Michael Ende
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 – 28 August 1995) was a German writer of fantasy and children’s fiction. He is best known for his epic fantasy The Neverending Story; other famous works include Momo and Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 35 million copies,[1] and adapted as motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books. Ende is one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to the enormous success of his children’s fiction. He was not strictly a children’s writer, as he wrote books for adults as well. Ende’s writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and fantasy.
Ende was born 12 November 1929 in Garmisch, Bavaria, the only child of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende and Luise Bartholomä Ende, a physiotherapist (Coby).[clarification needed] In 1935, when Michael was six, the Ende family moved to the “artists’ quarter of Schwabing” in Munich (Haase).[clarification needed] Growing up in this rich artistic and literary environment influenced Ende’s later writing.
In 1936, his father’s work was declared “degenerate” and banned by the Nazi party, so Edgar Ende was forced to work in secret.[2] The horrors of World War II heavily influenced Ende’s childhood. He was twelve years old when the first air raid took place above Munich. He reflected:
Our street was consumed by flames. The fire didn’t crackle; it roared. The flames were roaring. I remember singing and careering through the blaze like a drunkard. I was in the grip of a kind of euphoria. I still don’t truly understand it, but I was almost tempted to cast myself into the fire like a moth into the light.
He was horrified by the 1943 Hamburg bombing, which he experienced while visiting his paternal uncle. At the first available opportunity his uncle put him on a train back to Munich. There, Ende attended the Maximillians Gymnasium in Munich until schools were closed as the air raids intensified and pupils were evacuated. Ende returned to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he was billeted in a boarding-house, Haus Kramerhof and later in Haus Roseneck. It was there that his interest in poetry was awakened. As well as writing his own poetry, he began to study poetical movements and styles. A good deal of modern poetry was banned at the time, so he studied the Romantic poet Novalis, whose Hymns to the Night left a great impression on him.
In 1944, Edgar Ende’s studio at no. 90 Kaulbachstraße, Munich went up in flames. Over two hundred and fifty paintings and sketches were destroyed, as well as all his prints and etchings. Ernst Buchner [de], Director of Public Art for Bavaria, was still in possession of a number of Ende’s paintings, and they survived the raids. After the bombing, Luise Ende was relocated to the Munich district of Solln. In 1945, Edgar Ende was taken prisoner by the Americans and released soon after the war.
In 1945, German youths as young as fourteen were drafted into the Volkssturm and sent to war against the advancing Allied armies. Three of Michael Ende’s classmates were killed on their first day of action. Ende was also drafted, but he tore up his call-up papers and joined a Bavarian resistance movement founded to sabotage the SS’s declared intention to defend Munich until the “bitter end”. He served as a courier for the group for the remainder of the war.
In 1946, Michael Ende’s grammar school re-opened, and he attended classes for a year, following which the financial support of family friends allowed him to complete his high-school education at a Waldorf School in Stuttgart. This seemingly charitable gesture was motivated by more self-interest: Ende had fallen in love with a girl three years his senior, and her parents funded his two-year stay in Stuttgart to keep the pair apart. It was at this time that he first began to write stories (“Michael,” par. 3).[clarification needed] He aspired to be a “dramatist,” but wrote mostly short stories and poems (Haase).[clarification needed]
