New DNA analysis solves the mystery of the “lost prince” Kaspar Hauser

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“His birth was unknown, his death secret.”

So it is written (translated from Latin) on the tombstone at the grave of the mysterious man named Kaspar Hauser, who died in 1833. Almost 200 years later, scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery about Hauser's alleged ties to the German royal family.

Hauser appeared seemingly out of nowhere in what is now Nuremberg on May 26, 1828. He was about 16 years old at the time. He was found wandering around the town square, without identification and with an unsigned letter in his hand.

The letter and Hauser's fragmented memories 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 showed up downtown, he could barely write his own name and was barely able to communicate with officials who questioned him.

A fantastic story began to spread that Hauser was a kidnapped prince from local legend, abducted from the royal family of Baden, then a sovereign state in what is now southwest Germany. There was no evidence to support this theory, but the rumors persisted, endearing Hauser to the genteel members of European society and making him 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 blood samples indicated that he did not come from the Baden line. But a few years later, examinations of Hauser's hair samples refuted these results.

Recently, scientists found definitive answers through a new analysis of Hauser's hair samples, according to a study published in the journal iScience. Their approach, developed for ancient Neanderthal DNA fragments, was more sensitive than previous methods.

When they analyzed Hauser's mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA – genetic code passed down through his mother's side – they confirmed that it did not match the mtDNA of members of the Baden family. Nearly two centuries after Hauser's mysterious appearance, this finding ruled out the possibility that he was a kidnapped prince.

The new analysis “shows how molecular genetics can unravel historical puzzles,” said Dr. Dmitry Temiakov, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

“This is a very comprehensive study,” said Temiakov, who was not involved in the research. “It took into account all previous data, examined and explained the discrepancies in DNA sequence analyses performed at different times and using different methods, presented new data and carefully estimated the probability that an individual corresponds to a particular ancestry.”

Decoding DNA

The lab that conducted the new analysis has worked for nearly two decades to improve techniques for examining highly degraded DNA, 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, scientists first reviewed previous findings about Hauser. In 1996, a laboratory in Munich analyzed blood from Hauser's underwear. (He died of a knife wound and his bloodstained clothes are kept in a museum in Ansbach.) According to the Munich laboratory, the mtDNA in Hauser's blood did not match Baden's mtDNA. However, some researchers who supported the “lost prince” hypothesis claimed that the blood may not have been Hauser's, Parson told CNN.

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

In the early 2000s, another laboratory in Münster examined hair samples from Hauser. The results showed that Hauser's mtDNA closely matched that of Baden, which contradicted the results from Munich.

“They were at a stalemate,” Parson said.

A royal fraud exposed

Parson's lab conducted a new analysis of Hauser's hair, using strands collected before and after his death. The hair was extensively documented and could be authenticated with greater certainty than the blood samples, Parson said. In addition, the lab's highly sensitive technique allowed researchers to be sure they had taken samples from the hair shafts, where the useful mtDNA was located, and that the samples were not contaminated.

“With the improved sequencing method, we were able to obtain sequences of the highly degraded component,” Parson said, producing results with a much stronger signal than the previous hair analysis. The new results were consistent with those of the 1996 blood analysis and found that Hauser's mitotype – a set of mitochondrial alleles for various genes – was type W. The Badens' mitotype was type H.

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

To confirm their results, the researchers sent strands of hair to a third laboratory in Potsdam that specialized in ancient DNA, but did not tell the scientists there that the sample was Hauser's hair. The blind analysis in Potsdam also showed the mitotype type W for the Hauser sample.

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

“The riddle of his time”

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; the nameless boy died at the age of 18 days.

However, some whispered that the deceased infant was another baby, swapped for the two-week-old prince by his step-grandmother, Countess Louise Caroline von Hochberg. The theory is that the real prince – the man who later called himself Kaspar Hauser – was then hidden. When Carl and Stéphanie later failed to produce a male heir, one of Countess Hochberg's sons ascended to the grand ducal throne.

The new findings on Hauser not only disprove the prince theory; they also show the importance of pushing the boundaries of DNA analysis technologies, Parson said. “This obviously has implications for how we in forensics continue to work on mitochondrial DNA in human identification cases,” he added.

But if Hauser wasn't a “lost prince,” then who was he? It's impossible to say based on the mtDNA evidence, which, according to the study, only links him to Western European ancestry.

In the Ansbach cemetery where Hauser is buried, his gravestone describes him as “the enigma of his time.” But who Hauser was is a mystery that has still not been solved.

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

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