
Kurt Grimmer (6 June 1974-) was a German policeman who served as a homicide detective in the Berlin Police during the 2010s.
Biography[]
Kurt Grimmer was born in Marzahn, Berlin, Germany, the son of Eva Grimmer and the brother of Ulf Grimmer. His mother was deeply racist, and his brother became the leader of the neo-Nazi Marzahn Brotherhood; Kurt's family ties to Nazism, including his brief involvement with the Brotherhood, would haunt him after he pursued a career with the police. Grimmer joined the Berlin Police and became a homicide detective, distinguishing himself in his field and becoming Gert Seiler's best detective. However, he suffered from a gambling addiction and was indebted to the loan shark Tomo Kovac, and he also had two families: one with his wife Paula Grimmer, and another with his girlfriend Sabine Ludar. In 2018, while staying with Ludar, he noticed police activity near her apartment and discovered that the footballer Orkan Erdem had been murdered. Grimmer had the responding officers Hauke Wachtmeister and Alina Petrović cover up the case until he could inform his superiors, partly to prevent a media circus (as the World Cup qualifiers match was the next day), and partly so that he could bet on Turkey defeating Germany in the qualifier match in order to repay Kovac and clear his debts. He was assigned the Erdem case by Seiler, and he assembled a task force codenamed "Operation Red Card", a name suggested by Petrović.
Due to his personal investment in the investigation, Grimmer resisted all attempts by his supervisor to bring Turkish policeman Erol Birkan aboard as his partner, calling Birkan homophobic slurs and even arranging his beating in order to scare him away from the investigation. Before the Germany-Turkey match, he visited the locker room of the German team, had all non-players clear out, and informed them of their teammate Orkan's death, both to convince them not to tell the media about the reasons for Orkan's absence, and to ensure that they would be demoralized enough to lose the game. The Turkish team narrowly won by a margin of 2-1, apparently earning Grimmer enough money to repay his bookie Sascha Fruehm and his Kovac clan masters, but this plan was derailed when Fruehm was found murdered; this also complicated matters with Grimmer's loan from his brother Ulf, who had given him money from his Brotherhood's coffers to help him settle his debts.
Ultimately, the discovery of Erdem's death resulted in tensions between Berlin's gangs boiling over, as it was rumored that the neo-Nazis were behind his murder, and this ultimately led to the Death Daggers brawling with the neo-Nazis hours after Erdem's funeral. In the meantime, after discovering that the Kovac clan was in league with the Tarik-Amir clan, Grimmer decided to allow Birkan to join the investigation with the objective of destroying the Kovac clan (thus absolving himself of Tomo Kovac's debts) and the Arab mafia. Grimmer was later abducted by the Marzahn Brotherhood for failing to repay his debts, and he was severely beaten before his mother arrived and paid off his debts with her own money, claiming that the money belonged to Kurt. Birkan, who had grown suspicious of Grimmer for his unusual behavior during the investigation, tailed Grimmer to the Nazi meeting, and the journalist Karsten Nguyen, using Birkan as a source, played up the theory that neo-Nazis were involved in Erdem's murder. At the same time, the Kovac and Tarik-Amir clans fell out, resulting in a gang war between the two organizations, while the Death Daggers and neo-Nazis went to war. Grimmer learned from Petrovic that Erdem's Lamborghini was found in the garage of his neighbor, the pensioner Albert Meiser, and Grimmer questioned Meiser and discovered that he was the real murderer, and that he had done so after Erdem's dog defecated on his lawn. Believing that Meiser was no threat to the public, and that he could use the power of the "Red Card" investigation to bring down Berlin's embattled gangs, Grimmer decided to cover up the murder, and he forced Birkan - who had tailed him to the apartment - to agree to join him, even though Birkan had come to realize that Grimmer and Hans Kuscha had been the masked men to beat him earlier (upon hearing Kuscha's cough).
Grimmer was later summoned to an abandoned warehouse by Kareem Tarik-Amir, who had taken over the Kovac clan's businesses now that Kovac had gone into hiding, and who was in possession of Grimmer's betting slips. Kareem revealed that he had planned on fixing the World Cup qualifier match after bribing Erdem, and that he thus had nothing to gain from Erdem's death; Erdem was on the way to meet Tarik-Amir when he was shot by Meiser in Marzahn. Grimmer's booker Sascha Fruehm was murdered by Tarik-Amir because the latter believed that Grimmer's bet on Turkey winning meant that Fruehm had let Grimmer know about Kareem's fixing of the match. Kareem then revealed that he wanted Grimmer's help with arresting his brother Hakim so that he could become head of the clan, and he forced Grimmer to orchestrate a raid on Hakim's wedding in the "no-go zone", where Hakim's safe room - full of weapons - would be enough to incriminate him. Kareem then told Grimmer to launch the raid that day, or else the slips would be released. After Kareem left, Grimmer picked up the baseball bat which Kareem had discarded, and he had Birkan drive the golden Lamborghini from Meiser's garage to the warehouse before throwing away Meiser's sign post and planting the baseball bat in the trunk. Grimmer, using another SIM card and a fake voice, called the police and said that he had found an unattended lamborghini while walking his dog, saying that he would not give his name because he did not want any trouble. Grimmer then informed his boss Gert Seiler that he had found the Lamborghini and a possible murder weapon, thus framing Kareem for the murder and preventing Kareem from blackmailing him. Grimmer then suggested a raid on the no-go zone during Hakim's wedding, resulting in a massive police operation, a riot, a shootout, and the arrest of the Tarik-Amir brothers.