In 1828 a boy staggered into Nuremberg clutching a letter, able to say almost one sentence, claiming he'd spent his whole life alone in a dark cell fed only bread and water. Was he a hidden prince, an elaborate hoax, or something no one has ever explained? Then, just as Europe grew obsessed, he was murdered.
The complete strange record: found in Unschlitt Square on May 26, 1828, walking like he'd never used his legs, writing his own name in a firm hand yet knowing almost no words.
A tight overview of how a barely-verbal teenager became the most famous person in Germany, and why his account of a lifetime in a lightless box gripped a continent.
The details that made people believe — and doubt: three wooden toys, a diet of only bread and water, and a body that reacted to light and food like nothing his doctors had seen.
The chilling escalation: the first attack in 1829 by a hooded man who warned him he 'still had to die,' and the fatal meeting in a park four years later.
The geneticist who identified Richard III tackles the biggest question: was Kaspar the hidden heir of the House of Baden? What the DNA evidence actually shows.
The three enduring theories laid side by side — including the uncomfortable evidence that Kaspar may have been an accomplished liar who staged his own wounds.
Herzog's haunting film, cast with a non-actor who had himself spent years institutionalized. Less a solution than a meditation on what it means to arrive in the world fully grown and utterly unformed.