Pencil Portrait of Michael Ende by Arturo Espinosa. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (accessed: December 28, 2021).
Michael Ende
, 1929 - 1995
Michael Ende was born in 1929 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany). He trained as an actor in Munich and worked for small theatres in the North of Germany. From 1954, Michael Ende worked as a film critic for the Bavarian Radio and also wrote humorous scenes and songs for a political cabaret. In 1956, Ende left the theatre, experienced an artistic crisis and started writing Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver) which was published in 1960 and was awarded the Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis (German YA Book Award).
In 1964, Ende married the actress Ingeborg Hoffman and the couple moved to Rome. Momo was published in 1972. In 1974, Momo was awarded both, the Deutscher und Europäischer Jugendbuchpreis (German and European YA book awards). 1975 it was made into an opera libretto with music by Mark Lothar.
Since 1976, Ende was involved with theatre again, with his Das Gauklermärchen (The Trickster’s Tale). In 1979, Die Unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) was published. Ende was very displeased about the movie version and distanced himself from the project. In 1986, Momo was made into a movie.
In 1989, Ende, whose first wife had died, married Mariko Sato, who translated The Neverending Story into Japanese.
Ende wrote over 40 novels, fairy tales, stories, plays, essays, poems and non-fiction books and received 41 awards for his work. Over 20 million copies of his books have been published.
The International Youth Library in Munich has a permanent Michael Ende exhibition (accessed: September 28, 2018) which displays his entire works, as well as typescripts, letters, drawings, photos and illustrations from his books, his large personal library and other personal belongings:
Source:
Official website (accessed: September 28, 2018)
Bio prepared by Babette Puetz, Victoria University of Wellington, babette.puetz@vuw.ac.nz
Records in database:
