Momo (novel)

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"Momo" sculpture by Ulrike Enders in Hanover at Michael-Ende-Platz

Momo is an in 1973 published novel by Michael Ende . The title denotes the main character , the subtitle is: The strange story of the time thieves and of the child who brought people back the stolen time . With over seven million copies sold worldwide, the book is the most successful work by the end after The Neverending Story . Momo was awarded the German Youth Book Prize in 1974.

action

The novel Momo is divided into three parts:

  1. Part Momo and her friends (consisting of the 5 chapters 1–5)
  2. Part The Gray Gentlemen (consisting of 7 chapters 6–12)
  3. Part The hour flowers (consisting of 9 chapters 13–21)

First part: Momo and her friends

In a fantasy world, a huge city with large new building districts, Momo lives in an old, crumbling amphitheater . Momo is a little girl with dark, curly hair, who has never seen a comb, pitch black eyes and pitch black feet because she only has two shoes that are too big and do not match and therefore mostly goes barefoot . She only wears old clothes, consisting of a motley patchwork skirt sewn together that reaches down to her ankles and a man's jacket that is much too wide. Momo is poor, but she has a special gift: she can listen very well. She is so good at this that the tongues of those she listens suddenly come loose and all of a sudden they get big ideas again and the joy blossoms in them, and then they tell everything they were hiding in with winged words. This leads to Momo becoming an indispensable pastor for everyone. However, since she also stimulates people's imagination through her particularly good listening, the children can play much better than ever before. Ever since Momo was here, storyteller Gigi has also been able to tell his stories much better and more exciting than ever before. The old street sweeper Beppo, who always collects a lot of sensory impressions during his work, can tell Momo about them without anyone thinking him crazy, because Momo understands him and listens to his heart.

Second part: the gray gentlemen

One day the gray gentlemen appear. The bald agents of the “Zeitsparkasse” are dressed in ash gray from head to toe and always smoke ash gray cigars. They try to make people, time to save to allegedly safe for later interest retained. In truth, however, people are being cheated of their time. As they try to save time, they forget to live in the now and enjoy the beautiful things in life.

Momo feels the cold that comes from saving time. When she opens the eyes of some people through her special gift of listening and shows them where saving time is leading, she disrupts the work of the gray men and draws them to their attention. She gets a visit from one of them, the agent BLW / 553 / c. He wants to distract her from her friends with the help of a toy doll, so that Momo forgets them, but Momo does not accept the doll because one cannot love her. When she asks the gray gentleman if anyone loves him, he is so shocked that he opens up to Momo and reveals the whole terrible secret of the time savings bank to her. When he realizes what he has done and what difficulties it can get him into, he urges Momo to forget the secret and flees. But Momo reveals everything to her friends Beppo and Gigi. Together they decide to make the entire city aware of the danger posed by the gray men and organize a demonstration with the children to inform the people.

The gray gentlemen prevent the adults from listening to the children. After condemning and executing the traitor Agent BLW / 553 / c in the dump by depriving him of all time, they decide to catch Momo and head to the amphitheater. Beppo, who happened to be watching the trial, also cycles to the amphitheater to warn Momo, but is late. The gray gentlemen are also late, as Momo had a visit from the turtle Cassiopeia, which the girl took with her. The gray gentlemen are looking for Momo all over the city, but cannot find her, as Cassiopeia can see half an hour into the future and knows how to avoid the gray gentlemen. Cassiopeia leads Momo to her master, Master Hora, the mysterious “steward of time”. He lives in the nowhere house outside of time, which can only be reached if you cross the Niemalsgasse backwards to the nowhere house, whereby the time flows out of the visitor. Around the nowhere house you have to do everything slowly to move forward quickly. Master Hora explains to Momo the secret of time, how it is created and that the gray gentlemen need the time saved by people to "smoke" it in their cigars in order to stay alive.

Third part: the hour flowers

Since Momo wants to tell her friends about this, Master Hora lets her go back to town. But a lot of time has now passed there and everything has changed. There is no more room for Momo, as the gray men keep her away from her friends and finally ask Momo to lead her to Master Hora so that he can hand them over to them all at once. Momo refuses, however, especially since she cannot find the way to Master Hora without Kassiopeia's help anyway. Finally Cassiopeia appears and leads her back to Master Hora, but the gray men follow them and want to penetrate the nowhere house. However, they do not succeed because when crossing the Niemalsgasse time flows out of the gray men - and the gray men, who consist only of stolen time, dissolve in this way.

Since the world is now almost entirely owned by the gray gentlemen, the wise master Hora decides to act. He falls asleep, whereby time stands still and thus all things also stand still. Only Kassiopeia and Momo, who previously gave Master Hora a "flower of the hour", can move with the flower for an hour and are thus supposed to lure the seemingly overpowering gray gentlemen into a trap. When they notice that time has stood still, they flee back to their headquarters, where Momo and Kassiopeia follow them. There the gray gentlemen keep the hour flowers made from the stolen time in a refrigerated storage room, the door of which happened to be open before Master Hora fell asleep and thus all things became immobile. The gray men reduce their number to six with a coin toss in order to be able to survive longer with the remaining supplies of hourly flowers. Momo sneaks past the gray gentlemen and locks the storage room with the help of her hour flower. The gray gentlemen, deprived of their supplies, panic and fight for the last cigars, but they lose them and shortly afterwards dissolve into nothing. Momo opens the storage room with her hour flower and enters it. Since there are no longer any gray gentlemen, the hour flowers thaw, carry Momo outside with them as if on a magic carpet and wander back to the people to whom they actually belong. Momo is reunited with her friends, and Kassiopeia finds her way back to Master Hora, who has awakened from his sleep with the thawing of the hour flowers.

characters

Momo

The little girl who turns up one day in an amphitheater, can listen well and comforts others with it. Momo has pitch-black curls and large pitch-black eyes, as well as feet of the same color, as she almost always walks barefoot. She wears a well-worn men's jacket and a motley patchwork skirt, is poor and helpful.

Gigi tour guide

Gigi tour guide, later known as Girolamo, is one of Momo's two best friends, the storyteller and tour guide. He is also a park ranger, best man, dog walker, love mailman, funeral attendant, souvenir dealer, cat food seller and much more. When he became famous and successful under the influence of the gray men, he lost his imagination and originality.

Beppo street sweeper

Beppo street sweeper is Momo's other best friend, a patient street sweeper who ponders until he gives an answer that most people have already forgotten what they wanted to know. In his opinion, most suffering is due to people saying rash things. He also suggested that instead of paying attention to the end of the long street, only ever see the next piece. With the promise that Momo will come back if he saves a hundred thousand hours, the gray men rob him of his personality.

Master Hora

Secundus Minutius Hora is the keeper of time and the hour flowers. He allocates their lifetime to all people and constantly changes their age. His name is a speaking name , as Hora is the Latin word for hour. Accordingly, seconds stand for second and minutius for minute.

Cassiopeia

Master Hora's turtle, who look half an hour into the future and yet cannot say what will happen. It is expressed through writing that appears on its armor. In the cartoon series from 2001 this writing is represented by pictures, in the original radio play Cassiopeia is spoken by Eva Pflug instead of pictures or words appearing on the tank.

The gray gentlemen

With pale gray skin, gray hats, gray jackets, “elegant gray cars” and cigars from a dried up time in their mouth, without which they cannot exist, they form an organized gang of time thieves who go about their dark business under the code name Zeitsparkasse . After all, they control the entire city, and their appearance is not remembered.

BLW / 553 / c

The gray man who tries to bribe Momo with the Bibigirl doll. Momo leads him to reveal all the secrets about the time savings bank.

In the animated series from 2003 , his name is Agent 100 .

XYQ / 384 / b

The gray gentleman who comes to Mr. Fusi's in the barber shop.

The children

Momo always meets with them in the amphitheater and plays exciting games with them.

Nino

Host of a small pub on the outskirts.

Liliana

Nino's wife.

Nicola

The bricklayer, one of Momo's best friends. In front of the gray men he was proud of his buildings, but when the buildings were built on the assembly line, soulless and with inferior quality, he becomes dissatisfied with his work.

Mr. Fusi

The hairdresser who is not rich, but also not poor. He is the gray gentlemen's first victim. Agent XYQ / 384 / b pays him a mid-life visit and calculates how much time Fusi has wasted so far. Fusi lets himself be convinced that he will get a lot more time if he saves it, and then actually begins to rush and only want to make a profit. Since Agent XYQ / 384 / b erased Fusi's memory of his visit while walking, Fusi thinks the sudden time-saving was his own idea.

background

The setting of the story, an Italian-style suburb with an amphitheater, is reminiscent of Genzano di Roma , the town where he lived at the time, and the nearby ancient Tusculum . The author worked on it for six years, as he mentioned in a conversation with Jörg Krichbaum : “Then at some point I noticed that it wasn't there yet, I couldn't get it right, in the way that I put it in my library and leave it it lay long. [...] I kept pulling it out to myself, read it through, thought about it, [...] until the moment comes when you suddenly feel, now you have it, now you have the right access to it. ”As an illustrator, he preferred first Maurice Sendak , who was already very successful with his childlike, surreal dream worlds. After the publisher refused, Ende succeeded in illustrating the novel himself. Michael Ende's later work in Japan, the home of his second wife, is closely related to Momo. Werner Onken , head of the free economic library in Varel , wrote an interpretation of Momo in 1986 , which was published in the journal Issues of Freedom . In a letter to Onken, Michael Ende confirmed that Momo criticized today's monetary system : “By the way, you are the first to notice that the idea of“ aging money ”is in the background of my book 'Momo'. It is precisely with these thoughts of Steiner and Gesell that I have occupied myself more intensively in recent years, since I have come to the view that our cultural question cannot be solved without the money question being solved at the same time or even beforehand.

reception

Amphitheater in Michael-Ende-Kurpark, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

A Momo bronze sculpture by the artist Ulrike Enders has been located on Michael-Ende-Platz in Hanover since 2007 . The square and the erection of the monument are initiated by the association “Friends of Stadtparkallee e. V. “back.

The buildings and sculptures in the Michael-Ende-Kurpark in Garmisch-Partenkirchen are dedicated to various works by the author: The Roman Momo is represented by a small amphitheater.

The Baden-Württemberg regional association of the BUND established the Momo Foundation in 1993 . The foundation supports projects that aim to give children and young people a better understanding of their environment and nature.

Film adaptations

Radio plays

  • Carousel 1975 LP, 1984 three cassettes; 1999 three CDs
    • Part 1: Momo and her friends
    • Part 2: Momo and the gray men
    • Part 3: Momo and the hour flowers

Settings

  • Momo and the Zeitdiebe Opera in two parts by Michael Ende with music by Mark Lothar , world premiere: Landestheater Coburg, November 19, 1978
  • Momo Opera after Michael Ende by Toshi Ichiyanagi , 1995
  • Direction, music, texts: Stefan Krämer, first performance: June 11, 2009, Gymnasium Osterbek Hamburg (die musicaLISTEN)
  • The hour flower symphonic novella for wind orchestra by Uwe Kohls
  • Momo and Die Zeitdiebe , children's musical by A. Holtermann, B. Wingert and P. Kurz, Ikarus Musikverlag
  • Momo Musiktheater in 18 pictures by Wilfried Hiller , world premiere: Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Munich , December 16, 2018

Ballet adaptations

  • The world premiere of the adaptation by choreographer Tim Plegge took place on April 21, 2012 at the Karlsruhe State Theater .

expenditure

Regular expenses

Special editions

Secondary literature

  • Hermann Bausinger: Momo. An experiment on political-literary placebo effects . In: Walter Jens, Wilfried Barner , Martin Gregor-Dellin, Peter Härtling (eds.): Literature in der Demokratie. For Walter Jens on his 60th birthday . Kindler Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-463-00852-1 , p. 137–145 , urn : nbn: de: bsz: 21-opus-50427 .
  • Birgit Dankert: Michael Ende: Trapped in Fantasia . Ed .: WBG (Scientific Book Society), Darmstadt. Lambert Schneider Verlag, 2016, ISBN 3-650-40122-3 .

Web links

Commons : Momo (Roman)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Momo. In: thienemann.de. cms.thienemann.de, accessed on April 16, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Quotation from: Michael Ende, Jörg Krichbaum: The archeology of darkness: Conversations about art and the work of the painter Edgar Ende . Chapter: Conversation, third day . Stuttgart: Edition Weitbrecht 1985
  3. ↑ Birgit Dankert: Michael Ende: Captured in Fantasy. Ed .: WBG (Scientific Book Society), Darmstadt. Lambert Schneider Verlag, 2016, pp. 155–156.
  4. ↑ Facsimile of a letter from Michael Ende to Werner Onken, September 3, 1986 on Sozialoekonomie.info: Werner Onken: The economic message from Michael Ende's "Momo" (accessed on September 23, 2019)
  5. ↑ Monument of a special kind: The Momo Monument on hannover.de, accessed on September 23, 2019
  6. ↑ Brochure Michael Ende and Garmisch-Partenkirchen p. 19, accessed on December 22, 2016
  7. ↑ Momo Foundation of the BUND Baden-Württemberg for children, the environment and health. In: bund-bawue.de.
  8. ↑ Momo (1986) in the Internet Movie Database (English); 1. at Edition Deutscher Film 2, 1986; 2. at Millenium Storm, different language version. (also German), 2006; at Studiocanal, 2000 EAN 4006680017280
  9. ↑ Momo in the fantastic world of Master Hora (based on Michael Ende) - video film based on paintings by Angerer the Elder for the book Momo. Angerer the Elder, accessed on September 24, 2019 (Angerer said at the end of February 1, 1986: "This is the world MOMO as I imagine it to be. I am thrilled").
  10. ↑ Momo alla conquista del tempo (2001) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  11. ↑ z. B. EAN 5414233149187 - Episodes 1 to 4: A girl named Momo, Where should Momo live ?, Momo and the gray visitor and Momo and the South Sea princess.
  12. ↑ Momo and the time thieves. ( Memento from June 23, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) at: musicals-fuer-kinder.net
  13. ↑ Ballet: Momo. Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, season archive 11/12, accessed on April 5, 2020 .