Wolfgang Grimmer is a middle-aged freelance journalist who, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, travels across Europe investigating human rights abuses, driven by a personal need to uncover the truth about his own past. He is a survivor of Kinderheim 511, a secret state-run orphanage in East Germany where children were subjected to brutal psychological experiments designed to strip them of their emotions and turn them into obedient operatives. As a result of this trauma, Grimmer developed a dissociative second personality that he calls the Magnificent Steiner, an aggressive and immensely powerful fighter that emerges in moments of extreme stress or danger, inspired by a television character he admired as a child. After leaving Kinderheim 511 at age fourteen, he underwent spy training and was given the name Wolfgang Grimmer, as he does not know his original name. His work as a spy later led to a failed marriage and a child, but his inability to feel or express genuine emotions, a direct consequence of the experiments, destroyed his family life. Outwardly, Grimmer presents himself as a kind, generous, and perpetually smiling person who believes in the inherent goodness of others, especially children, and is deeply concerned with their well-being. This constant smile is a learned behavior, as he once remarked that learning to smile was the hardest thing they taught him, and it masks his internal emotional numbness. His primary motivation is to expose the atrocities committed at Kinderheim 511 and to seek justice for its victims, a mission that intertwines with the larger search for Johan Liebert. He meets Kenzo Tenma on a train and, after reading innocence in Tenma's eyes, decides to help him, forming a crucial alliance based on a shared commitment to moral truth. Throughout the story, Grimmer serves as a key investigator and ally, using his spy training, keen observational skills, and ability to detect lies and manipulation to navigate dangerous situations. His character arc culminates in the Ruhenheim Massacre, where, after witnessing the death of a young girl he had befriended, he consciously takes control of his Magnificent Steiner personality and kills four of the perpetrators before dying from his injuries in front of Tenma and Franz Bonaparta. This final act represents a tragic but decisive reclaiming of his own agency and a powerful assertion of his belief that all life is sacred, even as he sacrifices his own. His abilities include formidable combat strength and agility when the Magnificent Steiner emerges, as well as extensive espionage skills, infiltration techniques, and a sharp intellect honed by his past. The central conflict of his life is the struggle between his learned emotional emptiness and his genuine, sometimes desperate, desire to be a good and moral person, a struggle that defines his role as a deeply complex and empathetic figure within the narrative.