The note referred to Hauser by name and indicated familiarity with his history. It promised information about his origins. Its author identified themselves with the initials M. L. Ö. and noted they had come from “the Bavarian border, near a river.” The note’s content was consistent with what a genuine informant might write to draw Hauser to a meeting. It was also consistent with what Hauser himself might have written to establish a cover story for a wound he planned to self-inflict.
The critical observations made by those who suspected the note was Hauser’s own work were these: the note was folded in a triangular style characteristic of Hauser’s known correspondence; it contained the same kinds of spelling and grammatical errors found in his writings; and no person matching the description Hauser gave of his attacker was ever identified.
The observations made by those who accepted the note as genuine were these: the note required planning and execution that would have been difficult for someone who was about to stab himself in the chest; the wound was deep and potentially fatal, inconsistent with a plan to generate sympathy rather than a catastrophic outcome; and the absence of an identified attacker does not prove there was none.
Both interpretations remain logically possible. The 2024 DNA study is irrelevant to this question. The question of what happened in the Hofgarten on December 14, 1833 belongs to forensic history, not to genetics.
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## Feuerbach’s Report and the Legal Framework
The 1832 publication by Paul von Feuerbach remains one of the foundational documents in the Kaspar Hauser literature, and its framing has shaped how the case has been understood for nearly two centuries.