Editing Michael Ende (section)

===Early career===
During his time in Stuttgart, Ende first encountered [[Expressionism|Expressionist]] and [[Dada]]ist writing and began schooling himself in literature. He studied [[Theodor Däubler]], [[Yvan Goll]], [[Else Lasker-Schüler]] and [[Alfred Mombert]], but his real love was the poetry of [[Rainer Maria Rilke]], [[Stefan George]] and [[Georg Trakl]]. He also made his first attempts at acting, performing with friends in Stuttgart's America House. He was involved in productions of [[Chekhov]]'s one-act comedy "The Bear", in which he played the principal role, and in the German premiere of [[Jean Cocteau]]'s ''[[Orpheus (film)|Orpheus]]''. Ende's first play "Denn die Stunde drängt (As Time is Running Out)" dates to this period. It was dedicated to [[Hiroshima]], and was never performed.

Ende decided that he wanted to be a playwright, but financial considerations ruled out a university degree, so in 1948 he auditioned for the [[Otto Falckenberg School of the Performing Arts]] in Munich and was granted a two-year scholarship (Haase).
On leaving drama school, his first job as an actor took him to a provincial theatre company in Schleswig-Holstein. The troupe travelled from town to town by bus, usually performing on makeshift stages, surrounded by beer, smoke and the clatter of skittles from nearby bowling alleys. The acting was a disappointment, he usually had to play old men and malicious schemers, and had barely enough time to memorize his lines. Despite the frustrations and disappointments of his early acting career, Ende came to value his time in the provinces as a valuable learning experience that endowed him with a practical, down-to-earth approach to his work: "It was a good experience, a healthy experience. Anyone interested in writing should be made to do that sort of thing. It doesn't have to be restricted to acting. It could be any kind of practical activity like cabinet making—learning how to construct a cabinet in which the doors fit properly." In Ende's view, practical training had the potential to be more useful than a literary degree.

Thanks to the numerous contacts of his girlfriend [[Ingeborg Hoffmann]], Michael Ende was introduced to a variety of cabaret groups. In 1955, {{Interlanguage link multi|Therese Angeloff|de}}, head of {{Interlanguage link multi|Die kleinen Fische|de}} (the 'Little Fish' cabaret), commissioned Ende to write a piece in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of [[Friedrich Schiller]]'s death. Ende produced a sketch in which a statue of Schiller was interviewed about newsworthy issues, and replied with quotes from Schiller's work. "There was rapturous applause, and commissions arrived from other cabarets too." Michael Ende began to compose sketches, chansons and monologues. He also worked as a film critic during the 1950s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.inhaltsangabe.de/autoren/ende/|title=Michael Ende • Biografie und Werke|website=www.inhaltsangabe.de}}</ref>