Time is Life.
Momo (novel)|Momo (1973) Originally "Zeit ist Leben"
Lots of things take time, and time was Momo's only form of wealth.
Momo (novel)|Momo (1973)
going through the door called death, (last chapter of Mirror in the Mirror):
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 – 28 August 1995) was a
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
author of
fantasyFantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
and
children's literatureChildren's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
. He is best known for his epic fantasy work
The Neverending StoryThe Neverending Story is a German fantasy novel by Michael Ende, first published in 1979. The standard English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1983...
; other famous works include
Momo and
Jim Button and Luke the Engine DriverJim Button and Luke the Engine Driver is a German children's novel written by Michael Ende. Published in 1960, it became one of the most successful German children's books in the postwar era after having first been rejected by a dozen publishers...
. His 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
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
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."
Ende's writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and
fantasyFantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
. 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
anthroposophyAnthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
. Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of
aging moneyIn the theory of Freiwirtschaft, Freigeld is a monetary unit proposed by Silvio Gesell.- Properties :Freigeld has several special properties:...
in mind when writing
Momo.
He was born in Garmisch (
BavariaBavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
), son of the
surrealistSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
painter
Edgar EndeEdgar Karl Alfons Ende was a German surrealist painter and father of the children's novelist Michael Ende....
. He died in
FilderstadtFilderstadt is a town in the district of Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is located approximately 13 km south of Stuttgart.Filderstadt is located next to the Stuttgart Airport and the new Trade Fair...
(Germany) of
stomach cancerGastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
.
Early life
Ende was born November 12, 1929 in
Garmisch-PartenkirchenGarmisch-Partenkirchen is a mountain resort town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Oberbayern region, and the district is on the border with Austria...
(
BavariaBavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
). An only child, his parents were
Edgar EndeEdgar Karl Alfons Ende was a German surrealist painter and father of the children's novelist Michael Ende....
, a
surrealistSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
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).
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