User talk:Schiontalander

biased account
There are two issues to be resolved here: first whether or not Kaspar Hauser was a victim of a horrific 16 year long imprisonment, and second, whether or not he was a prince of Baden. The current version of the article has a strong slant against both of these possibilities and is one sided in its consideration of the historical evidence and the historical and current controversy.

WIth regard to the first issue, carefully recorded eye witness accounts by the highly reputable people involved with Kaspar Hauser, namely Professor Daumer and Judge Feuerbach make clear and decisive statements on the veracity of Kaspar's story, and the absurdity of the deniers, in the face of the extreme characteristics he expressed. These include but are not limited to: 1) the highly unusual musculo-skeletal anomalies in his legs and hips, that could only have occurred developmentally. 2) his profound difficulty walking, soft feet, and persistent lack of stamina for many months 3) the extreme sensitivity of his vision, hearing, smell, taste and even some other unusual senses not typical of human beings (sensitivity to metals, unseen people, mental disturbance in others, etc.)  4) the extreme sensitivity of his digestive system and its inability to assimilate anything but bread and water without pain and illness and its subsequent habituation to a great variety of foods over time  5) the savant like nature of his mnemonic capacity and its subsequent decline, 6) his perceptual naivete on the use of object size in determining distance, the interpretation of color cues and its subsequent improvement  7) his conceptual naivete to the point of a tabula rosa, combined with the rapid assimilation of new concepts and intense drive to learn under the tutelage and care of Daumer  8) his utter guilelessness, innocence and compassion for all things,  a quality many many people who knew him remarked upon and 9) his profound unfamiliarity with all things in the world. These most salient testimonies are severely underrepresented in the current article, and my edits redressed this to a limited extent.

With regard to the second issue: If the link to the House of Baden is "long since rejected", then why are there DNA analyses still going on in the 21st century? Clearly there is still an active controversy effecting continued investigation, and this introductory, yet summary statement is unsupported by the facts.

Finally, according to Wikipedia: A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Mayer is widely cited in articles and books on the subject of Stanhope, and is both a researcher and author, so he is indeed a historian. Academic credentials and posts in no way guarantee objectivity. All serious and widely cited historical surveys must be included as valid according to the rules of neutrality in Wikipedia.

Schiontalander (talk) 18:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)