Matthias T. J. Grimme was born in Hamburg on 24 June 1953. His stage name is Tatsu Otoko, written 竜男, “Dragon Man.” In German-language BDSM books and magazines he is one of the standard textbook names. On the international kinbaku circuit he is one of the few German riggers people recognise. He writes, publishes, and photographs, and he ties in a Japanese style. The “Hamburg School of Bondage” is not a copy of Tokyo technique. It mixes what he took from Tokyo with his own way of staging a scene.
The path started in clinical work and social work. After secondary school he trained in nursing and social work and spent about fifteen years in psychiatric institutions. That background is how he came at BDSM. He also organised in the German men’s movement, co-led men’s groups, and published books and stories about men and how they relate to themselves. From 1989 he co-published Schlagzeilen, the largest German SM magazine, and wrote widely on BDSM, fetish, and bondage. As co-owner of the BDSM house Charon-Verlag he produced Das SM-Handbuch and Das Bondage-Handbuch, the desk references German players still use. He moved from men’s-movement writing, close to clinical work, into SM publishing that was more than an underground zine, and the books became part of the practical infrastructure.
He was also in public. German documentary television used him, including a 1994 episode of ARD’s Unter deutschen Dächern called “Das soll Liebe sein,” and he appeared in bondage productions, among them a five-part workshop series from Charon-Verlag. With others he organised early public SM parties in Germany under the name Les Fleurs du Mal, “The Flowers of Evil,” through 1998. From 1999 he ran the “Respekt!” parties in Hamburg, an explicit respect frame instead of the old decadent literary brand. He performs and he teaches, running SM and rope workshops in Germany and abroad.
From 2000 he went to Tokyo again and again, and became only the second Westerner to do public bondage shows in Japan. Venues and events included East meets West, Department H, Loft plus One, and Tokyo Jail. He met Japanese rope artists including Eikichi Osada, Akechi Denki, Chiba Sensei, Randa Mai, Yukimura Haruki, Osada Steve, Kinoko Hajime, Kazami Ranki, Mira Kurumi, and Yusuji Watanabe. Those were public shows and named teachers, not tourist dress-up. He mixed the technique he absorbed there with his own taste, and that mix is the Hamburg school.
From 2000 he also shot photographs and films for his Bondage Project. With his rope partner and model Nicole, stage name Ropecat, he makes “rope art” and they perform and teach together. A rigger paired with a regular model who also teaches became common later. Grimme and Nicole are an early, long-running German case. The people involved are consenting adults. Suspension is risky and needs consent. There are no suspension steps here.
From 2012 he was spokesperson for the BVSM, the Bundesvereinigung Sadomasochismus, the national sadomasochism association. Until 2013 he and Andrea Grimme co-ran the piercing and branding studio “Stahl Stich / Kiss of Fire.” He married Andrea Grimme in 1999 and lives in Hamburg. At BoundCon in 2017 he received a lifetime achievement award for his work in rope and for the long project as a whole: the handbooks, the parties, the bridge to Japan, and the publishing house.
The books are the reference shelf. From Charon-Verlag: Das SM-Handbuch (2014, ISBN 978-3-931406-01-1); Das Bondage-Handbuch. Anleitung zum einvernehmlichen Fesseln (2012, ISBN 978-3-931406-71-4), the title marking the tying as consensual; Japan Bondage – Bondage-Handbuch Spezial (2011, ISBN 978-3-931406-70-7); Das SM-Handbuch Spezial 1, which he edited (2005, ISBN 978-3-931406-44-8); and SM-Handbuch Spezial 2 – Das Session Kochbuch, edited with Andrea Grimme (2009, ISBN 978-3-931406-46-2). Also Käufliche Träume. Erfahrungen mit Pornografie (Rowohlt, 1988, ISBN 3-499-18210-6), and, with Elmar Kraushaar, Die ungleichen Brüder. Zum Verhältnis zwischen schwulen und heterosexuellen Männern (Rororo, 1988, ISBN 3-499-18226-2). He also edits the Charon-Verlag series Böse Geschichten & schmutzige Fotos, “Wicked Stories and Dirty Photos,” 35 volumes, a long archive of German-language SM fiction and images.
