KAŠPAR HAUSER – DÍTĚ EVROPY / KAŠPAR HAUSER – CHILD OF EUROPE

Jan Vedral

Cast: 10 men, 4 women

Kašpar Hauser, a mentally undeveloped individual isolated from human society until the age of sixteen, appeared in Nuremberg in 1828. He was suspected of fraud, interrogated, examined, taught and educated. In a short time every form of social manipulation was imprinted on him, which he reflected like a grotesque mirror. Kašpar Hauser was transferred from one citizen of Nuremberg to another for his upbringing. A judicial committee ascertained that he could have been the abducted descendent of a local aristocratic family, but the closer it came to proof, the greater the danger he was in. Kašpar Hauser was killed under similarly mysterious circumstances as he had appeared. Some people imagined even his agony was feigned. The author conceived the play as a myth of the modern age, fourteen stations on the way of the cross of modern man, on the basis of studies of authentic period sources. Kašpar’s case is presented as a model destiny of an individual in a bureaucratised rationalist society paying lip service to human rights but which does not show itself able to resolve conflicts of race, emotion and human relationships. In separate meetings with the citizens of Nuremberg who have an interest in looking after Kašpar, the author demonstrates the crisis of the concept of man in the European culture of the modern age.

  The play is available in Czech original.