Michael Ende

Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende
Born 12 November 1929(1929-11-12)
Garmisch-Partenkirchen1
Died 28 August 1995(1995-08-28) (aged 65)
Filderstadt
Occupation Novelist
Genres fantasy and children's books

Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 – 28 August 1995) was a German writer of fantasy and children's literature. He was born in Garmisch (Bavaria, Germany), son of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. He died in Filderstadt (Germany) of stomach cancer.

Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) is Ende's best known work. Other books include Momo and Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (English title Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver). Michael Ende's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 20 million copies, and have been adapted into motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books.

Ende was one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to the enormous success of his children's books. However, Ende was not strictly a children's author, as he also wrote books for adults. Ende claimed, "It is for this child in me, and in all of us, that I tell my stories," and that "[my books are] for any child between 80 and 8 years" (qtd. Senick 95, 97). Ende often found frustration in being perceived as exclusively an author for children, considering himself rather a man intending to speak of cultural problems and spiritual wisdom to people of all ages in his works; he wrote in 1985:

"One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about."[1]

Ende's writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and fantasy. The reader is often invited to take a more interactive role in the story, and the worlds in his books often mirror our reality, using fantasy to bring light to the problems of an increasingly technological modern society. Not least of all because of having attended a Waldorf school as a child, his writings were influenced by anthroposophy.[2][3] Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of aging money in mind when writing Momo.

Contents

Early life

Ende was born November 12, 1929 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Bavaria, Germany). An only child, his parents were Edgar Ende, a surrealist painter, and Luise Bartholomä Ende, a physiotherapist (Coby 258). Since his artwork was banned by the Nazi party, Edgar Ende was forced to work in secret. In 1935, when he was six, the Ende family moved to the "artists' quarter of Schwabing" in Munich (Haase 55). Growing up in this rich artistic and literary environment influenced Ende’s later writing.

Ende attended the Maximillians Gymnasium until schools in Munich were closed due to bombings in 1943 (Colby 258). He resumed school at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. It was at this time that Ende first began to write stories ("Michael," par. 3). He aspired to be a "dramatist," but wrote mostly short stories and poems (Haase 55). In 1945, sixteen year old Ende was drafted into the German army, but deserted and joined an anti-Nazi group for the remainder of the war (Colby 258; “Michael,” par. 3).

After World War II, Ende decided that he wanted to be a playwright, but accepted a scholarship to study acting at the Otto-Falkenberg-Schauspielschule in Munich, since he could not afford to pay for college (Haase 55).

Bibliography

Michael Ende's works include: (Note – original titles are listed in German, followed by the English translation of the title in captions. Any translations of an entire work into English are listed.)

Most of the above information was retrieved from the following sources:

Notes

  1. ↑ "Man darf von jeder Tür aus in den literarischen Salon treten, aus der Gefängnistür, aus der Irrenhaustür oder aus der Bordelltür. Nur aus einer Tür darf man nicht kommen, aus der Kinderzimmertür. Das vergibt einem die Kritik nicht. Das bekam schon der große Rudyard Kipling zu spüren. Ich frage mich immer, womit das eigentlich zu tun hat, woher diese eigentümliche Verachtung alles dessen herrührt, was mit dem Kind zu tun hat.", Page on Michael Ende by Thienemann, the publishing house that published most of Ende's works
  2. ↑ Peter Boccarius, Michael Ende: Der Anfang der Geschichte, München: Nymphenburger, 1990. ISBN 348500622X. German.
  3. ↑ Michael Ende biographical notes, "Michael Ende und die magischen Weltbilder" (German). "...es sei nicht nur die Steinersche Anthroposophie gewesen, die Michael Endes Weltsicht geprägt habe." ("...it was not only Steiner's anthroposophy that defined Michael Ende's world view.") Accessed 2008-09-08.

References

German Fiction Writers, Second Series. Eds. Wolfgang D. Elfe and James Hardin. Vol. 75. Detroit Michigan: Gale Research Inc, 1988.

Eds. Bernice E. Cullinan and Diane G. Person. New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, 2001.

External links