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The "pistol accident"

On 3 April 1830, a pistol shot went off in Hauser's room at the Biberbachs' house. His escort hurriedly entered the room and found him bleeding from a wound to the right side of his head. Hauser quickly revived and initially stated that an assailant had fired the shot before fleeing, however he later changed his story stating that he climbed on a chair to get some books, the chair fell and while trying to hold on to something he accidentally tore down the pistol hanging on the wall, causing the shot to go off. There are doubts whether the wound was actually caused by the shot and some authors associate the incident with a preceding quarrel in which, again, Hauser was reproached for lying.[9] Whatever the case, the occurrence led the municipal authorities to come to another decision on Hauser, whose initially good relationship with the Biberbach family had soured. In May 1830, he was transferred to the house of Baron von Tucher,[10] who later also complained about Hauser's exorbitant vanity and lies. Perhaps the sharpest judgement passed on Hauser was the one by Mrs. Biberbach, who commented on his "horrendous mendacity" and "art of dissimulation" and called him "full of vanity and spite".[11]

Fatal stab wound

Inconsistencies in Hauser's account led the Ansbach court of enquiry to suspect that he stabbed himself and invented a tale about being attacked. The most obvious of these being that there was only a single set of footprints in the snow where the attack allegedly took place. The note in the purse that was found in the Court Garden contained one spelling error and one grammatical error, both of which were typical for Hauser, who, on his deathbed, kept muttering incoherencies about "writing with pencil". Although he was very eager that the purse be found, he did not ask for its contents. The note itself was folded in a specific triangular form, just the way Hauser used to fold his letters, according to Mrs. Meyer. Forensic doctors agreed that the wound could indeed be self-inflicted. Many authors[16] believe that he wounded himself in a bid to revive public interest in his story and to convince Stanhope to fulfil his promise to take him to England, but that he then stabbed himself more deeply than planned.[17]

Medical opinions

Hauser's various accounts of the story of his incarceration include several contradictions.[19] If he had grown up in a darkened cell he would have been suffering from rickets and the associated skeletal deformations, which there is no record of as well as likely suffering atrophy from being in such a confined space for so long. Psychiatrist Karl Leonhard concluded: "If he had been living since childhood under the conditions he describes, he would not have developed beyond the condition of an idiot; indeed he would not have remained alive long. His tale is so full of absurdities that it is astonishing that it was ever believed and is even today still believed by many people."[20]