting the Knot: The title dolt confounds a doctor who asks him a version of the Knights and Knaves problem. Kaspar's response: "I would ask him if he is a tree-frog." It Makes Sense in Context.
- Doorstop Baby: Doorstop grown man, as Kaspar is found in the town square of Nuremberg, unable to communicate, or explain himself. He's taken in by the town. (He's even called a "foundling.")
- Downer Ending: Hauser's murdered, probably by his real family.
- The Full Name Adventures: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
- Gorgeous Period Dress: In a Ballroom scene.
- Grammar Correction Gag: The letter of introduction left by Kaspar's caretaker is full of spelling and grammar mistakes. When the cavalry captain reads it during Kaspar's interrogation, he tells the notary to transcribe it verbatim, including the mistakes.
- Insane Troll Logic: Kaspar is prone to this when his teachers try to educate him about the world. Prof. Daumer shows him the tower where he was held captive. Kaspar says this cannot be: when he was held captive in the room, everywhere he turned, there was nothing but room, while if he turns his back on the tower the tower disappears. Therefore the room must be bigger than the tower.
- Knights and Knaves: Kaspar Hauser is asked this question by a doctor trying to test his intelligence. The doctor will accept only a complex answer, but Kaspar responds simply (and correctly, since the doctor did not include the proper constraints), "I would ask him if he is a tree-frog."note
- Little People Are Surreal: The "King of Punt" is an elderly little person, who is one of the attractions in a circus freak show that briefly features Kaspar.
- Never Learned to Talk: Kaspar when he is discovered, as he is a Wild Child that has spent his whole life locked in a tower.
- Non-Actor Vehicle: Stars Bruno S., a street musician.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with the town notary walking away down the street, inordinately pleased with the autopsy results that show Kaspar to have had an enlarged liver and brain.
- Parental Abandonment: Thank God!
- Silence Is Golden: Almost no dialogue over the first thirteen minutes, as Kaspar Hauser is being held captive in a cell where no one ever talks to him. He has never heard a language, and consequently only grunts.
- Unwitting Test Subject: It's suspected that Kaspar Hauser was part of an early rogue experiment in psychology.
- Wild Child: Kaspar Hauser claimed to have been raised in an environment that completely cut him off from human contact. He also shows signs of having some sort of neurological illness. Subverted by the real Kaspar Hauser, who was strongly suspected of having been a swindler due to, among other things, significant inconsistencies in his story, and near-constant lies.
