The Sandman is a fictional character, a popular figure in Western folklore that brings good sleep and dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of children.

Traditionally he is a character in many children’s stories, invoked to help (or lull) children to sleep. He is said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of the child at night to bring on dreams and sleep. The grit or ‘sleep’ (rheum) in one’s eyes upon waking is supposed to be the result of the Sandman’s work the previous evening.

Ole-Lukøie, one of Hans Christian Andersen’s more obscure folk tales, told of the different dreams the Sandman gave to a young boy in a week.

E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote an inverse depiction of the lovable character in a story called Der Sandmann, which 

   Sandman puppet

showed how sinister such a character could be made. According to the protagonist’s nurse, he threw sand in the eyes of children who wouldn’t sleep, with the result of those eyes falling out and being collected by the Sandman, who then takes the eyes to his iron nest on the moon, and uses them to feed his children. The protagonist of the story grows to associate this nightmarish creature with the genuinely sinister figure of his father’s associate Coppelius.

Sandmännchen is a German TV series about the Sandman. Before reunification in 1991 there were two versions - one West German and one East German. The East German version is the most well known and popular, and it was also the only one to be continued after the German reunification. After the fall of communism, the GDR version of Sandmännchen has been seen as program that was used for propaganda purposes, depicting an idealized version of communist society and technological progress in the GDR and other communist countries. When the first GDR citizen (Sigmund Jähn) went to space in 1978 he brought a Sandman doll and held a televised speech to the children of the GDR. The USSR cosmonauts had brought a female doll named Mascha. This was depicted in the movie Good Bye Lenin!, where the main character is also a fan.