June 3, 2025
By Thomas Rayfiel
Tim Mohr, acclaimed translator, editor and author, died on March 31, 2025. He was 55. Tim joined the Coop in 2010. For many years, he worked in the basement, bagging bulk fruit, nuts and spices for sale upstairs.
Michelle Bosch, a friend and fellow member, recalls how he “fluffed up like a peacock when he told me he was a food processing squad leader.” She continued, “When I had a note about olive- and cheese-packing, he listened and tried to implement change. We also liked to talk about how the spice bags were the best deal in Brooklyn and how weighing the dried fruit was fun. Tim loved the Coop.”
Tim’s most significant work was Burning Down the Haus, a corrective take on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tim’s professional accomplishments are almost too many to name. He was a club DJ in Berlin, which led to his becoming a foremost American translator of contemporary German fiction. (He deliberately pushed for the inclusion of more women, feeling they had been unfairly overlooked when it came to foreign acquisition.)
Returning to America, he became an editor, working with, among other journalists, Hunter S. Thompson. He also ghostwrote autobiographies of such notable rock musicians as Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and Paul Stanley of KISS. But his most significant work was Burning Down the Haus (longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Historical Writers’ Association Crown for Nonfiction), a corrective take on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the book, he credited East Berlin’s punk culture with having far more of an impact than such facile staged news events as Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech. Publishers Weekly praised the work, saying:
“… he chronicles the ongoing clashes between the East German authorities and several microgenerations of punks, describing a compelling war of subversion, persistence, attrition, and defiance, where every act meant to crush spirits and enforce conformity only helped to fan the rebellious flames.“
“Tim was unabashedly proud to be a Food Coop member,” said friend Kristen Kusama-Hinte.
Tim’s wife Erin recalls how her husband loved “the salted onion cashews, the produce, THE CHEESE, the beer specials (we still have cans of West Kill Brewing Brookies from when they were on sale for 25 cents a pop), and, most of all, the people.” During the pandemic, Tim and Erin lived in a fourth-floor apartment with a view of the line that, at times, snaked up Union Street, along 7th Avenue, and down President Street. Tim would often monitor the line from his window, texting friends when it was short enough for them to run out and buy food.
His friend, Coop member Kristen Kusama-Hinte, remembers of Tim: “He was unabashedly proud to be a member.” She elaborated, “With others, I would potentially have interactions about the Coop that involved a comment about rules, or an eye roll. But never with Tim. Honestly, he made me love and appreciate the Coop even more than I already did.”
Tim is survived by his wife, Erin Clarke; his parents, James and Elizabeth; his children, Greta and August; and his sister, Stephanie Mohr.
Michael Reynolds, publisher of Europa Editions, which issued many of Tim’s translations, wrote: “I loved and admired Tim for his eloquence, his moral compass, his large, rebel heart, his consummate cool.”