Caspar Hauser; oder, Die Trägheit des Herzens (Caspar Hauser: The Inertia of the Heart), published in 1908, is Jakob Wassermann’s most celebrated novel. Written in German, it fictionalizes the true story of Caspar Hauser, the mysterious young man who appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 claiming to have been raised in isolation, and examines the failure of society to respond with adequate compassion to a being of radical innocence and vulnerability.
Wassermann transforms the historical enigma into a profound meditation on cruelty, goodness, and the indifference of the human heart. Download this free public-domain EPUB for one of the great early twentieth-century German novels and a haunting story that has never been fully explained.