Gödeke Michels

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Execution of Klaus Störtebeker (left) and the Vitalienbrüder on Grasbrook in front of Hamburg on a leaflet from 1701

Gödeke Michels († 1401 in Hamburg ), also Goedeke Michel , Godeke Mychel , Gottfried Michaelsen or Gottfried Michaelis , was a pirate and one of the leaders of the Vitalienbrüder .

Life

Together with Klaus Störtebeker , Hennig Wichmann , Klaus Scheld and Magister Wigbold , also leaders of the Vitalienbrüder, the ship's captain made the North and Baltic Seas unsafe at the end of the 14th century . They owned fast ships that brought up the Hanseatic cogs in a flash and boarded them. They were primarily concerned with stealing prey and not with the fight, so that those who did not fight back were usually "only" thrown overboard.

Lettering of the Störtebeker monument by Hansjörg Wagner, which was erected in the HafenCity in 1982

In 1401, shortly after Klaus Störtebeker, Gödeke Michels was executed together with 79 cronies on the Grasbrook in front of the port of Hamburg . In the Hamburg Chronicles in Lower Saxony it says:

In 1401 Hamborch Clawes Stortebeker vnd Godeke Mychel waited before seerouer vpgehalet vnd ​​myt eren journeyman vp dem Broke.

At that time Michels was better known than Störtebeker. Both Gödeke Michels and Störtebeker are first mentioned by name at the beginning of 1394 .

Gödeke Michels - like Klaus Störtebeker - is said to have grown up as a farmer's son in Ruschvitz on the Jasmund peninsula on Rügen . After that he is said to have worked as a servant on the estate there. In Mecklenburg an old rampart belonging to the Schulenburg estate near Sülz an der Recknitz is shown as a castle by Störtebeker and Michels. The fact that Gödeke Michels should have had a castle in Hamburg-Neugraben on the Falkenberg, as the local street name "Gödeke-Michels-Weg" suggests, has been archeologically refuted.

Literary adaptations

The fate of Gödeke Michels' is the subject of the ballad "The Lullaby" by Lulu von Strauss and Torney .

Representation in the film

Michels is one of the main characters in Sven Taddickens feature film 12 meters without a head , he is played by Matthias Schweighöfer . The film deals with the life of Klaus Störtebeker , Michels is his friend here.

literature

  • Matthias Blazek: Piracy, Murder and Atonement - A 700-year history of the death penalty in Hamburg 1292-1949. ibidem, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-8382-0457-4 .
  • Jörgen Bracker: Klaus Störtebeker - just one of them. The story of the vitality brothers . In: Wilfried Ehbrecht (Ed.): Störtebeker. 600 years after his death. Hansische Studien, Vol. 15, Porta-Alba-Verlag, Lübeck 2001, ISBN 3-933701-14-7 .
  • Hilke Wilhelmsen (ed.): In the clutches of the Hanseatic League - From the Kieler Burspraken . Radio play u. a. on the life of Gödeke Michels and Störtebeker, based on historical facts, Kiel 2009.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburg Chronicles in Lower Saxony, ed. v. Johann Martin Lappenberg, Perthes, Besser and Mauke, Hamburg 1861, p. 402. For details, see Blazek: Seeräuberei, 2012, p. 46.
  2. ↑ Herbold, Susanne: God's friend and all the world's enemy - Klaus Störtebeker in novels and in history, thesis from 2010 in the Department of German Studies - Newer German Literature, Academic Series Vol. V195967, GRIN Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3 -656-21972-9 , p. 9.
  3. ^ Grasse, Johann Georg Theodor : "Claus Störtebeker and Gödeke Michels", in: Sagenbuch des Prussischen Staats, 2nd vol., C. Flemming, Glogau 1868/71, p. 990.
  4. ↑ Reinhard Dzingel: The Jungfrauenweg in the Wulmstorfer and Daerstorfer Heide , Moisburg, November 2013, pp. 4–7, (PDF; 2.6 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Michels, Gödeke
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Micheels, Godeke; Michels, Godeke; Micheel, Godecke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Pirate and brother of vitality
DATE OF BIRTH 14th Century
DATE OF DEATH 1401
Place of death Hamburg