Klaus Störtebeker

Klaus Störtebeker was the best-known leader of the Victual Brothers (Vitalienbrüder), a fraternity of privateers-turned-pirates that raided Hanseatic League shipping in the North and Baltic Seas in the late 14th century, after originally being hired to supply besieged Stockholm during a war between Sweden and Denmark. Much of his popular legend, including his name, was embellished in later folklore, making the precise historical facts of his life difficult to separate from myth. He was captured and executed in Hamburg around 1401.