Kaspar

play by Handke

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June 30, 2026

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Peter Handke's play Kaspar (1968) is a significant work in his avant-garde career. It draws inspiration from the real-life mystery of Kaspar Hauser, a youth found in 19th-century Germany with little understanding of language or society. Handke's play depicts this foundling figure as a near-speechless innocent destroyed by society's imposition of its language and rational values. This aligns with Handke's broader thematic concern that conventional language and reality can be constraining, masking underlying irrationality and confusion. Handke, a Nobel Prize winner, is known for exploring the periphery and specificity of human experience through linguistic ingenuity.12

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Peter Handke
As a playwright
…is his first full-length play, Kaspar (1968), which depicts the foundling Kaspar Hauser as a near-speechless innocent destroyed by society’s attempts to impose on him its language and its own rational values. Handke’s other plays included Das Mündel will Vormund sein (1969; “The Ward Wants to Be Guardian”; Eng. trans.…
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…is his first full-length play, Kaspar (1968), which depicts the foundling Kaspar Hauser as a near-speechless innocent destroyed by society’s attempts to impose on him its language and its own rational values. Handke’s other plays included Das Mündel will Vormund sein (1969; “The Ward Wants to Be Guardian”; Eng. trans.…
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German literature
The late 1950s and the ’60s
Kaspar), by Peter Handke, takes its starting point in the story of the foundling Kaspar Hauser and his gradual acquisition of language and culture, showing him being browbeaten into learning German and becoming increasingly dehumanized in the process. Although this play did not explicitly address…
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Kaspar), by Peter Handke, takes its starting point in the story of the foundling Kaspar Hauser and his gradual acquisition of language and culture, showing him being browbeaten into learning German and becoming increasingly dehumanized in the process. Although this play did not explicitly address…
Read More