In Memory of Tim Mohr

Tim Mohr, who translated seven novels by Alina Bronsky for Europa Editions, passed away at his home in Brooklyn yesterday, March 31, 2025. Tim was a supremely talented German-to-English translator whose ear for the cadences of his source language was second-to-none and whose facility and inventiveness with English made his translations exciting to read. But he did far more as a translator than produce fun, felicitous, and faithful translations. He was committed to making conscious, meaningful decisions about whose work he translated. In addition to Alina Bronsky’s seven novels, he translated Dorothea Dieckmann’s Guantanamo for Catapult, and it won the Best Translated Book Award; he translated two books by Charlotte Roche for Grove, Wetlands and Wrecked; he translated Tiger Milk by Stefanie de Velasco, and The Second Rider by Alex Beer. When Tim began working as a literary translator it seemed to him (and to many of us) that the world of literature in translation had a laddish patina to it, that it was dominated by white guys translating well-established white guys. Tim took issue with that and was determined to establish his reputation as a translator of female voices, and, at the same time, of voices from outside the mainstream.

Tim’s commitment to undiscovered female voices and to edgier, less mainstream authors surprised nobody who knew him. Tim, who’d spent years as a club DJ in Berlin, and years more researching his own book, Burning Down the Haus, the definitive book on the East German punk scene and its contribution to the political and social changes in Europe in the 1980s, was convinced that the antiestablishment underground was vast and that its role as a disruptor of the mainstream was vital.

Tim was not only someone I knew professionally; he was also a good and dear friend with whom I have had a lot of fun over the almost twenty years we knew each other and with whom I shared many important moments. I am inconsolable at his passing. I am furious with the universe. I miss him terribly. I loved and admired Tim for his eloquence, his moral compass, his large, rebel heart, his consummate cool. (My daughters never failed to remind me that Tim was the coolest friend I had.) I admired the way he conducted his career, how he held himself with others, how he went about being a father, a husband, a neighbor, and a friend. He had many friends – a testament to his genuine curiosity about other people and their life experiences, his warm heart and open mind, and to the energy and effort he put into maintaining friendships – and I know that today, like me, they are devastated. Many of them I have never met, but I know exactly what they have lost, and so I send my love and deep condolences not only to Tim’s wife, kids, and his entire family, but also to those many friends of his all over the world.

As Europa’s publisher, I can only say that we were lucky to have worked with Tim, that we’re grateful for his brilliant translations, which left our reading landscape so much the richer, and that he will be terribly missed.

Peace, my dear friend.

Michael

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Michael Reynolds
Executive Publisher
Europa Editions