The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

by Werner Herzog

This film depicts an enigmatic real-life character who turned up in a village in Nuremberg in 1828. He has no language and seems completely outside of human culture, and is taken in by the local doctor who tries to socialise him. But the big question is, how could somebody be, as it were, outside of human society and find it so hard to develop language and to make sense of people? Kaspar Hauser might be the first well-documented case of autism in literature, or even in history.