12 Meter ohne Kopf (2009)

The pirate Klaus Störtebeker enjoys life to the full with his friend Gödeke Michels: plenty of money, plenty of women, plenty of wine. But one day Störtebeker is stabbed, and his life changes abruptly: the once-strong and courageous leader starts acting timidly and wants to settle down with Bille, a beautiful young woman. However, he is captured and sentenced to death. The film begins with a man being led to his execution. Before he is beheaded, he insists that he—Klaus Störtebeker—has lived a life of absolute freedom and would not trade a second of it. Hermann Lange, who is present, realizes that this is not Störtebeker at all and advises Simon von Utrecht, who is overseeing the execution, to stop it. But Simon refuses. The film then jumps back a year. Klaus Störtebeker and his crew are in the middle of attacking a Hanseatic ship. A narrator introduces the crew members, including Gödeke Michels, the man who was about to be executed in the previous scene. Klaus sees the ship’s captain flee below deck and follows him. But the captain manages to drive a knife into Klaus’s chest and escape. Klaus falls to the ground and loses consciousness. Later, Klaus comes to on a beach. His crew is with him, but they lost their ship in the fight. Fortunately, they can get a new boat at their hideout in Marienhafe. It is there that Klaus meets Bille. She wonders whether it might mean something that he was already dead once, referring to his injury. Meanwhile, Michels flirts with the waitress Okka, but she turns him down. The next day, Störtebeker’s crew sets sail in its new ship. They soon discover that it is a pretty dilapidated tub. In one corner they find the previous owner’s skeleton and a Chinese cannon, though they have no idea what to do with it, since cannons are practically unknown in Europe at this time. As time goes on, it becomes clear that Klaus has changed a lot since his injury—he has suddenly become much more fearful. Naturally, their raids suffer as a result. Frustrated, the crew all leave one night, with the exception of Klaus and Michels. Klaus thinks it might be better if he left the ship too, and leaves Michels alone aboard. Michels tries to hang himself. When he knocks over a candle, he starts a fire that sets off the cannon. Startled by the loud bang, Klaus returns to the ship and saves Michels. The two recognize the cannon’s potential. Soon the rest of the crew returns, and their successful raids increase dramatically thanks to the cannon. Hamburg’s city council can only watch helplessly as Störtebeker’s crew makes seaborne trade virtually impossible. The council has the merchants Hermann Lange and Nikolaus Schocke explain how the new weapon works and propose countermeasures. When the crew comes ashore in Marienhafe again, Michels wants to impress the woman he loves, Okka, with the treasures they have plundered, but she tells him she is now engaged. Klaus demonstrates the cannon’s power to Bille, but she is not impressed. She asks Klaus to stay ashore the next time he comes back. Meanwhile, Michels has tracked down Okka’s fiancé and wants to vent his frustration by castrating him. Klaus intervenes just in time and stops this senseless act of violence. Back at sea, the other crew members mercilessly mock Michels for his failure in love. He cannot really laugh along, however, and has one of the men (Lupe) put in a barrel, which is then dragged behind the ship on a rope. It is only meant to teach him a lesson, but then the rope snaps and the barrel drifts helplessly away. Michels fears that the Hanseatic League will shut down—that is, that no more merchant ships will dare venture into the North Sea. So he and the crew decide to sail to Hamburg and show those hated moneybags what for. Klaus knows this is a crazy suicide mission, but he cannot stop the determined Michels. Instead, one night he sinks the cannon to force Michels to turn back. But by then, the Hanseatic warships, led by Lange and Schocke, have already appeared. Now armed with cannons of their own, they sink Störtebeker’s ship and capture him. They report to their superior, Simon von Utrecht, that all the others must certainly have drowned. Michels manages to escape with his life and takes shelter on a farm. There he also runs into Lupe, who tells him—after a hard punch in the face—how he survived. The two try to start a new life as radish farmers. But Michels cannot put up with this poor, boring life for long. He steals a horse and sets off with Lupe to save Klaus Störtebeker from execution. Disguised as guards, they break him out of prison, and Michels tells him about his plan to get a new ship and continue their life as pirates. But Klaus refuses—he no longer wants to be a pirate. Michels then willingly allows himself to be arrested so that Klaus can escape. This leads into the execution scene the audience saw at the start of the film. This time, however, it is a little longer; it ends with Michels, as the sword is already swinging toward his neck, shouting one last time, “Fuck the Hanseatic League!” Then we see Klaus, presumably a few weeks later, sitting by a campfire and telling children about the adventures of the great Klaus Störtebeker, including how, after his execution, he ran for twelve meters without his head. Once the children are finally in bed, Klaus is visited by the ghost of Klaus Störtebeker—that is, Gödeke Michels. He tells him that he needs to embellish the story much more. He begins listing a few ideas that are indeed part of the legends about Störtebeker today, for example, that a traitor poured lead into their rudder.