The little man with the goatee and pointed cap is Germany's longest-serving character on children's television. The favorite of millions of children "born" in the GDR is still active, although his original employer no longer exists. He survived the fall of the Berlin Wall and outlived his colleague from the West by decades. He has sent generations of children to bed with his dream sand.
Now the 24-centimetre-tall TV star is reaching the traditional retirement age - without retiring. The Sandman turns 65 today.
It all began on November 22, 1959 at 6.55 pm in the television studios in Berlin-Adlershof. Ten years after the founding of the GDR, the Sandman appeared on television there for the first time. Still in black and white. The premiere was a great success from the point of view of the socialist state: there was also a West German Sandman, but he only appeared for the first time eight days later.
The East German television producers had caught wind of the project in the West and wanted to be quicker. And GDR children immediately took the character to their hearts: because the Sandman himself was tired at the end of the first broadcast and fell asleep in the snow, many boys and girls wrote to him offering their own beds.
