Tim Mohr, the journalist and translator who chronicled the political significance of the Nineteen Eighties East German punk scene and co-wrote memoirs with Weapons N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan and Kiss chief Paul Stanley, has died. Michael Reynolds, Mohr’s pal and writer at Europa Editions, confirmed the information in a press release to Pitchfork, writing that Mohr died at his dwelling in Brooklyn. Reynolds confirmed in a press release to Rolling Stone that the reason for loss of life was pancreatic most cancers. Mohr was 55.
“Tim was not solely somebody I knew professionally; he was additionally and expensive pal with whom I’ve had quite a lot of enjoyable over the virtually twenty years we knew one another and with whom I shared many vital moments,” Reynolds wrote in a heartfelt assertion about Mohr. He continued: “I’m inconsolable at his passing. I’m livid with the universe. I miss him terribly. I cherished and admired Tim for his eloquence, his ethical compass, his massive, insurgent coronary heart, his consummate cool.”
Mohr started his profession as a DJ residing in Berlin within the Nineties earlier than returning to the States and dealing as a journalist in New York. Through the years, he printed tales in The New York Occasions E book Assessment, Particulars, Inked, and New York Journal, and ultimately grew to become an editor at Playboy. Towards the top of the aughts, Mohr employed Weapons N’ Roses’ bassist Duff McKagan to jot down a monetary column for Playboy—a relationship that will result in the 2 males collaborating on McKagan’s 2012 memoir It’s So Straightforward (and different lies). McKagan remembered Mohr in a publish on X in the present day (April 2), writing: “We misplaced man, a FAMILY man, a pal, and a literary LION.”
Mohr additionally labored on Gil Scott-Heron’s unfinished memoir The Final Vacation, Paul Stanley’s 2014 memoir Face the Music: A Life Uncovered, and Genesis P-Orridge’s posthumously printed ebook Nonbinary from 2021.
In 2018, Mohr launched his personal ebook, Burning Down the Haus, which chronicled the function of East German punks within the political shifts of Nineteen Eighties Germany—and the toppling of the Berlin Wall. The ebook was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
For a few years, Mohr labored as a German-to-English translator who translated Alina Bronsky’s seven novels in addition to works by Dorothea Dieckmann, Charlotte Rochee, Stefanie de Velasco, and Alex Beer. He particularly targeted on feminine writers and texts outdoors of mainstream literature.
Revisit “Methods to Create the Underground in Occasions of Surveillance: On Tim Mohr’s East German Punk Historical past, Burning Down the Haus.”
