Michael Ende was born on November 12, 1929, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, in what is now West Germany. His family moved to Munich in 1931. His father, surrealist painter Edgar Ende, settled the family in the artists' quarter of Schwabing, where Ende was surrounded by the avant-garde. He went to school at Maximilians Gymnasium until 1943, when the Munich schools were evacuated due to allied bombing and he returned to Garmisch. After World War II, unable to afford a university education, Ende accepted a scholarship to study acting at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schauspielschulein Munich. He acted briefly with a regional theater troop in Stuttgart before returning to Munich, in 1948, where he struggled as a freelance writer. Ende married actress Ingeborg Hoffman in 1964.

Ende published his first book, Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivfuhrer, in 1961 and a sequel, Jim Button and the Wild 13, in 1962. His first novel won the German Youth Book...