Born and raised in Hannover, Germany. After finishing school, Tanja went to live for a year in Paris, France.  She came back to Hannover and made an apprenticeship in “pre-print-production/ graphic-design”.

     In 1988 she left Germany, with a one way ticket to the Republic of the Congo, where she stayed with an african family for 3 month. She left and went down the congo river through Zaire and continued through Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya, flew from there to South East Asia and finally settled in San Francisco.

     Finally settled down, she set herself up to paint again. She got her first tattoo in 1989 and was instantly attracted to the art and craft of tattooing.  In 1993 she started to learn how to tattoo and in 1995  she was hired at Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Studio.

     In 1996 She acted in and co-produced the independent feature film ”LOVE WILL TRAVEL”.  The movie has been shown and well received at the Silver Lake Film festival in Los

Angeles, at the FAF film festival in San Francisco and at the Film festival in Dubrovnik, Europe.

     During her travels she took a lot of photos that got stolen on a bus-trip from Tanzania to Kenya, so she wrote a book about her travels, that she finished in 2009.

Her lifestyle now embraces tattooing, painting, photography and surfing.