“Momo”

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Momo is an orphan girl who lives in the city’s amphitheater – she is never alone, she has many friends. Everyone comes to her and seeks her advice, even if Momo can’t give great advice. But there is one thing she can give, time. Time to listen – and that’s something very few can do.

But one day, the good time with her friends ends because they stop visiting. They don’t have time anymore, at least that’s what the Gray Gentlemen told them.

“Momo” is magical from the first page. The pictorial, fairytale-like writing style of Michael Ende simply has a total pull effect and I have been thrilled with every character and every page and am totally sad that this reading festival is already over. The book definitely deserved the time of a reread.

With “Momo” Michael Ende has created a unique character that takes the readers’ hearts by storm. She and her friends get caught up in the dark plot of the mysterious Gray Lords. They are mean time-thieves who steal people’s lives with all kinds of devious tricks. In the end, it’s up to Momo to save her friends and the whole town from disaster. But she’s not alone. She is supported by Master Hora and a Tortoise Cassiopeia, who can see exactly half an hour into the future.

A timeless fairy tale about friendship and the courage of a girl who, against all odds, stands up for her friends and does everything she can to save them. Imaginative, captivating, endearing and an absolute reading recommendation from me for you.

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I met Michael Ende on a plane in the 80s, ten years after he had written “The Neverending Story” and “Momo”. He flew from London to Tokio, Japan to meet up with his friend and translator Mariko Sato, who later became his wife. I sat beside Michael Ende in first class, after the airline had bumped up my ticket, because I had just spent 24-hrs in a very small airport in Luxembourg, and my original flight had long been gone when I finally arrived at the London airport.

Michael Ende was easy to talk to and I listened.

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My readers shouldn’t be ashamed of having laughed and cried during the game I suggested to them; perhaps it even shook them up, but they’ll emerge—even if it only lasts a few hours—with a freshly ironed soul.

He respected my work as a translator as much as I respected his work as an author. He gave me a new perspective and a better understanding of the importance to ‘hear’ an authors soul and listen to a books heartbeat. It’s not just about the story and the words, it’s about the blood and tears that flow in it. To not lose the style of the author when you translate – that’s quite a responsibility.

Momo is a little girl with a tousled head of curly hair. She lives in an old amphitheater on the outskirts of an Italian-looking city and although she is poor in money, she is rich at heart. Her special gift is that she is a very good listener. So well, in fact, that creativity and imagination begin to grow in those she listens to. One of the core themes to which Michael Ende has devoted himself again and again, fantasy as a theme in life.

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The subtitle of Momo is “The Strange Story of the Time Thieves and the Child Who Brought Back Stolen Time to the People” because the agents of the time savings bank break into the world. You don’t have to be a scientist to discover the current monetary system and the capitalist world of work associated with it. Adults spend most of their lives working. And the money earned is then used to buy unnecessary junk to compensate for the emptiness created by the work.

I can’t help but think about all our smart phones today – the time thieves in today’s world. Originally they promised us to save us time, to connect us, while in reality they isolate us more and more. Hours after hours spent on phones that operate like mini computers. The Time Thieves of the 21st. Century?

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One of the gray gentlemen of the savings bank offers Momo a doll to play with instead of confusing other people with her imagination and creativity. The doll has countless coats, pajamas, dresses, swimsuits, sports dresses, evening dresses and still more to wear.

“So,” he says, smiling thinly, “You can play with it for a while, can’t you, little one? But it also gets boring after a few days, do you think? Well, then you must have more things for your doll.”

Michael Ende gets to the heart of consumer terror. Children no longer use their own thoughts, their own imagination to play, but only the toys they have bought. Creativity withers away and so does the world.

“Children are the human material of the future. The future will be a time of jet machines and electron brains. An army of specialists and skilled workers will be necessary to operate all these machines. But instead of preparing our children for tomorrow’s world, we still allow many of them to waste years of their precious time playing useless games. It is a disgrace to our civilization and a crime against future humanity!” (Written in the 70’s)

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The only thing that often counts is the benefit and the usability. Work as the meaning of life. The fact that this was in no way exaggerated, but rather far-sighted, is shown in Kindergartens in which Mandarin or English are already spoken, so that the pupils have an advantage over other children in terms of utilization. I started learned French in Kindergarten in Austria in the 60’s. Today, childhood is no longer understood as a period of free personality development, but as a period of training in order to earn more and more later on, as if money or work were the meaning and purpose of life. Michael Ende’s “Momo” is ethical entertainment fiction-wrapped in a modern fairy tale. Here, values are conveyed in passing. Of course, this is only for do-gooders and those who want to become one, regardless of how old they are.

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Michael Ende didn’t like the raised index finger and as in his other books, he again manages to convey a message that does not come along with a moral sledgehammer, but that creeps secretly into the emotional world in empathy and identification with Momo and the other children and develops all the more effectively. I am inclined to write that there is no such thing today. Michael Ende was an exceptional artist who left behind a wide body of work and whose best-known writings are children and youth books that still have the potential to reach and change both, small and big hearts. Especially in today’s world, when anger and hatred are on the rise again and reaching broad sections of society, it seems all the more important that Michael Ende’s works continue to find their way into children’s rooms.

In our modern world there is essentially one primary mode of dealing with time, time is seen as something to be saved and maximized. This is misguiding, and Momo elegantly tackles this fundamental error, in the way that only fiction can. Remember, it was written in the 70’s.

What the story of “Momo” shows, is how to move from wanting to somehow save time and maximize it for some hypothetical future benefit to instead learn how to cherish time for the gift that it really is -and it does it in a way that a bright ten-year-old can understand.

But this in no childish matter. Learning to cherish time is an individual mission and a project that will take us a whole lifetime to truly master.

“Momo” one of my all-time favorites.

The movie isn’t bad either. 🙂