Michael Ende

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-09-24

Michael Ende was born November 12, 1929, in Garmisch, Bavaria, Germany, the only child of surrealist painter Edgar Ende and physiotherapist Luise Bartholomä Ende; his father's art was declared "degenerate" by the Nazi Party in 1936, forcing him to work secretly. Ende attended the Maximilians Gymnasium in Munich, completed secondary schooling at a Waldorf School in Stuttgart (1946-1948), and studied at the Otto Falckenberg School of the Performing Arts in Munich on a two-year scholarship (1948-1950). He began his career as a provincial theater actor in Schleswig-Holstein, worked as a film critic during the 1950s, and wrote cabaret sketches, chansons, and monologues from 1955 onward before turning to fiction. His major works include Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (1960), for which he won the German Prize for Children's Fiction in 1961, Momo (1973), and The Neverending Story (1979), which became internationally famous through its 1984 film adaptation; his books have sold more than 35 million copies in over forty languages and found particular success in Japan, where more than two million copies had sold by 1993. Ende married actress Ingeborg Hoffmann in Rome in 1964; she died in 1985. He married Japanese translator Mariko Sato in 1989, having met her at the 1976 Bologna Children's Book Fair. He died August 28, 1995, in Filderstadt, Germany, of stomach cancer, at age sixty-five.

Universe(s)

Books

• Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (1960) · Jim Button Core Canon
• Jim Button and the Wild 13 (1962) · Jim Button Core Canon
• The Neverending Story (1979) · The Neverending Story Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 3 (3 won)

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