Tim Mohr, Who Chronicled the East German Punk Scene and Co-Wrote Rock Memoirs, Dies at 55

Tim Mohr, the journalist and translator who chronicled the political significance of the 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 residence in Brooklyn. Reynolds confirmed in a press release to Rolling Stone that the reason for demise was pancreatic most cancers. Mohr was 55.

“Tim was not solely somebody I knew professionally; he was additionally and pricey pal with whom I’ve had quite a lot of enjoyable over the just about twenty years we knew one another and with whom I shared many necessary 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 beloved and admired Tim for his eloquence, his ethical compass, his massive, insurgent coronary heart, his consummate cool.”

Mohr started his profession as a DJ dwelling in Berlin within the Nineteen Nineties earlier than returning to the States and dealing as a journalist in New York. Over time, he revealed tales in The New York Instances E book Evaluate, Particulars, Inked, and New York Journal, and finally grew to become an editor at Playboy. Towards the tip of the aughts, Mohr employed Weapons N’ Roses’ bassist Duff McKagan to write down a monetary column for Playboy—a relationship that might result in the 2 males collaborating on McKagan’s 2012 memoir It’s So Straightforward (and different lies). McKagan remembered Mohr in a post on X at present (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 revealed guide Nonbinary from 2021.

In 2018, Mohr launched his personal guide, Burning Down the Haus, which chronicled the position of East German punks within the political shifts of Eighties Germany—and the toppling of the Berlin Wall. The guide 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 centered on feminine writers and texts exterior of mainstream literature.

Revisit “How to Create the Underground in Times of Surveillance: On Tim Mohr’s East German Punk History, Burning Down the Haus.”