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Klaus Störtebeker

German pirate (1360–1401)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Klaus Störtebeker was a German pirate. He was reputed to be the leader of the Victual Brothers, his group was hired to assist in a war between Sweden and Denmark and continued to capture merchant vessels mainly in the Baltic Sea and North Sea. Sharing their spoils equally, they named themselves "Likedeelers".

Editorial summary

“Klaus Störtebeker” enters the record as german pirate (1360–1401). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Klaus, Störtebeker and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 52-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Klaus, Störtebeker and German.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Klaus Störtebeker” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Klaus, Störtebeker and German provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Klaus Störtebeker”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Klaus Störtebeker primary sources, Klaus Störtebeker archive and Klaus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Klaus Störtebeker”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Klaus Störtebeker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.