Police detained him as a vagrant. At the station, he wrote his name. When guided to make a mark on official documents, he produced the name Kaspar Hauser in a cramped but practiced script. His physical condition was unusual: the soles of his feet were smooth, suggesting he had not walked on outdoor surfaces. He reacted strangely to ordinary smells. He preferred bread and water to cooked food. He appeared unable to understand spoken language, though his hearing was intact. He was confused by a mirror, reportedly searching behind it for the person he saw reflected inside.
Over the weeks and months that followed, as he was housed first with a jailer and then with a schoolmaster named Friedrich Daumer, Hauser slowly acquired language. As his speech developed, he described, in increasing detail, what he said was the entire experience of his childhood: a cell approximately two meters long, completely dark, with a straw bed and two small wooden horses and a wooden dog as his only companions. He said he had received bread and water, been drugged when his hair and nails were cut by an unseen person, and had never seen the face of whoever cared for him. Near the end of his captivity, he said, a man with a hidden face had appeared and taught him to write his name and to form the cavalryman phrase, which he did not fully understand.
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## The City That Adopted Him
Nuremberg did not simply observe and investigate Hauser. It adopted him, formally and financially. The city voted funds for his care and education. He became, almost immediately, a public figure — visited by notables, discussed in newspapers, and treated by some as a living proof that human nature was shaped entirely by experience rather than heredity.