Ronald Zehrfeld, the actor playing Störtebeker in the film, called the role “a childhood dream.” Asked to describe his character, he said, “He butchers people, but also has a very, very big heart.”

The pirate’s status has waxed and waned since the Romantic period, enjoying particularly good runs during the Nazi era and in socialist East Germany. He has been the subject of rock songs, adventure novels and even a baroque opera. The slogan of Störtebeker beer, brewed in Stralsund, is “the beer of the righteous.”

“This strikes a nerve of social justice at the moment,” said Philip Kalisch, one of the movie pirates outside the Gothic house here, who had been made picture-perfect medieval grimy  right down to the black cuticles  by the makeup team.

Mr. Kalisch, 29, responded to an open call for actors and received time off from his job in Hamburg working for a Social Democratic member of Parliament to appear in the production. “People really want to see the fat pepper sacks relieved of a bit of their riches,” he said, using a seasoned German term for the wealthy.

Much has been made of the fact that the capitalists responsible for the current global financial crisis are, in many cases, being propped up with multibillion-dollar state bailouts. In the name of stability, no one is in a hurry to see the bankers, or more to the point their banks, fail.

It may be completely appropriate to applaud today as the early capitalists of the Hanseatic League, the organization of German merchant towns whose ships Mr. Störtebeker reputedly preyed upon, are run through, keelhauled and made to walk the plank. In these difficult times, it may even be a little therapeutic.