Born in 1955, Klaus Starkemann was born in West Berlin during the Cold War to his parents Kurt and Eva Starkemann.  Both parents were noted to have been Prussian nobles (Junkers), but were officially 'de-titled' as per their family's request many years before.

 

Klaus was raised on the 2,000 acre estate in a large, beautiful home.  There, he and his parents worked hard to help the local industries and businesses get restarted, help farmers harvest their fields and produce, raise horses and most interestingly, learn and teach Teutonic history and lore at the nearby university. Klaus' father, an Olympic athlete that missed out on participating in the actual Olympics due to World War II and his nation's rise of Nazism, moved his family to Switzerland for the duration of the war, but had since moved back. The locals didn't much care for the Starkemanns, however, thanks to the Starkemann's generous and helpful nature, it seemed that the Starkemannn's 'abandoning' of their Germanic roots was eventually 'allowed' to have happened thanks to the Starkemann's generous donations and assistance to the local communities. 

 

Klaus was raised to be a smart, conscientious man, as well as become an Olympic level athlete as well (although he did miss out in competing in the 1968 Olympics for West Germany by losing in the final heat by 0.1 seconds). Regardless, Klaus went to college and learned much about security, at his father's bequest, allowing his to start up a newer version of the family's archaic security firm, commercializing it and calling itself Norse Securities. At age 21, Klaus was informed about a secret family legacy; a legacy that went back thousands of years. The legacy of the god, Perun.

 

Klaus was taken to the outer edge of the family estate in the woods, where he was shown a secret, disguised hatch in what was supposed to look like a dead tree stump.  The hatch opened to reveal a vertical ladder leading into a concrete bunker below grounds.  There, in the dark, after lighting several lanterns, did Klaus learn what was hidden: nearly two dozen boxes of ancient magical antiquities and artifacts, with one prominent one being a long rectangular box with four ornate locks on them. His father unlocked the prominent box's locks and revealed what looked to be a massive battle axe, the likes of which he'd never seen before. Looking at it, it must have weighed over 300 lbs. His father would not even try to touch it.

 

His father informated Klaus that this axe was a magical axe of their ancient ancestor, the Slavik god once called Perun.  The Axe of Perun had magical properties; properties that one day, should Klaus choose to do so, could take on the responsibilities of; a responsibility that, currently in West Germany, as mentioned by Klaus' father, was illegal. As per national and international law, no super-powered beings were legally allowed to exist or operate in either West or East Germany under penalty of life imprisonment or death. This law was made due to the Nazi's own super-powered Axis Force and their use of their powers for evil.  As such, Klaus' father denoted that the Axe would always be here for him to take, when and if he should chose to do so. 

 

Klaus' father also told his story of him and the Axe when it was bequeathed unto him. According to Klaus' father, he dared to wear it in the Great War (World War I). He wore it once, used it once, and after that, never wore it again.

 

After being trained about the history of the Axe (with the documents that were presented with it), Klaus' father passed the Axe's magical tests and was then able to wield the Axe. Klaus' father then donned an old suit of armor and made his way to the battlefront where he intended to 'single-handedly win the war for the Kaiser'. Instead, after easily killed dozens of enemy troops, Klaus' father realized he wasn't stopping an enemy, he was murdering them; the Axe gave the Germans the power of gods, and as such, felt that he was wielding power that was too awesome for his time or era, even though things like airplanes and chemical warfare were now in use.  Regardless, when Klaus' father saw the amazing destructive power of the Axe, Klaus' father fled the battlefront, swearing never again to wear the armor.

 

Klaus' father hid the armor in an old root cellar of a groundskeepers cabin (that was torn down years later and was the place it was being hidden in now). Klaus' father's muscular physical changes that were gained from his exposure to the Axe, however, remained, leaving Klau's father a 7 foot tall monster of muscles by comparision to his original body. For Klaus' father, fate aligned to help ever with that.

 

While out hunting for food with his hunting rifle, Klaus' father was accidently shot dead unintentionally by another hunter shot in a hunting accident. Luckily, the hunter that shot Klaus' father was a doctor. Although Klaus' father's heart stopped beating for over 2 minutes, the doctor was able to resuscitate Klaus' father and stop the bleeding. Klaus father, as a result of being dead, lost his magically enhanced physical abilities, wherein the said magic, as per the Axe's documentation, would return to the Axe so that the next worthy and strong person who was capable of passing the Axe's arcane test of worthiness that would one day allow the same to happen to them.  As per the Axe's instructions, it HIGHLY recommended keeping the Axe 'in the family' to ensure that a bequeathed family member could be trained and conditioned to not only wield the Axe, but to use it for the side of good and the German people.

 

Following World War II, Klaus' father knew he had to train his only son to be the next one to wield the Axe, even though it broke his heart to have to do so. As such, as mentioned earlier, Klaus' father attempted to tell Klaus that due to the new West German laws that he (Klaus) couldn't legally wield the Axe anyway and that he instead should simply store the Axe and 'pass it down' to his children and future generations. Sadly, that didn't happen.

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In 1975, West Germany was embroiled in a nuclear deal providing Brazil with Uranium to use in nuclear power plants in Brazil, all for trade over jet fuel nozzles. The world was embittered by this deal due to Nuclear Proliferation Treaties (NPTs), but not so much as an organization calling itself Condor Legion. This band of East German super-powered radicals (initially supported by the East German communist government, but later 'disavowed') intercepted the Dutch Uranium shipment (the nation where the Uranium was contractually be shipped from) that was to be sent to Brazil. Over 1000 lbs of Uranium was stolen by Condor Legion, all of which, if scientifically processed right, could be made into Plutonium and atomic bombs.

 

Klaus, who'd been working in the German government, heard about what had happened through classified channels. The idea of East German fanatics having nuclear weapons was indeed worthy of his action. No one else was stopping Condor Legion thanks to a bunch of political United Nations' 'red tape' over who was supposed to respond. Knowing what he was about to do was illegal, Klaus went and 'tested' himself with the Axe of Perun. After barely passing the the right to wield the Axe, Klaus 'borrowed' experimental rocket boots and an experimental (and HIGHLY expensive) nuclear radiation suit that his government team was testing.  Wearing the armor, Klaus used the rocket boots (very unsuccessfully at first, but he got the hang of flight by the time he crash landed on the ship with the Uranium) and fought the Condor Legion aboard the Uranium-ladened ship. The Axe indeed was powerful and the meager few Condor Legionnaire Troops and superheroes that were on the ship weren't capable of stopping the new magically super-powered Klaus.  In minutes, Klaus vanquished the Condor Legion. He then turned the ship back to German waters and called in over the radio for the authorities to come 'pick up the East German trash' he'd found aboard the ship.

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Because of the classified nature of this event, the public was never told of what happened that day with the Uranium, Condor Legion...or Klaus. That, however, didn't stop the West German government from attempting to recruit the mysterious 'stolen German radiation-armor-wearing man with the large, powerful magic axe' (as the report first called him). A West German Intelligence Officer who went by Damon Kaufmann talked with Klaus and within a couple of hours, they'd both agreed to 'talk again' at a more secure site later.

 

Days later, and after dozens of conversations, classified reports and agreements were completed, Klaus was recruited into the "West German Ministry of Agriculture, Division 8", which was a front for a band of secretive West German superheroes that 'didn't officially exist', codenamed as the "Teutonic League".  Klaus, now wearing a more refined version of the radiation armor (and painted in the colors of the West German flag) called himself the "Hessian Juggernaut", and as such, became the powerhouse of the team.

 

Over the next 15 years, Klaus, as the Hessian Juggernaut, performed countless acts of heroism, spying and actions for national security, nearly dying several times as a result. Eventually, Klaus' father found out about Klaus utilizing the Axe of Perun and basically shunned Klaus, basically until Klaus' death. Sadly, due to the West German laws, none of Klaus' heroic exploits, nor any of his team's actions, were allowed to be presented to the public.  As such, they became secret unsung heroes of West Germany.

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In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, as did East Germany, along with the only reason to not reunify the two Cold War nations back into one Germany. In so doing, all the classified actions of East Germany's STASI, as well as West Germany's Division 8, all had to be purged and shutdown. Sadly, the heroes of Division 8's Teutonic League were kept secret and never revealed to anyone right up to the end of the 20th century. As the division closed at the end of 1990, Klaus decided it was time to 'settle down' and as such, hung up the Axe of Perun in a new vault he'd placed in a bomb shelter in his estate's backyard. There, he also moved his dozens of magical artifacts that he and his family were responsible for safe keeping and preservation, some of which Klaus had to reclaim from the Nazis and black marketers after World War II. As such, Klaus placed all of his family legacy treasures under one location, in the shelter's vault, where Klaus intended to keep there until he figured whether if he wanted to continue the Axe of Perun legacy or not.

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In the 1990s,as part of his 'settling down', Klaus married a fellow Division 8er, Wilhelmina, and had a two sons by her, Michael and Sebastian. To ensure that his sons' legacy was truly legal, regardless of what German politics said, Klaus commissioned a band of reputable lawyers from around the world and worked out a secretly made, fool-proof, iron-clad legal arrangement to ensure that the Axe and all the magical relics would be retained under the Starkemann name so long as there was a Starkemann to hand them down to (or to the German government in lieu of no more Starkemanns).  To that end, Klaus redoubled his efforts in expanding his Norse Securities business into a modern if not futuristic means of protecting the Starkemann legacy from anyone willing to take it away from them. His security team were given Greek alphabet letters to identify themselves as so as to prevent revealing their own family names. To add to this, to following his company's own ideas of security and 'hiding assets', Klaus had the secret vault in his bomb shelter covered with a concrete wall, completely hiding it from view, with only he and his wife (and a couple of classified contractors who worked for Division 8 before and one lawyer) knowing about the vault's hidden status and what was in it. As such, with his company making tens of millions of dollars doing security services for the now reunified Germany, Klaus and his family were now living the ideal family dream. Sadly, this all came to a devastatingly and disastrous ending for the Starkemanns thanks to a band of intergalactic invaders.

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In January 2000, the Soltan Star Empire invaded Earth. Damon Kaufmann tried to call Klaus to get him to 'don the armor' and help fight the Soltans, but the Starkemanns, sadly, had already been gathered up and taken to a slave labor camp by Soltan troops before Klaus could get to the vault. The Soltans never found the Axe of Perun thanks to the Axe's magical null detection field, preventing any chances of it being found.  Months into their forced labor, Klaus was finally able to break his family out of the the camp and escape back to their home. While Sebastian was climbing down the vertical ladder into the bomb shelter, the Soltans found them. Sebastian's mother told Sebastian to stay there and eat and drink what was in the shelter and only come out as a last resort. She closed the hatch, hiding the hatch with a pile of leaves, and ran with her husband and Sebastian's brother, Michael into the woods to avoid capture.

 

The three Starkemanns died trying to escape capture, leaving Sebastian, at four years of age, in a bomb shelter by himself during an alien invasion. 

 

The remnants of the Starkemann's Norse Securities team eventually found Sebastian at the bomb shelter, but had to give him the bad news that the rest of his immediate family died trying to escape the Soltans. Sebastian was taken to a secret camp deep in the Black Forest until the end of the invasion where, thereafter, those that survived the invasion, brought Sebastian to his grandparents, where Sebastian was raised thereon.

 

As for Klaus as the Hessian Juggernaut and the secretly vaulted Axe of Perun, it would be many years later before anyone would know anything about either one of them. The Starkemann's home (where the bomb shelter was) was torched and bombed by the Soltans after Klaus, his wife and his son Michael were killed escaping on the family grounds. It was an absolute miracle Sebastian nor the bomb shelter hatch were ever found.

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Today, the Hessian Juggernaut is lauded along with the heroes of Division 8 and the Cold War era's Teutonic League in statues, memorials and parades. Klaus' identity as the Hessian Juggernaut was never revealed. Damon Kaufmann, who survived the invasion, asked Klaus' parents where the Axe was, to which Damon was told to simply 'pack sand', leaving Damon with no Hessian Juggernaut or Axe of Perun that he'd hoped to one day use again to help keep Germany safe. For the next dozen or so years, Damon searched for the Axe, but to no avail.

 

The legacy of the Axe of Perun, however, was still in play.

 

The lawyers, the Norse Securities team and Sebastian's grandparents all knew that one day, the Axe of Perun and its legacy would wind up front and center in Sebastian's life...

 

...but that's another story for another day...and another hero.

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