1000 Francs CFA Klaus Störtebeker

Störtebeker was a Baltic privateer executed in Hamburg in 1401, and the degree to which he qualifies as a legitimate historical figure versus a semi-mythologized folk hero remains genuinely contested among German historians. The story that his decapitated body walked past eleven of his crew before collapsing is almost certainly apocryphal, but it has driven his popular image for six centuries. Burkina Faso has no historical connection to him whatsoever — this is a fiscal issue produced squarely for the European collector market, a practice the country's mint authority has leaned on heavily since the early 2000s.