Editing Kaspar Hauser (section)

== "Hereditary prince" theory ==
===Rumours===
[[File:Luise-Karoline-von-Hochberg.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The Countess of Hochberg]]
[[File:StephanieB.jpg|thumb|right|upright|The Grand Duchess Stéphanie]]
According to contemporary rumours, circa 1829, Hauser was the hereditary prince of Baden, who allegedly had been switched at birth with a commoner. The infant prince of Baden was born on 29 September 1812. His parents were [[Charles, Grand Duke of Baden]] and [[Stéphanie de Beauharnais]], a cousin by marriage and the adopted daughter of [[Napoleon|Napoleon Bonaparte]]. The infant prince died on 16 October 1812 after a few weeks. When his father Charles died in 1818, he had no sons to succeed him.  Charles' successor was his uncle, [[Louis I, Grand Duke of Baden|Louis I]], who was succeeded in 1830 by Louis' half-brother, [[Leopold I of Baden|Leopold I]]. 

The rumour was that [[Louise Caroline of Hochberg]], Leopold's mother, had been scheming to put her son on the throne in Baden. Disguising herself as a ghost, the so-called "White Lady", she sneaked into the nursery of the infant prince, kidnapped him and replaced him with a dying baby. The infant prince was then incarcerated for 16 years, until he emerged as Hauser in Nuremberg in 1828. The rumour also linked Hauser's stabbing death in 1833 with a conspiracy to prevent him from challenging the legitimacy of Leopold I.

=== Evidence uncovered in the 1870s ===
In 1876, Otto Mittelstädt presented evidence against the hereditary prince theory, with official documents concerning the infant prince's emergency baptism, autopsy and burial.<ref>Otto Mittelstädt, ''Kaspar Hauser und sein badisches Prinzenthum'', Heidelberg 1876.</ref> In his ''Historical Mysteries'', [[Andrew Lang]] summarises the results:<blockquote>"It is true that the Grand Duchess was too ill to be permitted to see her dead baby, in 1812, but the baby's father, grandmother, and aunt, with the ten Court physicians, the nurses and others, must have seen it, in death, and it is too absurd to suppose, on no authority, that they were all parties to the White Lady's plot."<ref>Andrew Lang, ''Historical Mysteries'', 1905</ref> </blockquote>

Historian Fritz Trautz went so far as to write that, "The silly fairytale, which to this day moves many pens and has found much belief, was fully disproved in Otto Mittelstädt's book."<ref>Fritz Trautz 1974, p.&nbsp;723</ref> Letters of the Grand Duke's mother, published in 1951, give detailed accounts of the infant prince's birth, illness and death, which would also disprove the hereditary prince theory.<ref>[[Prince Adalbert of Bavaria (1886–1970)|Adalbert Prinz von Bayern]]: ''Königin Caroline von Bayern und Kaspar Hauser'', in: Der Zwiebelturm 1951, pp.&nbsp;102–107 and 121–128.</ref>

=== DNA analyses ===
In November 1996, the German magazine ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' reported an attempt to genetically match a [[blood sample]] from underwear thought to have been Hauser's. This analysis was performed in laboratories at the [[Forensic Science Service]] in Birmingham, England, and the LMU Institute of Legal Medicine at the [[University of Munich]] in Germany. Comparisons with descendants of the princely family proved that the blood examined could not have come from the hereditary prince of Baden.<ref>''Der Spiegel 48'' (25 November 1996), pp.&nbsp;254–273.</ref><ref>{{cite journal
 |vauthors=Weichhold GM, Bark JE, Korte W, Eisenmenger W, Sullivan KM |title= DNA analysis in the case of Kaspar Hauser
 |journal= International Journal of Legal Medicine
 |year= 1998
 |volume= 111
 |issue= 6
 |pages= 287–91
 |publisher= Springer
 |issn= 0937-9827
 |pmid= 9826086
 |doi=10.1007/s004140050173
|s2cid= 22288883
 }}</ref>

In 2024, a new study corroborating previous analysis by [[massive parallel sequencing]] ruled out the prince theory by demonstrating that the [[mitochondrial DNA]] [[Haplotype|haplotypes]] in all samples attributed to Hauser including the previously examined blood sample were identical and different from the mitochondrial lineage of the House of Baden.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Parson |first1=Walther |last2=Amory |first2=Christina |last3=King |first3=Turi |last4=Preick |first4=Michaela |last5=Berger |first5=Cordula |last6=König |first6=Anna |last7=Huber |first7=Gabriela |last8=Anslinger |first8=Katja |last9=Bayer |first9=Birgit |last10=Weichhold |first10=Gottfried |last11=Sänger |first11=Timo |last12=Lutz-Bonengel |first12=Sabine |last13=Pfeiffer |first13=Heidi |last14=Hofreiter |first14=Michael |last15=Pfründer |first15=Dietmar |date=2024 |title=Kaspar Hauser's alleged noble origin – New molecular genetic analyses resolve the controversy |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2589004224017644 |journal=iScience |language=en |volume=27 |issue=9 |pages=110539 |doi=10.1016/j.isci.2024.110539|doi-access=free |pmc=11379569 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Cassella |first=Carly |date=2024-08-11 |title=DNA From 'Lost European Prince' Solves a 200-Year-Old Conspiracy |url=https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-from-lost-european-prince-solves-a-200-year-old-conspiracy |access-date=2024-08-14 |website=ScienceAlert |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/21/science/kaspar-hauser-new-dna-analysis/index.html|publisher=CNN|last=Weisberger|first=Mindy|title=New DNA analysis unravels the mystery of ‘lost prince’ Kaspar Hauser|date=September 21, 2024|access-date=September 21, 2024}}</ref>