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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 Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer'' (''Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver''). His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 20 million copies, and adapted as 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 fiction. He was not strictly a children's writer, however, as he wrote books for adults too. Ende claimed, "It is for this child in me, and in all of us, that I tell my stories", and that "(books are ) for any child between 80 and 8 years" (qtd. Senick 95, 97). 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. 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 nursery door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one to have suffered this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about.〔"''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.〕 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. His writings were influenced by anthroposophy.〔Peter Boccarius, ''Michael Ende: Der Anfang der Geschichte'', München: Nymphenburger, 1990. ISBN 3-485-00622-X. German.〕〔(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〕 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''. ==Early life== Ende was born November 12, 1929 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Bavaria, Germany), the only child of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende and Luise Bartholomä Ende, a physiotherapist (Coby). In 1935, when Michael was six, the Ende family moved to the "artists' quarter of Schwabing" in Munich (Haase). 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. The horrors of the second world war heavily influenced Michael Ende’s childhood. He was twelve years old when the first air raid took place above Munich. ‘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 (Bombing of Hamburg in World War II), which he experienced while visiting his uncle. At the first available opportunity his uncle (Edgar Ende’s brother) 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 his birthplace of 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, 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 German army 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). He aspired to be a "dramatist," but wrote mostly short stories and poems (Haase). During his time in Stuttgart, Ende first encountered Expressionist and Dadaist writing and began schooling himself in literature. He studied Theodor Däubler, Yvan Goll, Else Lasker-Schüler and Alfred Mombert, but his real love was the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George and Georg Trakl. He also made his first attempts at acting, performing with friends in Stuttgart’s America House. 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’s first play "Denn die Stunde drängt (As Time is Running Out)" dates to this period. It was dedicated to Hiroshima, and was never performed. 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). On leaving drama school, his first job as an actor took him to a provincial theatre company in Schleswig-Holstein. The troupe travelled from town to town by bus, usually performing on makeshift stages, surrounded by beer, smoke and the clatter of skittles from nearby bowling alleys. Even the acting was a disappointment, for despite his dark curls, Michael Ende was never assigned the part of ‘heroic lover’ that he had trained for. Instead he was made to play old men and malicious schemers, and had barely enough time to memorize his lines. Despite the frustrations and disappointments of his early acting career, Ende came to value his time in the provinces as a valuable learning experience that endowed him with a practical, down-to-earth approach to his work: ‘It was a good experience, a healthy experience. Anyone interested in writing should be made to do that sort of thing. It doesn’t have to be restricted to acting. It could be any kind of practical activity like cabinet making - learning how to construct a cabinet in which the doors fit properly.’ In Ende’s view, practical training had the potential to be more useful than a literary degree. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michael Ende」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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