Hamburg

The Hamburg scene

Hamburg’s rope scene has its roots in the German SM publishing world. The author and publisher Matthias T. J. Grimme, co-publisher of the SM magazine Schlagzeilen and author of German handbooks on SM, bondage and Japanese-style bondage, has given workshops since the mid-1990s; his own site dates them to around 1996. Since 2001 he has taught mainly rope and Japanese-inspired bondage, together with his co-trainer Nicole (Rope-Cat); he has visited Tokyo several times to study the techniques of different shibari masters. His place in the wider German story is told in Kinbaku in Europe.

Workshops and community projects

Grimme and Nicole now run Bondage Project Hamburg, a workshop program in German for small groups. Their last official stage performance, at the Passion fair in Hamburg in 2025, marked 25 years on stage and more than 1,000 shows; the workshops continue. They teach Japanese-inspired bondage and shibari but not from a fixed scheme, and they put communication through the rope, mindfulness, safety and consent at the base of the work. Other local projects also mix influences. The team behind Knotenpunkt Hamburg teaches shibari workshops on Mondays and hosts rope and play jams on Fridays or Sundays, along with guest-teacher weekends and safety workshops for rope models. Its organizers list a mix of influences rather than one lineage: Benignus names Shibari Bremen, Kazami Ranki, Osada Steve and Yagami Ren among his teachers.

Long-running meetups

Some of Hamburg’s formats have lasted a long time. TüdelTreff, a meetup for rope enthusiasts of all levels, has met at the Catonium club since 2008, on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Each evening opens with house rules and a free mini-workshop on bondage basics, for which the organizers help find a tying partner, while open tying runs alongside it and a quieter area is set aside for couples.

Shops, fairs and visiting teachers

Rope teaching also reaches people through places that are not rope studios. The Fuck Yeah Sexshopkollektiv, a collectively run sex shop in the Gängeviertel, holds shibari beginner and intermediate courses taught by visiting instructors such as Ori Ropeart, with three price tiers: reduced, full and solidarity. The Passion fair, which bills itself as a European BDSM and fetish fair, brings a weekend of workshops to Hamburg; its November 2026 program includes several shibari sessions, among them two by Andree of Shibari Bremen, whom the official Osada-ryū site lists as a licensed instructor of that line since 2020.

What the city offers now

A newcomer can choose between small-group workshops, a module-based community project, a twice-monthly meetup with a beginner introduction, shop-run courses and fair workshops. The programs cited here are all published in German. For other ways to start, see Ways into shibari.