（ＣＮＮ） “His birth is unknown, his death hidden.”
So reads the Latin inscription on the gravestone of the mysterious Kaspar Hauser. Nearly 200 years after his death in 1833, scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery surrounding Hauser’s connections to German royalty.
Hauser seemed to come out of nowhere. He was found wandering the town square in what is now Nuremberg, Germany, on May 26, 1928. He looked to be around 16 years old, had no identification and was clutching an unsigned letter.
The letters and Hauser’s fragmented memories reveal a terrifying story: He grew up in a cramped dungeon and never left it. He was fed and always kept clean, but he never met anyone who cared for him. When Hauser turned up in the city center as a teenager, he could barely write his own name and could barely answer questions from authorities.
Thus, a fantastic story was born: according to local legend, Hauser was a kidnapped prince from the Grand Duke of Baden, who ruled in southwestern Germany at the time. There was no evidence to support the story, but the rumor was strong. Hauser became a beloved figure among members of high-flying European society and established himself as a local celebrity.
For a long time after his death, scholars searched in vain for evidence of a royal connection: in the mid-1990s, analysis of genetic data from preserved blood samples from Hauser suggested he was not a member of the Grand Duchy of Baden, but hair samples confirmed this a few years later.
Watercolour studies of plums, rosebuds and cherries, attributed to Hauser. Daniel Karmann/dpa/picture alliance/AP
According to a study published in iScience on the 20th, scientists recently used new techniques to analyze Hauser’s hair and discovered a definitive answer.
Analysis of Hauser’s mitochondrial DNA showed that it did not match that of any member of the Grand Ducal House of Baden, a discovery that ruled out the possibility that he was an abducted archprince, nearly two centuries after his mysterious appearance.
“The analysis is an example of how molecular genetics can help unravel historical mysteries,” said Dr Dmitry Temiakov, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study.
Dr Walter Persson, a researcher at the Austrian Ministry of the Interior’s National DNA Database Institute and lead author of the study, explained that improvements in DNA analysis methods have produced results that are much more indicative than previous hair analyses.
According to Temiakov, similar results have now been confirmed by three independent laboratories, lending further support to the paper’s conclusions.
According to the “Archduchess theory,” Hauser’s parents were Archduke Karl and Archduchess Stéphanie of Beauharnais. The Archduchess gave birth to a boy on September 29, 1812, but the baby, whose name is unknown, died 18 days after birth.
However, a rumor spread that the baby that died was not his real identity, and that the two-week-old Archduke had been replaced by his grandmother-in-law, Countess Louise Caroline von Hochberg. The real Archduke, who would later call himself Kaspar Hauser, was hidden away from prying eyes. As Archduke Karl and Archduchess Stephanie did not have a male heir, one of Countess Hochberg’s sons became Archduke.
If Hauser is not the “lost archprince,” then who is he? It is impossible to tell from mitochondrial DNA evidence, and the paper only reveals that he is related to a Western European family.
Buried in Ansbach, Germany, the inscription on Hauser’s gravestone describes him as “an enigma of his time,” but much of his identity remains a mystery.