Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 – 28 August 1995) was a German writer of fantasy and children's fiction.

In 1936, his father's work was declared "degenerate art" and banned by the Nazi Party, so Edgar Ende was forced to draw and paint in secret.

There, Ende attended the Maximillians Gymnasium until schools were closed as the air raids intensified and pupils were evacuated.

Ernst Buchner [de], Director of Public Art for Bavaria, was still in possession of a number of Ende's paintings, which survived the raids.

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.

[clarification needed] During his time in Stuttgart, Ende first encountered Expressionist and Dadaist writing and began schooling himself in literature.

He was involved in productions of Chekhov's one-act comedy "The Bear", in which he played the principal role, and in the German premiere of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus.

Ende decided that he wanted to be a playwright, but financial considerations ruled out a university degree, so in 1948 he auditioned for the Otto Falckenberg School of the Performing Arts in Munich and was granted a two-year scholarship (Haase).

Thanks to the numerous contacts of his girlfriend Ingeborg Hoffmann, Michael Ende was introduced to a variety of cabaret groups.

I finally wrote the last sentence ten months later, and a great stack of paper had accumulated on the desk.Michael Ende always said that ideas only came to him when the logic of the story required them.

Three weeks later he was about to shelve the novel when suddenly he had an idea—the steam from the tank engine could freeze and cover the rocks in snow, thus saving his characters from their scrape.

About a year later, on the morning of the announcement that his novel, Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, had won the German Prize for Children's Fiction, Ende was being sued by his landlady for seven months' rent back payment.

With the prize money of five thousand marks, Michael Ende's financial situation improved substantially, and his writing career began in earnest.

Both books were serialized on radio and TV, and the Augsburger Puppenkiste famously adapted the novels in a version filmed by Hesse's broadcasting corporation.

He often expressed frustration over being perceived as a children's writer exclusively, considering that his purpose was to speak of cultural problems and spiritual wisdom to people of all ages.

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.

[9][10] Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of aging money, or demurrage, in mind when writing Momo.

The Japanese language and script were so different from Ende's native German that it seemed they were grounded in a different kind of consciousness—an alternative way of seeing the world.

[citation needed] He was particularly intrigued by the way in which everyday circumstances were shaped into intricate rituals, such as the tea ceremony.

[citation needed] There was, he realized, a sharp contrast between the traditions of ancient Japan and its industry-oriented modern-day society.

In 1986 Michael Ende was invited to attend the annual congress of the JBBY (Japanese Committee for International Children's Literature) in Tokyo.

At the invitation of Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, Michael Ende attended the opening and spent two months touring Japan.

The following year an archive devoted to Michael Ende was established at Kurohime Dowakan, a museum in the Japanese city of Shinano-machi.

According to Ende, he was standing at an ivy-covered counter serving as barman, when Hoffmann strode towards him, looking "flame-haired, fiery and chic".

[13] They began a relationship that led to their marriage in 1964 in Rome, Italy, and ended with Ingeborg Hoffmann's sudden and unexpected death in 1985 from a pulmonary embolism; she was 63 years old.

In 1955, Therese Angeloff, head of Die kleinen Fische (the 'Little Fish' cabaret), commissioned Ende to write a piece in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Friedrich Schiller's death.

[13] For fourteen years, Ende and Hoffmann, who were both Italophiles, lived just outside Rome in Genzano, in a house they called Casa Liocorno ("The Unicorn").

Sato had emigrated from Japan to West Germany in 1974 and was working at the time for the International Youth Library in Munich.

From 1977 to 1980 Michael Ende and Mariko Sato worked together to produce a translation into German of ten fairy tales by Japanese writer Kenji Miyazawa.

For the first time Ende was able to experience Kabuki and Noh theatre, and was greatly impressed by traditional Japanese drama.