Kaspar Hauser: New DNA analysis disproves the “lost prince” theory

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“His birth was unknown and his death hidden.”

So says the inscription on the tombstone (translated from Latin) marking the grave of the enigmatic man known as Kaspar Hauser, who died in 1833. Almost 200 years later, scholars have finally solved the long-standing mystery of Hauser’s alleged ties to the German royal family.

Hauser appeared seemingly out of nowhere in what is now Nuremberg, Germany, on May 26, 1828, when he was about 16 years old. He was found wandering around the city’s marketplace without any identification and with an unsigned letter in his hand.

The letter and Hauser’s fragmentary memoirs told a harrowing story: He grew up in a cramped dungeon he never left, fed and kept clean by a benefactor he never saw. When the teenage Hauser appeared in the city center, he could barely write his name and could barely communicate with the officials who interrogated him.

A fantastic story arose, suggesting that Hauser was a kidnapped prince of local legend, taken from the royal family of Baden, then a sovereign state in what is now southwestern Germany. There was no evidence to support this theory, but the rumors persisted, endearing Hauser to fashionable members of European society and establishing him as a local celebrity.

Long after Hauser’s death, scientists searched in vain for evidence of royal descent. In the mid-1990s, genetic data from Hauser’s preserved blood samples suggested that he was not part of the Baden line. However, these results were soon contradicted by tests conducted several years later, in which Hauser’s hair samples were taken.

Scientists recently found definitive answers with a new analysis of Hauser’s hair samples, according to a study published in the journal iScience. Their approach, developed for ancient DNA fragments from Neanderthals, was more sensitive than previous methods.

When they analyzed Hauser’s mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA—the genetic code passed down through the mother’s line—they confirmed that it did not match the mtDNA of Baden’s family members. Almost two centuries after Hauser’s mysterious reappearance, the discovery ruled out the possibility that he was a kidnapped prince.

The new analysis “shows how molecular genetics can unravel the mysteries of history,” said Dr. Dmitry Temiakov, a professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

“It’s a very comprehensive study,” said Temiakov, who was not involved in the study. “(It) took into account all previous data, examined and explained discrepancies in DNA sequencing analyses that occurred at different times and were performed using different methods, presented new data and carefully estimated the probability of an individual matching a particular lineage.”

The lab that conducted the new analysis has been working on perfecting techniques for examining heavily degraded DNA for nearly two decades, said lead study author and forensic molecular biologist Dr. Walther Parson, a researcher at the National DNA Database Laboratory of the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior in Innsbruck, Austria.

For their study, the researchers first reviewed previous findings about Hauser. In 1996, a lab in Munich, Germany, analyzed blood from Hauser’s underwear. (He died of a stab wound, and his bloody clothes are preserved in a museum in Ansbach, Germany.) The Munich lab found that the mtDNA in Hauser’s blood did not match Baden’s mtDNA. However, some researchers who supported the “lost prince” hypothesis have argued that the blood may not have been Hauser’s, Parson told CNN.

“It was said that the curators of the museum where Kaspar Hauser’s trousers were displayed were refinishing the blood stain to make it look better,” adding fresh blood from another source, he said. “If that were the case, the new blood would have masked the old blood and would most likely have different mitochondrial DNA.”

In the early 2000s, another lab in Münster, Germany, tested Hauser’s hair samples. The results showed that Hauser’s mtDNA was similar to that of the Baden men, contradicting the Munich results.

“They were at an impasse,” Parson said.

Parson’s lab conducted a new analysis of Hauser’s hair, using strands collected before and after his death. The hair was documented in detail and could be authenticated with greater certainty than the blood samples, Parson said. What’s more, the lab’s highly sensitive technique allowed researchers to ensure that they were sampling from hair shafts that contained usable mtDNA, and that the samples were not contaminated.

“With the improved sequencing method, we were able to obtain sequences of the highly degraded component,” providing results with a much stronger signal than in the previous hair analysis, Parson said. The new results matched the 1996 blood analysis, finding that Hauser’s mitotype—the set of mitochondrial alleles for different genes—was type W. The Badens’ mitotype was type H.

“This changes the landscape because now hair samples give the same result as a blood sample,” Parson said.

To confirm their results, the researchers sent the hair strands to a third lab—in Potsdam, Germany—that specialized in ancient DNA but did not tell the scientists there that the sample was Hauser’s. Blind analysis in Potsdam also revealed a W mitotype for Hauser’s sample.

“The consistency of the data from three independent laboratories further strengthens the study’s conclusions,” Temiakov added.

According to the “prince theory,” Hauser’s parents were Grand Duke Carl and Grand Duchess Stéphanie de Beauharnais. The Grand Duchess gave birth to a son on September 29, 1812, and the unnamed child died when it was 18 days old.

Some, however, whispered that the dead infant was another child, swapped for the 2-week-old prince by his stepmother, Countess Louise Caroline von Hochberg. The theory goes that the real prince—the man who later called himself Kaspar Hauser—was hidden away at that time. When Carl and Stéphanie failed to produce a male heir, one of Countess Hochberg’s sons ascended the grand-ducal throne.

The new findings about Hauser not only dispel the prince’s theory; they also show how important it is to push the boundaries of DNA-analysis technology, Parson said. “This obviously has implications for how we continue to work with mitochondrial DNA in forensic identification cases,” he added.

But if Hauser was not the “lost prince,” then who was he? There was no way to tell from mtDNA evidence, which could only link him to a Western European line, according to the study.

In the Ansbach cemetery, where Hauser is buried, his gravestone describes him as “an enigma of his time.” Whoever Hauser was, he remains an enigma that has not yet been solved.

Mindy Weisberger is a popular science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American, and How It Works magazine.