the never ending Story

The Neverending Story is a first time in 1979 in K. Thienemanns Verlag published novel by Michael Ende . The work is a fairytale, fantastic and romantic educational novel at the same time and is now one of the new classics of children's and youth literature .

The majority of the action takes place in a parallel world , called Fantasia, which is destroyed by “nothingness” - ever larger parts of the realm simply disappear without leaving anything of it. A kind of frame narrative consists of sequences that are located in the human world. Each of these worlds represents one of the two main characters of the novel. Bastian Balthasar Bux is a human boy who initially only reads one novel about the land of Fantasy, but for him the story becomes more and more a reality. Eventually he becomes part of it himself until he is about to lose himself in the fantasy world. Atreyu, on the other hand, is a young fantasy hunter who, on behalf of the sick ruler of the empire, the childlike empress, searches for the cause of her illness in order to save Fantasia. He later becomes Bastian's friend and helps him find his way back home.

content

Bastian Balthasar Bux is a ten or eleven year old shy, imaginative chubby boy. His father never got over the death of Bastian's mother, takes refuge in his work and hardly pays any attention to his son. At school, the boy is an outsider and is bullied by his classmates. On the run from them, Bastian escapes to the bookseller Karl Konrad Koreander's second-hand bookshop. He is currently reading a mysterious book called The Neverending Story . For Bastian this appears to be the book of books, because he has always wanted a story that never ends. When the phone rings, Coreander leaves the room. Bastian steals the book and escapes with him to the attic of his school. There he begins to read The Neverending Story .

This is about fantasy, the realm of fantasy. The childlike empress, ruler of this empire, who lives in the ivory tower , is seriously ill and threatens to die. As her disease progresses, Fantasy itself is doomed. The land and all the beings that live in it are gradually being devoured by nothing, and literally nothing is left of them. That is why the childlike empress sends Atréju, a green-skinned boy of Bastian's age. He is supposed to get a cure for the childlike empress and thus save fantasies. Atreyu travels from place to place and speaks to the most diverse inhabitants of the empire. So he gradually finds out that the Childlike Empress can only be saved if she is given a new name that only a human child can give her. He also meets the lucky dragon Fuchur, who becomes his companion.

As Bastian Atréju follows adventures with tension, he comes closer and closer to fantasies. His scream of horror can be heard in phantasias and Atreyu sees him for a moment in a magic mirror. When Bastian finally realizes that he alone is the savior of Fantasy, he fears that the Childlike Empress might find him unworthy. That's why he doesn't dare to pronounce her name out loud, which he has long recognized. In order to save her empire, which has already almost completely disappeared, the Childlike Empress forces him to visit the old man from the Wandering Mountains and let him read the Neverending Story for an infinite amount of time. Bastian finally gives her the desperately requested name: Moon Child.

In this way, Bastian himself came to Fantasy. The childlike empress hands him her symbol, the amulet AURYN, and instructs him to recreate the world of Fantasia with his wishes according to his ideas. When Bastian complies with her demand, fantasies can arise anew. AURYN fulfills each of his wishes and so he tries to get rid of all the weaknesses that have inhibited him in his previous life. He wishes to be beautiful and strong, brave and wise.

With his wishes, Bastian creates the night forest Perelín and the color desert Goab, which is ruled by the lion Graógramán. Bastian meets Atréju and Fuchur again in the silver city of Amargánth. They want to help him find his way back into the human world, but Bastian doesn't want to go back. He likes himself in the position of being the great and mighty savior of Fantasy. The magician Xayíde gains influence on him, encouraging him to desire power and strength. She leads him to break away from Atréjus and Furchur's friendship after he discovers by eavesdropping that Atreyu wants to take AURYN from him by force.

Bastian wants to be crowned Emperor of Fantasies instead of the Childlike Empress. The coronation ceremony is interrupted by Atréju's declaration of war. A battle over the ivory tower breaks out, ending with Bastian wounding Atreyu in the chest.

After the battle, Bastian arrives in the old emperor's city, where people who used to come to fantasies and have not found their way back into the human world, eke out a meaningless existence. Bastian notices that every wish costs him a memory of his own world. He only has as many wishes left as he has memories, and he has to recognize his true will through the use of his wishes, because only this can lead him back home.

Bastian's desire for community leads him across the sea of fog and his desire for security to the lady Aiuóla in the house of change. Then his desire to love arises. Bastian casts off AURYN and arrives at the innermost place of Fantasy, a domed hall in which a fountain flows with the water of life, which is guarded by two snakes. With the help of Atréju, the snakes open the way to the water, which Bastian fills with joie de vivre and from which he regains his original shape, in which he now feels comfortable. Bastian wants to bring his father the water of life and so comes back into the human world. Only a few hours have passed there. Bastian goes back to his father and tells him his experiences. The father is touched and the two find a new, loving relationship with each other.

characters

Bastian Balthasar Bux

Bastian is a little boy of ten or eleven. He's a shy and feeble bookworm who gets teased at school. His mother has passed away, which is also very stressful for his father, who rarely speaks to him. In The Neverending Story he becomes big, strong and powerful, forgets who he used to be and gets into big trouble.

The childlike empress

The Childlike Empress, embodiment of fantasy, is the ruler of Fantasy, but under this title one should in no way imagine what is usually understood by it. The childlike empress or “golden-eyed mistress of wishes”, as she is also called, does not rule and never makes use of her power. She never judges. Before her, all beings are the same, whether beautiful or ugly, bad or good. Although she looks like a girl around ten years old, she has sparkling white hair and is ageless. It is not a being of fantasy, but without it nothing can exist in fantasy. Your life force is measured by name. If her name is forgotten, she absolutely needs a new one, otherwise she and all fantasies will die with her.

Atreyu

Atreyu belongs to the "Greenskin" people who live in an area called "The Grassy Sea". Although he is only ten years old, the Childlike Empress appoints him as her deputy and sends him to search for a cure. The greenskins are a proud people of hunters, even the smallest learn to ride horses without a saddle. Her skin is olive green and her hair is ebony black. They make everything they need from grass or the skins of the purple buffalo that roam their land in large herds. Atreyu is Bastian's friend and often helps him out of almost hopeless situations.

Fuchs

Fuchs is a lucky dragon and is therefore one of the rarest creatures in Fantasia. Fuchur's scales are mother-of-pearl, shimmering rosy and glittering white. He has a lush mane and fringes on the tail and other limbs.

Lucky dragons have almost no resemblance to "ordinary" dragons such as those found in fantasy literature. They neither live in dark caves in which they hoard treasures, nor do they constantly spew fire and smoke or wreak havoc just for fun. They have no leather wings and are by no means plump, but rather have a long, supple body.

In terms of appearance and meaning, the lucky dragons in Neverending Story are similar to those in Chinese mythology . They are creatures of the air, of warmth and unrestrained joy. Despite their size, they are as light as a feather and therefore do not need wings to fly - they virtually swim through the air, like fish in water.

Another special feature is Fuchur's singing, which is described as "the roar of a huge bronze bell". Anyone who has heard this song will never forget it for a lifetime. Lucky dragons never seem to lose hope and happiness; they trust their luck and understand all languages of joy.

Origin and publication history

In 1977 his publisher Hansjörg Weitbrecht advised Michael Ende to write a new book. Ende promised to have it ready by Christmas, but doubted reaching a page number beyond 100. Ende mentioned as a leitmotif: While reading a story, a boy literally gets caught up in the story and finds it difficult to get out again. The Thienemann publishing house approved this concept in advance.

However, it quickly became apparent that the material was more extensive than Ende had believed. The publication had to be postponed further and further. Ende promised that the book could be published in autumn 1979. A year before the specified date, he called his publisher and informed him that the main character Bastian absolutely refused to leave Fantasia. He (Michael Ende) had no choice but to accompany him on his long journey. It is also no longer a normal book. Rather, it should be designed like a real magic book: a leather binding with mother-of-pearl and brass buttons. They finally agreed on a silk cover, the well-known two-tone print and the twenty-six letter vignettes for the individual chapters that Roswitha Quadflieg was to design. The production costs for the book increased significantly as a result.

However, Ende didn’t make any progress with his story, because he didn’t have an idea how he could bring Bastian back to reality from fantasy. During this artistic crisis, one of the coldest winters that Ende had ever seen came. The water pipes froze, a pipe burst, the house was flooded, the walls began to go moldy. During this difficult phase, the author came up with the saving idea that AURYN, the amulet of the Childlike Empress, itself represents the exit from Fantasy. So at the end of 1979, after almost three years of work, I was finally able to finish work on the book.

“In the Neverending Story, again, until the very end I didn't know where the end of fantasies was. The book should come out a year in advance. The publisher had ordered printing dates, the paper was already there, and he always called and asked: When will I get it now, and I always had to say: You, I can't give it to you, Bastian won't come back. What should I do? I have to wait until the time comes, for the character to feel the need to come back, and that's why it became this odyssey.

When we decided at the time that I should write this book, when the publisher was downstairs and said: How about if you wrote a book again? - I really hate to write - I said: Well, if I have to. I was crawling around in my junk box, throwing notes into it, and there was also a piece of paper that said: When reading a book, a boy literally gets into the story and finds it difficult to get out. Then he said: You’re going to do it, that sounds good. And then I: Oh yes, but you know, there's not much in it. It might be a 100-page story. Well, so much the better, he said, finally write a short book. And then I started. And then the thing literally exploded in my hands; In the moment when you take it seriously, i.e. don't save yourself with a few magic tricks, so that the boy can get in and out again. That's not enough for me.

One thinks to oneself: what kind of story does it have to be that forces the reader to get into it, why does the story just need him? Well, after a lot of mistakes and fumbling around, this fantasy came about. Then the second question is: What kind of boy does that have to be? That doesn't happen to everyone. What kind of prerequisites does he have to have in order to even embark on this adventure? At first I had a completely different Bastian. I had an anti-social, a defiant boy who closes himself off against the world. Only I noticed when I was in the middle of the book that it will certainly never come back. The story doesn't open to me at all. So back again and started all over again. What is in the book today is about a fifth of what I actually wrote. Four fifths ended up in the trash. "

The novel was first published in September 1979 by Thienemanns Verlag. The story brought the author international fame. He subsequently received the Buxtehuder Bullen, the ZDF Bookworms Prize, the Wilhelm Hauff Prize for the promotion of children's and youth literature, the European Youth Book Prize, the Rotterdam Silver Pen and the Grand Prize of the German Academy for Children's and Youth Book Literature .

The end of the estate is in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . The manuscript of the Neverending Story is in the Museum of Modern Literature seen in Marbach in the permanent exhibition.

Granting of film rights and distancing the end

One year after the release, the producer Bernd Eichinger tried to get the rights to film the Neverending Story . Despite numerous letters to the editor who protested against this, Ende gave his approval. In the course of the development of a script by the director Wolfgang Petersen , however, Ende distanced himself from the project because Petersen's script deviated too far from the original material. Finally, Ende tried to terminate the contract, but Eichinger's film company, Constantin Film , threatened him with a claim for damages worth millions. Ende's own lawsuit against the film company was dismissed. So Ende had to agree to the filming.

In 1984 the first film, which cost more than $ 60 million, was completed. Ende was invited to a preliminary performance. He was horrified by the gigantic melodrama made of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic and felt deeply hurt in his honor as a writer, artist and cultured man. He could not prevent the distribution of the film, but reserved the right to withdraw his name.

pads

The first edition of Thienemanns Verlag in September 1979 was only 20,000 copies. Rezipiert from the start positive, the novel was published in July 1980 to number 5 in the mirror - bestseller list , where it remained sixty weeks long, and reached over the next three years fifteen editions with almost one million copies. By the time Michael Ende died in 1995, the number of copies had increased to 5.6 million. Thirty years after its publication, “The Neverending Story” has been translated into over 40 languages. The total worldwide circulation is 10 million copies (alternative information: 40 million copies).

The book is usually not printed in black. Most editions use two font colors. Red font stands for storylines that are located in the human world, blue-green font for the events in Fantasy, the realm of fantasy (the colors vary). This facilitates access to the plot, as the protagonist, a ten-year-old boy named Bastian Balthasar Bux, moves between the two worlds.

“The Neverending Story” has 26 chapters, each of which begins in alphabetical order from “A” to “Z” with a large, richly decorated initial . The overall design was developed together with the illustrator Roswitha Quadflieg . In the new edition of the book from 2004 these initials and the green font are missing.

In the English translation by Ralph Manheim, the book has a different cover, but there is also the two-tone font and the initials from "A" to "Z" in alphabetical order - the translation of the first words of each chapter has been linguistically adapted accordingly.

The paperback edition was published by dtv-Verlag in 1987, followed by “Der Niemandsgarten” in 1998 as part of Edition Weitbrecht with writings from Michael Ende's estate. It contains a fragment of the novel of the same name, which can be read as the forerunner of the “Neverending Story”. A new edition with illustrations by Claudia Seeger has been available from Thienemann-Verlag since 2004. In 2004 Piper Verlag also published “But that's another story. The great Michael Ende reading book ”, which contains the unpublished chapter“ Bastian learns the art of magic ”. Also at Piper Verlag since 2009 is “The Neverending Story. The original in paperback ”available. In 2009, Thienemann-Verlag added “Das Phantásien-Lexikon”, edited by Roman and Patrick Hocke . "The Neverending Story" has also been available as an e-book since November 2017 .

1979: The neverending story , illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg, Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-522-12800-1 .

1987: The neverending story , paperback edition, dtv 10795, Munich, ISBN 3-423-10795-2 .

1994: The Neverending Story , paperback edition / new edition, illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg, dtv, Munich, ISBN 978-3-423-10795-2 .

1998: The No Man's Garden , from the estate; therein the fragment of the novel of the same name, which can be read as the forerunner of the “Neverending Story” ; Edition Weitbrecht, Stuttgart / Vienna / Bern ISBN 3-522-72005-9 .

2004: The Neverending Story , new edition, illustrated by Claudia Seeger, Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-522-17684-2 .

2004: But that's a different story, the great Michael Ende reader , in it the unpublished chapter “Bastian learns the magic”, Piper, Munich / Zurich, ISBN 978-3-492-04672-5 .

2009: The Neverending Story , the original in paperback, Piper 5348, Munich / Zurich, ISBN 978-3-492-25348-2 .

2009: The Phantásien-Lexikon , edited by Roman and Patrick Hocke, Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-522-20050-9 .

2014: The Neverending Story , anniversary edition, illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg, Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-522-20203-9 .

2017: The Neverending Story , e-book, illustrated by Claudia Seeger, Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-522-62112-0 .

2019: The neverending story: jewelery edition with color illustrations , illustrated by Sebastian Meschenmoser , Thienemann, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-522-20250-3 .

interpretation

When asked about an interpretation of the “Neverending Story”, Michael Ende gave no answer. Every interpretation is correct if it is good. There is only one statement from the author himself: “This is the story of a boy who loses his inner world, i.e. his mythical world, in this one night of crisis, a life crisis, it dissolves into nothing, and he has to jump into it We Europeans have to do this too. We have succeeded in dissolving all values, and now we have to jump in, and only by having the courage to jump there into this nothingness can we awaken our own innermost creative powers and a new fantasy, that is, a new world of values , build up.".

Michael Ende has been asked again and again what the message of his novel is. As a rule, his answer to this question was similar to that in this letter to a reader:

“But art and poetry don't explain the world, they represent it. You don't need anything that points beyond it. You are a target yourself. A good poem is not there to make the world better - it is a piece of the improved world itself, so it doesn't need a message. This staring out at the message (moral, religious, practical, social, etc.) is an unfortunate invention of literature professors and essayists who otherwise would not know what to write and gossip about. The plays of Shakespeare, the Odyssey, Arabian Nights, Don Quixote - the greatest works of literature have no message. They don't prove or disprove anything. They are something like a mountain or a sea or a deadly desert or an apple tree. "

- Michael Ende : Letter to a reader.

“You write because something occurs to you on the subject, and not because you feel the intention or the urge to teach the audience an important ideological lesson. But of course what comes to mind depends on the world and visual image that you have formed. But I've never managed to get everything that goes on in my head under one roof. I don't have a philosophical system that provides an answer to every question, no worldview that is ready - I'm always on the go. There are some constants that are in the center, so to speak, but towards the edges everything is open and vague. Actually, I've never written for any audience, it's all a conversation with God in which I don't ask him for anything (since I assume he knows what we need anyway, and if he doesn't give it to us, then for good reason) but to tell him what it is like to be an inadequate person among inadequate people. I think that might interest him as it is an experience he cannot have had. "

- Michael Ende : Typescript from the estate.

“The Neverending Story” is often viewed as an art fairy tale, but overall it is only based to a limited extent on the genre model, the folk tale. The fairy tale elements are often only imitated or simulated and have no solid foundation. In this way, the end replaces the mystery of the world, which was once contained in myth and found an aesthetic expression in fairy tales, with the mystery of the self. At the same time as the fairy-tale shell, the salary changed at Ende.

Similar turns have taken place in science fiction literature. They are to be seen in the context of a postmodern crisis of meaning. The world has become more explainable and controllable through the natural sciences, but it has by no means made more sense. The resulting search for meaning has brought about the subject of “inner space” in science fiction literature. At the end it leads to a mythologization of the ego.

Against this background, the fairy tale elements only have a serving function; From a poetic perspective, they are functionally subordinate to other, non-fairytale aspects. Nevertheless, they are eminently important for the representation of the plot and the formation of the intention and to a large extent responsible for the success of the book.

The Neverending Story is not an analytical or instructive book. Yet it contains a clear message. Michael Ende turns against materialism and the disdain for the imagination. He himself says:

"Throughout my life I have been looking for clues and thoughts that could lead us out of the world view of what can only be proven."

- Michael Ende : quoted from Peter Boccarius' Michael Ende biography, afterword.

Ende advocates a balance between the world of hard facts and the world of fantasy. It is about rediscovering the magic of existences, of existence par excellence in a world dominated by technology and having become intellectually poor, or, since all people had a childhood, to make the magical fertile for adult life, similar to the one in so-called " primitive peoples " is common.

Ende speaks of the human world becoming healthy; He is interested in an ideal world, which he constructs within the framework of the classic good-evil scheme, a world in which no child has to worry about numerous imponderables and insecurities. If the thinker of postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard, is right, people today live in a hermetic and almost indestructible simulation of the world, in which there is no longer any above or below, good and evil, but exploitation, oppression and diffraction of the individual. It is important to work on it, and if the matter seems hopeless: the main thing is not to be among the losers. From a child's perspective, this is extremely stressful. Children as well as indigenous peoples need the enchantment, the hope for change beyond calculating logic.

In his conversation with Erhard Eppler and Hanne Tächl about the social and cultural situation, Ende explains:

“On the outside we have everything, inside we are poor devils. We cannot see a future, we cannot find a utopia "

Modern people lack a positive image of the world in which they live: a utopia that they can counter to the desolation that results from the modern world conception. This leads to a "desperate thirst for the wonderful" and a "hunger for beauty" in children and adults alike.

The post-war years tried to "see everything under a socially critical, political, (...) enlightening image" and pulled people even more into "a maelstrom of negativity, anger, bitterness and disaffection". Ende defends itself against this exclusivity imposed in literature and art. According to him, the time has come "to give back to the world its sacred secret and to man his dignity":

"The artists, the poets and writers, will have an important part in this task, because their task is to give magic and mystery to life."

The writer's possibilities are to renew old values or to create new ones. Michael Ende also follows this principle and is looking for a utopia for society in order to renew its values. Like Thomas More 's utopia , the end of a land that is nowhere real: Here man finds the lost myths again. Ende moves in a poetic landscape according to the standards of the four cardinal points: beauty, the wonderful, the mysterious and the humor. However, the secrets of the world are only revealed "to those who are ready to be transformed by them". In order to be able to immerse themselves in his world, Michael Ende's readers, like the author himself, must "enjoy the free and unintentional play of the imagination". In his lecture in Japan, Ende explains how the free creative play of writing becomes an adventure in itself due to the unplanned approach. He reports on the creation of the Neverending Story:

"I literally fought for my life with this story."

- End, Michael : note box. Sketches and Notes , p. 188.

If the person has not become a “real adult”, that “disenchanted, banal, enlightened crippled being who exists in a disenchanted, banal, enlightened world of so-called facts”, then live in him the child, "which means our future until our last day of life". Ende dedicates his works to the “eternally childlike” aspect of every human being, which is why his works should not be classified as children's literature. The choice of the fairy tale novel was only made for artistic and poetic reasons:

"If you want to tell certain wonderful incidents, you have to describe the world in such a way that such incidents are possible and probable in it."

If he had become a painter, he would paint like Marc Chagall , claims Michael Ende in a television interview with Heide Adams. In Chagall's works of art he finds his view of things again: In their “way (...) they hit the heart-tone of the eternally childlike”, which lets us know “that there is everything, that it is even more real than all of them this worldly reality ”. Based on this knowledge, Michael Ende changed Friedrich Nietzsche's sentence (“There is a child hidden in every man who wants to play”) to his thesis: “There is a child hidden in every person who wants to play”.

Ende understands art as the highest form of play. For Michael Ende, poetry as well as the visual arts fulfill “primarily a therapeutic task”, because born out of the wholeness of the artist, they could give this wholeness back to people. In a sick society the poet takes on the job of a doctor who tries to heal, save and comfort people. But “if he is a good doctor”, says Ende, “he will not try to instruct or improve his patients”. Ende remains true to this principle. But his new myth is above all a renewal of the old. To do this, Ende uses a variety of literary references. He uses well-known motifs, makes use of numerous mythologies, the Greek, the Roman, the Christian.

The book is mainly read by adults who, after reading it, may decide to include their creative, associative, emotional half of the brain again.

The main message of the novel is that by dreaming and immersing a person in a fantasy world, ideas and thoughts arise that can be transferred into reality by opening the eyes to the "wonders and secrets of everyday life" . The project presented in The Neverending Story aims to convey the following:

Learning to see the “magical shape” of things and living beings and thus the new discovery and re-evaluation of impressions and experiences in everyday life.
(Fellow) people learn to love as the “true wish” behind all wishes.

Ende illuminates step by step the consequences of this trivial statement. He first makes it clear that an idea that is born out of the imagination is as such neither positive nor negative, neither good nor bad. It is only subjected to an evaluation by human moral concepts when it results in an action. But then the idea can be used for desirable as well as reprehensible purposes. Here the author particularly mentions the lie, which in his eyes represents a perversion of the imagination, which is used to manipulate others and thus to exercise power over them in an unfair way. The fantasy itself ultimately falls by the wayside through repeated lies. After he has worked out this basis, Ende deals with further aspects of the relationship between people and their creative power: flight from reality, exercise of power, responsibility (especially in the sense of ingerenz , standing up for the consequences of one's own actions), self-confidence and interpersonal relationships important topics of his story. Ende's assessment that the journey into the world of fantasy can only lead to a positive result if it is used to improve the real world runs like a red thread through the plot.

The author chooses the characteristics of his protagonist, Bastian Balthasar Bux, with care. As early as 1973, Michael Ende complained in a letter to his publisher about the “functionalization mania” of a soulless “phalanx of reconnaissance terrorists” and thus turned against a worldview based exclusively on rationality, which wants to forbid people from dreaming. Accordingly, Bastian Balthasar Bux is also a boy who cannot cope with life because most people's rational worldview, which is purely expedient, seems pointless to him. Like his father, he was never able to come to terms with his mother's death. Father and son only live next to each other, but no longer together. That is why Bastian takes refuge in books full of fantasy that create a world that seems more important to him than his real life.

The journey of the protagonist Bastian into the world of fantasy, into his own inner world, is thus to be understood as immersion in a forgotten reality, in a "lost world of values", as Michael Ende himself says, which has to be rediscovered and named in order to to regain consciousness. “Only the right name gives all beings and things their reality,” says the Childlike Empress, looking for a namesake herself. Ultimately, this is also to be understood as an ode to love (“water of life”), which has to be rediscovered again and again in order to grow. By giving free rein to his imagination, man sets out to search for himself, for his true self; the protagonist is given the task to recognize his true will and to act accordingly. For Bastian, the trip to Fantastica ultimately becomes a personal search for identity that forces him to face the problems that he has so successfully suppressed. Finally, Bastian succeeds in learning to love by drinking from the waters of life, and by bringing these waters to his father, he redeems him too: tears free him from the ice armor that held his soul captive.

The novel is an ode to the inspirational and constructive power of the imagination and its healing effect on reality. At the same time, he addresses the dangers associated with escaping reality into one's own fantasies.

Comparable works are Harun and the Sea of Stories , Inkheart , The Shadow of the Wind , The Last Unicorn , The City of Dreaming Books , The Golden Pot by ETA Hoffmann and Heinrich von Ofterdingen von Novalis . As far as it is a question of believing in yourself first in order to change the world for the better, the protagonist Bastian resembles the steam locomotive Rusty in the musical Starlight Express . The subject of being responsible for oneself and one's own actions is dealt with in a similar way in The Little Prince . In Charles Dickens' work The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain there is the moral that one needs memory in order to find oneself and to remain; this motif characterizes the entire second part of the book. There are also parallels to Ende's own book Momo .

criticism

Literary criticism in Germany during the Cold War took note of Michael Ende's ideas hesitantly and with great skepticism. During this time, literature had to be politically active and realistic, so there was no sympathy for traveling to Fantastica. After the end of the Nazi regime, there was fear in Germany that the catastrophe of the reign of terror might repeat itself. “In the face of a war-ready rocket arsenals, who could preach the departure into the realm of dreams?” One asked polemically. Politically committed representatives of the 1968 generation therefore blamed a lack of realism and escapist escape from the world.

Andreas von Prondczynsky saw The Neverending Story as a mixture of “Christological mysticism” and “social criticism oriented towards the romantic way of thinking”, caught “in the web of bourgeois morality and economic functional rationality”. Ende criticized the myth of reason as it underlies both technological rationality and an economized subjectivity. In contradiction to this, however, he pursues reason-oriented bourgeois virtues in diffuse “mysteries of the ancients”.

Hermann Bausinger interpreted the two books Michael Ende, "The Neverending Story" and " Momo ", as escapism , which is eagerly accepted by narcissistic young people who doubt the future and helps them to escape into non-commitment. The precise separation of good and bad in Ende's Fantastic would create a closed world in which nothing seems meaningless, everything seems meaningful and, far from realistic conflicts, invites us to identify with no consequences. In connection with Ende's works he spoke of “ placebo effects”. The readers saw their need for positive world designs satisfied in Ende's stories, so that they ascribed effects to them whose patterns were not even laid out in the text.

He and other critics viewed The Neverending Story as an invitation to flee from the world. Růžena Sedlářová contradicts this . The book makes it clear that the author does not want to place the imagination of the real world above, but rather to harmonize both, for example by Coreander about Bastian in Chapter XXVI. says: "There are people who can never come to Fantastica [...] and there are people who can, but they stay there forever. And then there are still some who go to Fantastica and come back again. Just like you. And they make both worlds healthy. ”Here you can see the doctrine of the harmony of feelings and reason, or fantasy and reality, or the unconscious and the conscious. Without knowledge of both levels it is not possible to reach wholeness. Bastian could have got to know his darker sides in this story and also overcome them and thereby become a better person.

Other literary critics accused the end of the apparent naivety of his message. In his novel Momo, for example, one would find an annoying “romanticization of poverty”. In addition, all critical findings ultimately led to the recommendation to repair the damage to civilization with self-discovery, self-knowledge and self-change as exemplary life patterns.

Awards

The novel was named "Book of the Month December" in 1979. Also in 1979 he received the Buxtehude bull ; 1980 the Silver Stylus of Rotterdam (alternative information: 1983), the Wilhelm Hauff Prize for the promotion of children's and youth literature, the Grand Prize of the German Academy for Children's and Youth Literature eV Volkach . and the ZDF Bookworms Prize Also in 1980 it was included in the selection list of the German Youth Book Prize ; In 1981 “The Neverending Story” was awarded the European Youth Book Prize of the University of Padua (alternative: 1980) and the International Janusz Korczak Prize for Literature ; 1982 with the Japanese Book Prize. In 1983 the book was named Children's Book of the Year in Spain. In 1988 the Polish version was included in the IBBY honorary list.

The neverending story was number one on the Spiegel bestseller list for 113 weeks and thus holds the record.

Adaptations

Movie and TV

The first part of the book (Atréjus Search) was implemented in 1984 by Wolfgang Petersen as a fantasy film of the same name . Actors were Barret Oliver (Bastian), Gerald McRaney (Bastian's father), Noah Hathaway (Atréju), Tami Stronach (Childlike Empress), Moses Gunn (Cairon), Silvia Seidel (Fee) and others. Heinz Reincke gave the lucky dragon Fuchur his voice. Klaus Doldinger composed the music for the German soundtrack. The title song Never Ending Story , composed by Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey , was a chart success for Limahl , the former singer of Kajagoogoo . It was only part of the soundtrack for the US version. The two versions had different soundtracks (the US version contained Doldinger's music as well as some electronic pieces by Giorgio Moroder), but after Limahl's success the film was also re-released in Germany with the US soundtrack.

The first film was followed by The Neverending Story II and III , which only have the title and a few characters in common with the original book:

In The Neverending Story II - In Search of Fantasies (1990, director: George Trumbull Miller ), fantasies are threatened by the “void”. The originator of this threat is the witch Xayíde. Bastian is portrayed here by Jonathan Brandis .

In The Neverending Story 3 - Salvation from Fantasies (1994, director: Peter MacDonald ), a gang of students, the “Nasties”, steals the book in Bastian's new school and threatens fantasies and the human world. In the third part, Jason James Richter as Bastian, Melody Kay as Bastian's stepsister Nicole and Jack Black as Slipp, leader of the Nasties, play with. The film takes place largely in the human world, u. a. is an American high school main setting. While the second film takes over some of the storylines of the book, the story of the third film has been completely reinvented and - apart from the characters - has nothing in common with the book.

In 1996 a 26-part German - French - Canadian cartoon version was produced. The content structure, however, had a different focus than the book.

In 2001 a 13-part Canadian television film adaptation was made, the original name of which was Tales from the Neverending Story (German title: The neverending story - The adventures go on ) and was broadcast on RTL II in 2004. There are only a few basic elements of the original story; many characters have been changed very much, sometimes very much. Atreyu actor Tyler Hynes was nominated for the Young Artist Award in the category Best Performance in a TV Drama Series - Leading Young Actor . The series' costumes won the Gemini Award .

In 2009, Leonardo DiCaprio announced his intention to remake the Neverending Story through his production company Appian Way Productions . These plans have not yet been implemented.

Notes :

The first and second film were partly shot in Bavaria Film in Munich, parts of the third film in Potsdam-Babelsberg . In the film park and in the Bavaria Film City there are some publicly available props of the film. In Babelsberg, among other things, the lucky dragon Fuchur can be seen, whereby Fuchur is a completely new design of the dragon.

In Bavaria Filmstadt you can see the Felsenbeißer, Morla and the version of Fuchur used in the first two films. In the case of Fuchur, it can even be ridden. With the help of blue screen technology , you can see yourself flying over the same landscape on a screen that Atreyu and Bastian also fly over in the film.

Originally, Atreyu was supposed to have olive-green skin in the film, as described in the book. After a few test shots with green make-up, however, this project was abandoned because it was not possible to achieve a credible shade.

Michael Ende wrote an additional scene especially for the film in which Atreyu meets a giant who is getting smaller and smaller due to nothingness. The sequence was shot, but it was cut from the film.

Michael Ende initially supported the film adaptation, but then increasingly rejected it and ultimately distanced himself sharply from it (see above chapter on genesis and publication history). He mentioned two examples as justification for his rejection of the film adaptation in 1990 in a 40-minute television interview with Joachim Fuchsberger on his ARD program “Heut 'Abend”.

Originally, Ygramul was supposed to appear in the film, a design was drafted, but finally a decision was made against Ygramul, because the insect creature would not have been credible to be realized with the technical means at the time.

In the former film park Warner Bros. Movie World (today: Movie Park Germany ) there was a water ride based on the Neverending Story. One entered a house with a library, the books of which were getting bigger and bigger. In a hall with huge books, the Childlike Empress pleaded in a film (actor unknown) that Fantasias should be saved. Through a door masked as a book page one got into a cave with boats and traveled with eight other people over a river that was also raging in the meantime (the empty fantasy) past the famous characters of the film. At the end you saw the ivory tower shine again at night in a large hall - the country was saved (and you yourself were wet). After all Warner Bros. usage rights had expired, the ride was redecorated in Mystery River during the winter break of 2004/2005 .

The Nothing is shown in the film as a kind of black hole that sucks everything into it in itself as it spreads insidiously in the book and dissolves fantasies piece by piece.

radio play

1980s

In 1980 Phonogram produced a three-hour radio play version (later marketed by Karussell ). Anke Beckert was responsible for production and direction . The haunting music was composed by Frank Duval . Harald Leipnitz acts as the narrator . Michael Ende himself reworked his book into a radio play manuscript. Therefore, the radio play comes closer to the original than the film adaptations, even if parts of the novel had to be omitted for the radio play implementation. Due to the medium compact cassette at that time, some passages had to be adapted in order not to exceed the time frame.

The radio play was released in three parts on a compact cassette each with a running time of approx. 55 minutes with the following subtitles:

The great search
The symbol of the childlike empress
The trip to the ivory tower

The radio play was later reissued in the Bertelsmann Club in a two-part licensed edition. All three parts were awarded a gold record in 1989.

There are two CD versions, one consisting of three CDs, the other consisting of two CDs. The 3-CD version corresponds exactly to the respective compact cassettes. The version with two CDs each contains the contents of around one and a half cassettes. In this version, part of the music and parts of the introductory narrative text from The Journey to the Ivory Tower have been cut out.

Here is a brief overview of the cuts. If possible, the respective chapter of the book is given. It only mentions major cuts that really change history.

The first shortening takes place after the end of Chapter IV. The characters of the two settlers Engywuck and Urgl have been combined to form a nameless "healer". The healer supplies Atreyu and Fuchur with the antidote to Ygramul's poison. Chapter VI has been completely deleted. Instead of going through the three magical gates, Atreyu goes through an ordinary rock gate and arrives directly at the Uyulála. When Atreyu arrives in Chapter IX in the haunted city, he discovers the half-starved werewolf Gmork, who was tied up by the sinister princess Gaya with a magical chain. In contrast to the original book, Gmork appears here for the first time in the radio play version. Also, one does not learn in the radio play that Gmork is an adversary of Atreyu and had the order to kill him. Because of this, Gaya chained him up. Chapters XVI up to and including XVIII have also been completely deleted. At the end of Chapter XV, Bastian comes to a clearing in the forest, where he meets Atreyu and Fuchur (straight out of Graógramán's cave, the “Temple of the Thousand Doors” is left out). The story continues with a fraction of Chapter XIX (the arrival of Bastian's "admirers" from all parts of Fantasy), Chapter XXI is omitted and transferred directly to Chapter XXIII. Chapter XXV is skipped and the story ends with Chapter XXVI.

The Bertelsmann Club's 2-MC edition has further cuts compared to the regular 3-MC edition. This mainly concerns sentences of the narrator that do not directly contribute to the plot but to the depth of the story (e.g. a description of the Grassy Sea and the Greenskins or the first followers of Bastian and the orchid forest). Much more important, however, is the cancellation of the ancient Morla without replacement; later in the radio play it is completely puzzling why Atreyu Ygramul describes that he wants to go to the Southern Oracle and how he knows that the Childlike Empress needs a new name. The dialogue with the wind giants in front of Atréju's fall was also cut; his arrival in Gelichterland is also somewhat shorter.

2010s

In December 2014, a new version of the radio play directed by Petra Feldhoff was published by WDR and was awarded the 2015 Audio Book Prize.

Audio book

In March 2008, Audio Verlag published The Neverending Story as a reading. This new version on nine CDs and with a running time of approx. 657 minutes will be read by Rufus Beck . Here, too, the book is not complete, but in contrast to the radio play, only individual sections and not entire scenes have been left out. In the end, however, it is particularly noticeable: Mr. Coreander says to Bastian "Let an old, experienced fantasy traveler tell you something, my boy!" However, it was not mentioned beforehand that Mr. Coreander was also in fantasies (Bastian's question regarding . a reunion with the Childlike Empress not addressed at all). In 2013 Hörbuch Hamburg published an unabridged reading with Gert Heidenreich as the speaker.

ballet

In 1999 the ballet The Neverending Story was premiered with music by Siegfried Matthus in Magdeburg .

Opera

The composer Siegfried Matthus had yet to Michael personally end the rights to a opera -making of the Neverending Story secured. The Matthus Opera premiered on April 10, 2004 at the same time in Trier and Weimar and in the 2004/2005 season it was also performed at the Linz State Theater .

theatre

For the Baumannshöhle in Rübeland in the Harz Mountains , the only underground theater in Germany, a stage version of the work was created as a play and was premiered on November 26, 2005. The production was taken over by Mario Jantosch, the director of the Harzer Bergtheater Thale , the role of Bastian was played by Kerstin Dathe. A version for the open-air stages was written in 2011 by Jens Lessing and Thorsten Heck, and its world premiere, directed by the authors, will take place on July 9, 2011 on the open-air stage in Korbach.

The Chemnitz Theaters will stage the work in the 2019/2020 season as part of the "Christmas Tales" series.

The Junge Theater Bonn has been playing an adaptation by Moritz Seibert and Timo Rüggeberg since 2017.

Legends of Fantastica

The first volumes of the series “Legenden von Phantásien” were created in the autumn of 2003 in the context of the authoring and publishing agency AVAinternational GmbH. In this, German authors deal with Michael Ende's Neverending Story . Ultimately, the books appeared as a Droemer-Knaur series. In the German version they are available in two different editions, a hardcover and a paperback series. Originally twelve volumes were planned, but the series was discontinued in 2004 after the sixth volume. The Legends of Fantasy have been published in Germany, Japan, Spain and Cyprus. So far there are no plans to publish the book series in English.

The first volume, written by Ralf Isau , is entitled The Secret Library of Thaddäus Tillmann Trutz . It is a prequel that shows the prehistory to the Neverending Story. It explains how Karl Konrad Koreander got to the antique shop and the book The Neverending Story . His own adventures in Fantastica are also described.

The other volumes are independent stories that take place in fantasies and in which many details known from Michael Ende's book are mentioned or even explained in more detail. Except for the first volume, the stories take place during or after the events depicted in the Neverending Story.

Tanja Kinkel : "The King of Fools", first published on September 1, 2003.
Ulrike Schweikert : "The Soul of the Night", first published on September 1, 2003.
Ralf Isau : "The secret library of Thaddäus Tillmann Trutz", first published on September 1, 2003.
Wolfram Fleischhauer : "The Angels' Conspiracy", first published on March 18, 2004.
Peter Freund : "The City of Forgotten Dreams", first published on March 18, 2004.
Peter Dempf : "The Lady of Words", first published on September 23, 2004.

Games

In 1985, the British game maker produced Ocean Software with The Neverending Story is a text adventure of all time popular 8-bit home computer systems.

In 1987 the board game The Neverending Story - The fantastic adventure game from Amigo was released .

In 1990 the German software house Linel Trading GmbH published The Neverending Story II as a platform action adventure for the C64, Amiga and Atari ST. In 1991 a version for MS-DOS appeared.

In 2002, the German studio Discreet Monsters released the PC game Auryn Quest and published it by the publisher dtp entertainment . In the jump 'n' run game, the player slips into the role of Atreyu, who has to find Auryn again. The amulet has been stolen, exposing fantasies to the destructive power of nothing. Large parts of the country have already been devastated or devoured by nothing. So that Fantasia does not go under, the Auryn must be brought back to the Childlike Empress.

Disney's Funny Paperback

In Disney's Funny Paperback No. 186 ( Count Frost and the Scepter of Time ), the story Adventure in Comic Land is reminiscent of Michael Ende's novel. In the story, Donald Duck is on the run from his creditors and is hiding in an attic with a book. The plot, which is much more streamlined than the original, is less based on the book than on the first film adaptation and culminates in the fact that Donald is drawn into the book, where some of his typical wishes are fulfilled: “a hammock, a few cool drinks and something Sweets ” and the “ desire to sleep deeply and soundly ” .

Donald takes on the role of Bastian, Mickey Mouse that of Atreyu, Dumbo plays Fuchur, Daisy Duck the childlike empress. Dagobert Duck's lucky coin symbolizes AURYN.

Translations

There are translations of the book in the following languages: Albanian, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Catalan, Korean, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian , Dutch, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Thai, Czech, Turkish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Vietnamese

Others

The front of the AURYN shows two snakes biting each other's tails. This mythological symbol has been common in many cultures since ancient times. More on this under " Ouroboros ".

The motto “Do what you want” (which is on the back of the AURYN) and its interpretation of recognizing and living your own “true will” comes from Aleister Crowley's Thelema teaching , which is the basis for formed the order Astrum Argenteum (A∴A∴). It can also be found in Augustine von Hippo (love (God) and do what you want) and in François Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel , from which it has also been adopted.

In the Alte Kaiser Stadt , a modification of the Infinite Monkey Theorem is used, in which the people of a city who do not find their way home from “Fantasia” create random letter combinations as a kind of occupational therapy, as the city guide - a monkey - explains; the point is that this is how all stories arise in infinite time. Ende expressly points out that The Neverending Story will also be among them. Curiosity: In the printed random text (which is said to have come about with dice) the line QWERTZUIOPÜ appears four times - the first line of the German QWERTZ keyboard .

The US band Listener makes several references to characters and events from the Neverending Story on their 2010 album Wooden Heart . In the song Falling in Love with Glaciers , for example, a free version of Morla's story is told, which also contains clear textual borrowings: “With every morning spent not caring if she cares or not sleeping in the melt and mud, waiting for the earth to rot burying herself alive [...] "

The metalcore band Atreyu named themselves after the character of the book.

In the original book, the first line is printed in mirror writing.

literature

Michael Ende: The neverending story . With letters and pictures from A to Z by Roswitha Quadflieg. Thienemann Verlag , Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-522-12800-1 . (For 111 weeks from 1981 to 1984 at number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list )
Michael Ende: Michael Ende's card box, sketches and notes . Stuttgart 1994.

Alwin Binder : Michael Ende's “Neverending Story” as a 'school of imagination'? In: Discussion German . 86, 1985. pp. 585-598.

Web links

The Neverending Story (1984) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
The Neverending Story (TV, 1996) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
The Neverending Story (TV, 2001) in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”, p. 129, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 26-opus-6049
↑ New classics of youth literature
↑ The Neverending Story at büchervielfalt.de ( Memento from October 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr, Michael Ende. Magical Worlds , published by the Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich, Henschel Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-583-1 .
↑ Michael Ende in an interview with Klaus Seehafer in the early 1980s.
↑ Report on the manuscript of the "Neverending Story". ( Memento from May 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
↑ The neverending story at www.phantastische-gesellschaft.de.

↑ http://parapluie.de/archiv/uebertragungen/phantasieliteratur/

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f The neverending story in Zauberspiegel magazine.

↑ The neverending story at www.phantastische-gesellschaft.de.

↑ HOCKE, Roman (1997): The search for the magic word. The life of Michael Ende. In: Hocke, Roman and Thomas Kraft: Michael Ende and his fantastic world. Stuttgart; Vienna; Bern: Weitbrecht-Verlag in K. Thienemanns Verlag, p. 62.

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story” , pp. 129/130, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 26-opus-6049

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story” , p. 130, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 26-opus-6049

↑ ^a ^b Commentary on the Neverending Story

↑ ^a ^b Torsten Mayer, Philosophical Texts. Comments on Zeitgeist and Culture: The good parallel world. After reading Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2

↑ Eppler, Erhard; Ende, Michael, Tächl, Hanne: Fantasy / Culture / Politics, minutes of a conversation , p. 22.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , pp. 58, 194.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , p. 184.

↑ ^a ^b Ende, Michael: Zettelkasten. Sketches and Notes , p. 196.

↑ Duden, The Foreign Dictionary, p. 838.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , p. 197.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , p. 58.

↑ ^a ^b Ende, Michael: Zettelkasten. Sketches and Notes , p. 187.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , p. 180.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Ende, Michael: Zettelkasten. Sketches and Notes , p. 181.

↑ See Adams, Heidi (text / author / interviewer): Visiting Michael Ende

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , pp. 190/191.

↑ Ende, Michael: Zettelebox. Sketches and Notes , p. 190.

↑ In detail analyzed and presented by Agathe Lattke, Wiederkehr der Romanik? An investigation. Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story .

↑ Cf. the central chapter XI. The childlike empress .

↑ ^a ^b Interpretation of the Neverending Story

↑ Chapter II. Every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, funny or serious, foolish or wise, all are considered equal by the Childlike Empress and are only there through their existence.

↑ This is mainly discussed in Chapter IX. executed, as the end of the encounter between Atreyu and Gmork, the relationship between the human world and fantasy is illuminated.

↑ Bastian does not wish to return to the human world because he seems to be so much more in Fantasia than there; in the end he even wants to crown himself childlike emperor, that is, to become the epitome of fantasy, Chapter XXII.

↑ Especially chapter XVII: Bastian creates a kite for hero Hynreck and begins to wonder whether his decision was correct; Chapter XXV: The carelessly expressed wish to turn the Acharai into silts turns against Bastian; Chapter XXVI .: The Waters of Life want to know whether Bastian has finished all the stories that he began.

↑ Bastian's entire development revolves around this motif.

↑ In particular Chapter XI. and XXVI.

↑ Michael Ende, quoted from Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr: Michael Ende. Magical Worlds , Henschel 2004, p. 109.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Roman and Patrick Hocke, Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. The Phantásien-Lexikon , Thienemann-Verlag, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-522-20050-9 .

↑ Typescript from Michael Ende's estate, referring to the film:

“Bastian is not, as the script describes him, just a boy who lacks a bit of self-confidence and who is therefore easy to intimidate. Bastian is a child who cannot find his way in a banal, cold, only rational world because he longs for poetry, for the mysterious, for the wonderful. The death of his mother and his father's being frozen in pain bring this helplessness towards life to a decisive crisis, precisely the reading of the Neverending Story - the question of the meaning of his life, his world. In this world everything seems meaningless. Everything has meaning in Fantasia. Without giving meaning to his life and the death of his mother, Bastian cannot exist. That is the reason why he comes into a sinking fantasy. The creeping nothingness that eats up fantasy is the banality, the insignificance of the world. "

Also:

“Bastian's father, who also has a very mundane job, suffers the same as Bastian. He too does not find the meaning, the meaning in his misfortune. He is completely locked in his pain and does not even notice that he is completely abandoning his child. He can no longer love. Until Bastian finally brings him the water of life and the redemption of tears. "

↑ Michael Ende, typescript from the estate.

↑ First mentioned in Chapter XIV .; Bastian only takes on this task from Chapter XXIII. really serious.

↑

“At least this shows a certain cunning and also developable bravery of the little Bastian, who by the way has nothing else to learn than everyone: namely to stand by himself and to come to terms with his being and also with his limits and weaknesses. "

- Wilfried Kuckartz : Michael Ende. “The neverending story.” An educational fairy tale , Die Blaue Eule Verlag, Essen 1984, ISBN 3-924368-13-9 , p. 40

Also p. 67:

"It is one of Bastian's path of initiation or the task of individuation, which can only end happily with his rebirth as a new person in a new life."

↑

"Everyone transforms into what they are looking for."

- Michael Ende : Michael Ende's Zettelkasten , Stuttgart 1994, p. 52

↑ Chapter XXV. and XXVI.

↑ Michael Ende, From the estate:

“The creative power in people increases, strengthens, enhances the being with which it comes into contact, regardless of the profession. It is the human ability to make the reality of beings perfect. That is why creative power is the highest of all human powers "

↑ Roman Hocke, Lexicon and Magical Worlds:

“The flight from the world of people into a better fantasy, which he was repeatedly accused of in the context of the escapism debate, was not the end's concern: Because the nothing that threatens fantasy, that banal, meaningless world in which fantasy is denied or is laughed at as a product by spinners and moon calves - this nothingness has its reflection in the equally senseless and banal world of the old emperor city, where those end who can no longer find their way out of fantasy. Nothingness and the old emperor city are their respective reflections. Because out of nowhere also grows the will to be creative. "

↑ The "father" of the modern fantasy genre, JRR Tolkien , had to deal with the accusation of escapism . Unlike Ende, who found the allegations inaccurate, Tolkien, who was intent on escapism with his work, replied to his critics: "Even prison guards can have something against escapism." - see http: //www.martin-ebers. de / dossiers / games / critics.html

↑ Author and work lexicon: Ende, Michael, p. 2. Digital Library Volume 9: Killy Literature Lexicon, p. 4744 (cf. Killy Vol. 3, p. 244)

↑ Růžena Sedlářová, Michael Ende and his fantastic stories Momo and The Neverending Story, Brno 2007, p. 38/39, PDF

^ Buxtehude bull.

↑ Michael Ende's biography. ( Memento from February 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Michael Ende at phantastik-couch.de.

↑ Children's and young people's book portal of the Goethe Institute.

^ Website of the Thienemann-Verlag about Michael Ende. ( Memento from February 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Personal data about Michael Ende. ( Memento of December 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Dieter E. Zimmer: The man who writes the myths of our time , in: "Zeitmagazin", p. 46.

↑ The Neverending Story (1984) in the Internet Movie Database (English)

↑ The Neverending Story in the Internet Movie Database (English)

^ The Neverending Story II - In Search of Fantasies ( Memento of October 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at Filmportal.de .