Wolfgang Grimmer

"Everyone in this world carries around their own sins, and they never go away. But that doesn’t change the fact that we do what we must."

- Mr. Grimmer

Wolfgang Grimmer (ヴォルフガング・グリマー, Vu~orufugangu Gurimā) is the tritagonist of the series, becoming a major character halfway through the story. He is a survivor of Kinderheim 511. He is trained as a spy, and travels around Germany posing as a freelance journalist, but is in actuality trying to uncover more information about Kinderheim 511 and his past.

Introduction
Wolfgang Grimmer is a freelance journalist, who in fact, investigates about child abuse and psychologically reprogramming and travels around the places that he considers, might be related to it. Grimmer very early reveals that he was trained as a spy during the old regime which hints on his good investigative skills.

In Dresden, he stumbles upon a free storeroom of a former journalism company. He is allowed by the principle to copy the old archives regarding data about the welfare system of former East Germany. Grimmer promises that he will write an article that will bring the truth to light. Grimmer also says that the next location where he heads is Prague, in Czech Republic.

Grimmer first encounters Kenzo Tenma at the train station, when Tenma helps him to pull the bag through the entrance. Tenma attempts to illegally cross the border from Germany to the Czech Republic. The two converse a bit, and then a police officer enters their division to check the men's passports. Grimmer picks up on Tenma's uneasiness and identifies that he is using a fake passport, so he helps him to escape before he can be apprehended by the guards. To ensure Tenma's security, he jumps off the train as well to give him tips on crossing the border safely. They have a picnic, then as dusk falls they part ways, promising to have another picnic the next time they meet.

Mikhail Petrov
Grimmer arrives in Prague and begins investigating a man by the name of Petrov who was once the headmaster of Kinderheim 511, the institution he is trying to gather information on. At first, Petrov is resistant to speak with Grimmer, and even arranges for some men to finish him off in his hotel room (naturally, Grimmer evades the encounter). He continues to narrow in on Petrov, and, upon following him to his apartment, realizes the man is currently running an illegal orphanage in his home, consisting of about a dozen young schoolboys. At first he is worried that Petrov is trying to recreate the Kinderheim experiments, but then realizes that the boys here have been raised with love, not hate. As Grimmer takes the boys out to play soccer, Johan Liebert comes in dressed as his sister and shoots Petrov. By the time he arrives back, Petrov is on his deathbed. Before passing away, the man gives Grimmer the key to a safety deposit box where he can find an interview with Kinderheim's "monster". As the boys are sent off to different orphanages, Grimmer hands one of them the key and asks that he hold onto it until they meet again.

Being the first witness on the scene, he is questioned by the police. His interrogator, Inspector Zeman, is actually a member of the former Czech Secret Police and wants to be in possession of the tape. He catches up with Grimmer at a later time and brutalizes him to a half-dead state. "Anna Liebert" mysteriously shows up around that time and kills one of the three torturers, triggering Grimmer's "Magnificent Steiner" personality; he beats the remaining two to death.

Jan Suk
Jan Suk, a rookie detective who is investigating the murder of these three men as well as Petrov, places Grimmer as a suspect of interest in both cases. He visits some of the orphaned boys and one of them announces that they are actually planning to meet with Grimmer and play soccer one last time (the boy will also give him back the key). Suk tags along and meets with Grimmer, obtaining his hotel information so they can keep in contact. As they continue to meet, it becomes apparent to Suk that Grimmer isn't the killer; he also learns a lot of secrets about the Czech Secret Police and some of his colleagues, putting him in a dangerous position. Some of the double agents working at the station frame Suk for murder, forcing him to go on the run. Grimmer and Suk work together to preserve the tape's safety as well as their own lives.

Kenzo Tenma
Tenma, who arrived in Prague at the same time as Grimmer, reads about Suk's case in the newspaper and can't help but realize the three superiors poisoned with whiskey bon-bons situation sounds all too familiar. He meets with Jan's mother who, in a confused state, believes him to be her son as a child; she taunts him about knowing where his secret hiding place is. Tenma travels to that building and finds Grimmer and Suk in a bloody mess. It appears as though his "Magnificent Steiner" ability awoke once more to kill the hit men. After performing first-aid, he and Grimmer check into a hotel room. There, Grimmer reveals to Tenma that he was once enrolled in Kinderheim 511.

Tenma and Grimmer are contacted by Karel Ranke, the former head of the secret police, who offers the safe return of Suk in exchange for the tape. They agree with the condition that the three of them listen to it first. During their meeting, Ranke talks about Franz Bonaparta and the Mansion of Red Roses. He also speaks about a boy named Adolf Reinhardt, his nephew whom he sent to Kinderheim 511 many years ago; this triggers Grimmer's memory as Adolf had been his best friend.

The men get the tape from Jan's mother and start listening to it. Halfway through the interview though, they discover that someone has tampered with it, recording their own message over its contents. Tenma identifies the voice to be present-day Johan.



Meanwhile, the children of Petrov's former orphanage are working to prove Grimmer's innocence by finding "The Blonde Lady", whom they believe is responsible for killing him. Milosh finds "her", and they converse about why he is an orphan and whether or not his mother loved him. Ultimately, "she" sends him off to a red light district in search of his mom, and when he realizes there is no hope he tries to kill himself by jumping off a bridge. Grimmer and Tenma catch up with him just in time though, and are able to prevent his suicide.

Suk is still recovering in the hospital, and Grimmer wants to ensure that when he comes out he doesn't spend the rest of his life -- or any time at all -- in prison. Therefore, he writes a letter to the police confessing to all the murders, much to Tenma's dissatisfaction. The men visit one of Bonaparta's former editors, Tomas Zobak, and then part ways: Grimmer leaves Prague and Tenma is arrested.

Ruhenheim
He is later seen in Ruhenheim, as it seems he has come to the same conclusion Heinrich Lunge did that Franz Bonaparta is living there. The two of them try to stop the massacre from occurring, but their attempts result in failure. After confronting Franz Bonaparta, he claims he will protect him with his life until the day that he goes public with everything he did to those poor children at Kinderheim 511 and the Red Rose Mansion. Unfortunately, he encounters a near death situation and "The Magnificent Steiner" doesn't show up, so he finds that he as Wolfgang Grimmer is also capable of killing someone. In the process he receives some fatal injuries, and his life begins to fade away as Tenma shows up with Bonaparta and Wim following closely behind. Grimmer introduces them and comments that he hopes one day he, Tenma, and Wim can go on a picnic together. In the last few minutes of his life, he begins to cry for the death of his son he remained impassive to so many years ago. He proclaims that people can't ever lose their emotions; they might disappear for a while like a letter lost in the mail, but they will always prevail in the end. He also says that in the last episode of "The Magnificent Steiner" he was never able to see, that fearsome beast probably became human again.

The End


Later, Fritz Verdemann is seen with Lunge and Suk gathered around his grave. They all pay their respects and Lunge places a beer next to his gravestone, saying that he probably had many things he wanted to talk about over a good drink.

Personality
Grimmer is a wonderful man who is always found smiling, no matter how difficult situation would befall him. He is very concerned for the well-being of others, especially children, and wants to ensure the best possible futures for them. At first glance he seems to be a modest person who finds joy even in the simplest things life can offer. However, due the treatment he experienced in 511 Kinderheim, he's actually not able to feel real emotions like joy, love or sorrow. Despite this issue he's trained as a spy and is a very quick thinker, which gets him out of sticky situations.

He is not a type of person who gets hurt easily, actually, it hurts him more when he sees others being in trouble or suffer unfairly. He even offered to give his shoe to a boy who cried because his shoes were taken by peers. Grimmer managed to comfort the boy and teaches him not to be brought down by losers but to move upwards because people are born without shoes.

He is favoured by children because he is entertaining and careful and that is seen during the Prague arc, when he was trying to free orphans from Petrov's care that was supposedly the continuous 511 experiment. It turned out to be the opposite after he noticed kids laughing at his clumsy move in soccer game. The kids were trying at all costs to prove Grimmer's innocence and risked their life when one of them, Milosz confronted Petrov's murderer. In Ruhenheim, he easily earned Wim's respect when Wim was crying witnessing Grimmer's death.

Despite his precious nature, he's incapable of feeling emotions and isn't able to express them as naturally. As a result of this, wife left him after his son died because he wasn't able to cry at the funeral. This is the outcome of Kinderheim 511 experiments and Grimmer couldn't reach his emotions for years. He was finally able to shed a tear when he saved Milosz from committing suicide. When he was dying in tears, he asked if this is the true happiness  because he finally learned how to cry. For Grimmer it was hardest to learn how to smile, he was very often seen smiling even when talking about tragedies

Grimmer was cheated by local hobo when a man mourned that he doesn't have money to help his sister in Vienna who collapsed. Man runs away after Grimmer gives him money and what we would expect from an average character is anger but instead, we see Grimmer smiling just after he realizes that he was cheated when a passer tells him so.

He believes in good of people and tried to prove it when he was staying at the middle of a street in Ruhenheim, shouting at the windows from where the shots flew, trying to convince others to stop making a chaos and listen to their own heart instead of someone's order. That unfortunately ended in failure.

The Magnificent Steiner
Grimmer possesses an alternative personality referred to as "The Magnificent Steiner." As a child in Kinderheim 511, the instructors conducted an experiment to see if they could get him to manifest a different personality by simultaneously exposing him to excessive amounts of TV and stressful conditions. In result, Grimmer, when put in a near death situation, becomes an extraordinarily violent creature, something you could probably call more of a beast than a human.

Timeline
Grimmer was born in 1954 (will gather more information and add to this later)

Background
Grimmer attended Kinderheim 511 until he was fourteen. In there, he lost almost all of his memories. The only piece of information he could remember was his friend, Adolf Reinhardt (Roberto). Adolf's parents were killed crossing the Berlin Wall. He loved drawing and insects, but hated bug collectors because they killed the bugs; he always let them free. He cherished his weekly hot cocoa, but when Grimmer was sick, gave him his. Roberto, in turn, probably knew some information about Grimmer, maybe even his real name, but he died before anything could be revealed. He was also stripped of his emotions, and says that the hardest thing for him to ever learn was how to smile.

After leaving Kinderheim 511, Grimmer was trained as a spy. One day a woman confessed her love for him, so he married her, because he was told having a family was a good cover up for someone of his position. The two of them had a son together, and they lived happily, until their son mysteriously and unexpectedly died. Grimmer's wife said he was to blame, because he was incapable of loving and had nothing in his heart. He couldn't even cry at his own son's funeral.

Before dying in Ruhenheim, he says the tears streaming down his face aren't because he feels his life fading away. Instead, they are the tears he should have cried for his son all those years ago. He says that people can't lose their emotions, and proves to the audience once and for all that The Magnificent Steiner was still a human, no matter how beastly he may have seemed.

Another Monster

 * Main article: Another Monster 

Grimmer left behind a notebook containing details of everything he uncovered about Kinderheim 511. He also comments on Das Ruhenheim and the Sleeping Monster, the latter he mistakes for Bonaparta's work.

Quotes

 * "Everyone in this world carries around their own sins, and they never go away...but that doesn't change the fact that we do what we must."


 * "I think I must have figured out how the show ended. The Magnificent Steiner, he probably, became human again."


 * "So this is what true sadness feels like. It feels a lot like...happiness."


 * "Don't just follow orders, you're men, not machines! In your hearts you know what's right, the answer is sitting there waiting for you. Are you brave enough to look inside yourselves?"


 * "The only person you can truly believe in is yourself. You can try to trust other folks, but sometimes they let you down."


 * "You can't just erase people's feelings. It's as if my emotions were lost somewhere hundreds of miles away. It's as if they were sent long ago, in a letter that was always intended for me."
 * "Bad things happen when I get angry"
 * "I'm a also an imaginary person. I'm not the man called Mr. Neumayer, who signed the hotel registry, nor am I the man known as Wolfgang Grimmer. I'm not anyone. So I'll disappear as well."


 * "Do you have any idea how terrible the things you did really mean? Do you understand what it means to destroy a human being's sense of good and evil? Can you even begin to comprehend what happens when you awaken the monster inside each us? People should know in their hearts that food tastes good. They should always look forward to having picnics and wonderful places on their weekends. They should think that beer tastes good after a hard day's work. People should know [how] they should feel, [that] they're suppose to grieve, from the bottom of theirs heart[s] when they have to bury their own child."Grimmer_and_bonaparta.png
 * "...He said to remember him. Back then, it was popular among us. We talked about ourselves to our friends. We really didn’t understand it… but our memories were fading… with the strange classes we attended every single day. We were even in danger of forgetting our own names… That’s why… that’s why… we had our friends remember who we were!"


 * "Looks like we can no longer stop it."


 * "I'm not sad because I'm going to die. I'm sad because my child is dead. It's impossible for humans to forget their emotions. My emotions... They were just lost somewhere."
 * "If you're in a pinch, no matter where you are, he'll come and save you. He'll punish any wrong. He is the invincible Magnificent Steiner."