The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (German: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, literally Every Man for Himself and God Against All) won the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 1975. It was the first major international recognition for Herzog, whose work had until then circulated mainly in German art-house programming.

The lead, Bruno S. (born Bruno Schleinstein in 1932), was a Berlin street musician and trained metal worker with a complex personal history of institutional confinement. Herzog had come across him in the documentary Bruno der Schwarze - Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn by Lutz Eisholz and cast him in the role with no acting training. They worked together again three years later on Stroszek; Bruno never appeared in any other film, and he kept up his street-music career in West Berlin until his death in 2010.

The film is loosely based on the real case of Kaspar Hauser, the young man who appeared in Nuremberg in May 1828 carrying a letter of introduction and claiming to have been raised in confinement. The case was one of the most discussed European mysteries of the nineteenth century and has been the subject of dozens of later investigations, novels, plays and films. Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein shot it, and the score draws mainly on Pachelbel's Canon, years before Robert Redford's Ordinary People popularised the piece for American audiences.