Tim Mohr, Berlin D.J. Turned Award-Winning Translator, Dies at 55

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Tim Mohr, Berlin D.J. Turned Award-Winning Translator, Dies at 55

An American who had lived abroad, he sought out books by up-and-coming German writers, while ghostwriting memoirs for rock stars like Paul Stanley

Tim Mohr in 2016. Working as a club D.J. in Berlin in the 1990s, he said, helped him learn a form of street German that set him up to work as a translator.Credit...Thomas Hoeffgen

By Clay Risen

April 16, 2025

Tim Mohr, an American who worked as a disc jockey and freelance writer in Berlin in the 1990s, diving deep into the city’s fervent post-Communist underground, before using his experiences to turn out sensitive, award-winning English translations of works by up-and-coming German writers, died on March 31 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 55.

His wife, Erin Clarke, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Mohr arrived in Germany in 1992 with a yearlong grant to teach English. He did not speak a word of German, so the program sent him to Berlin, a melting pot of cultures where English was often the second language.

He stayed for six years. By day, he worked as a journalist for local English-language magazines, including the Berlin edition of Time Out; at night, he was a D.J. in the city’s ever-expanding club scene.

He later remarked that his time spent traveling among Berlin’s many underground subcultures gave him a thorough education in a form of street German that set him up to work as a translator.

One of his first major translation projects, in 2008, was “Feuchtgebiete” (“Wetlands”), a sexually explicit coming-of-age novel by Charlotte Roche packed with raunchy, idiomatic slang that only someone with Mr. Mohr’s background could render in English.

“I read the book for the eventual U.S. publisher when they were considering buying the rights,” he told The Financial Times in 2012. “And I said to the editor, ‘You know, you’ll be hard pressed to find an academic translator who is as familiar with terminology related to anal sex as a former Berlin club D.J. is.’”

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One of Mr. Mohr’s first major translation projects was “Feuchtgebiete” (published in English as “Wetlands”), a sexually explicit coming-of-age novel by Charlotte Roche packed with raunchy, idiomatic slang.Credit...Fourth Estate

Many of the authors whose writing Mr. Mohr translated were women. That was intentional, an effort to push back against what he felt was a male-dominated field, among both translators and the translated.

He frequently translated the work of Alina Bronsky, the Russian-born author of novels like “Broken Glass Park” (2008, translated in 2010) and “Baba Dunja’s Last Love” (2015, translated in 2016).

His rendition of Dorothea Dieckmann’s novel “Guantanamo,” published in 2008, won that year’s Best Translated Book Award, an online prize that was later sponsored by Amazon.

“He had a real, solid commitment to working as much as possible with authors who were doing things that were a little bit outside of the mainstream,” said Michael Reynolds, the executive publisher at Europa Editions, which hired Mr. Mohr for several translation projects.

Mr. Mohr’s repertoire expanded beyond translation. He developed a second career as a ghostwriter for musicians, starting with Duff McKagan, the bassist for Guns N’ Roses. Together they wrote Mr. McKagan’s 2011 memoir, “It’s So Easy (and Other Lies).”

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Mr. Mohr in 2014 with Duff McKagan, the bassist for Guns N’ Roses. Mr. Mohr collaborated with Mr. McKagan on his 2011 memoir, “It’s So Easy (and Other Lies).”Credit...via Mohr family

In 2017, Mr. Mohr published his own book, “Stirb Nicht im Warteraum der Zukunft: Die Ostdeutschen Punks und der Fall der Mauer,” which appeared in English the next year with the title “Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Taking issue with the idea that the wall came down because of pressure from the West, Mr. Mohr argued that it was also the result of a grass-roots movement driven by the cultural dissidence embodied in the East German punk scene.

“Punk wasn’t music or clothing or novelty haircuts,” he wrote, “it was revolution from below, it was creating your own reality.”

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Mr. Mohr’s own book, “Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” took issue with the idea that the wall came down because of pressure from the West.Credit...Algonquin Books

Timothy Crail Mohr was born on Dec. 15, 1969, in Baltimore. His father, James Mohr, was a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and later at the University of Oregon. His mother, Elizabeth (Bushey) Mohr, was a high school English teacher.

He graduated from Yale in 1992 with a degree in medieval history and moved to Berlin later that year.

“I was a typical American who thought Germany was Oktoberfest,” he told The Financial Times. “I expected to get off the plane in Berlin and find everyone running around in lederhosen.”

After returning to the United States in 1998, he entered the Radcliffe Publishing Course (now the Columbia Publishing Course), an intensive six-week program intended to prepare students for jobs in publishing and other media.

There he met Ms. Clarke, who now works for HarperCollins. They married in 2006.

Along with his wife, Mr. Mohr is survived by his parents; his children, Greta and August; and his sister, Stephanie Mohr.

After finishing the Radcliffe course, Mr. Mohr became an editor at Playboy, where he worked with a wide range of writers, including Mr. McKagan, whom he hired to write a regular column on finance.

He also worked with the journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and he did his first translation work when he visited Mr. Thompson’s home in Colorado. Mr. Thompson asked Mr. Mohr to do a spontaneous translation of passages from a profile of him that had run in a German newspaper.

Hesitant at first, Mr. Mohr took to the task. He later sent Mr. Thompson a complete English rendition of the article.

From there Mr. Mohr moved on to translating novels — work that picked up in 2008, after Playboy laid him off, along with the bulk of its editorial team.

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Mr. Mohr in 2019 with Paul Stanley of Kiss. The book he wrote with Mr. Stanley, “Face the Music: A Life Exposed” (2014), was a New York Times best seller.Credit...via Mohr family

Over the subsequent decade, he translated an astonishing 12 novels, while also writing his own book and ghostwriting for Mr. McKagan; the singer and poet Gil Scott-Heron; and Paul Stanley, the frontman for Kiss. The book he wrote with Mr. Stanley, “Face the Music: A Life Exposed” (2014), was a New York Times best seller.

Mr. Mohr developed deep friendships through his projects, whether he collaborated with young German intellectuals or aging American rockers.

“I’m heartbroken,” Mr. Stanley wrote on X after Mr. Mohr’s death. “If you knew him, you loved him. The world has lost a bright light.”

Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.