His popular success and his recourse to romantic themes in a technological age make him a cultural and literary phenomenon of considerable interest and critical debate. The question whether his books offer valid solutions to the problems of the twentieth century or merely provide an escapist, juvenile romanticism has led Amity Shlaes to give Ende the ambiguous title "Germany's Pied Piper of Romantic Fantasy."
Born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1929, Ende was the son of Luise Bartholomä Ende and the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. In 1931 the family moved to Munich, settling in 1935 in the artists' quarter of Schwabing, where Ende grew up surrounded by painters, sculptors, and literary figures. He was educated at the Maximilians-Gymnasium. While the creative atmosphere of Schwabing may have fed Ende's literary proclivities, and while his father's surrealism surely influenced the fantastic nature of his fiction, Ende's path to success was not a direct one. In fact, his search for his artistic identity would barely survive a personal and creative crisis in the early 1950s, when he would nearly give up on writing.
In 1943 the Munich schools were evacuated due to Allied bombing, and Ende was sent back to his birthplace.
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