During the composition of the album Mutter, Till first choosed "Sandmann" as the title of the song that was finally released under the name "Mein Herz brennt" in 2001. In this text, Till offers a personal version of the legendary Sandman that we all know. The text of the demo (played live once at the Knaack Klub in 2000, before the album release) tells the story of a man who kills the sandman and stole his scalp to fool children. Till's final text is more elusive and takes root in the classic German literature, inspired by the version of the Sandman given by Ernst T. A. Hoffmann, a romantic writer and composer of the early nineteenth century, in his novel "Der Sandmann".



The main character of this novel, Nathaniel, was marked in his childhood by the lawyer Coppelius that he identifies as the Sandman and the murderer of his father. Therefore, Hoffmann modifies the character of the Sandman, who terrorizes the children rather than just make them fall asleep. This inversion gave Till the idea of writing a text where a monster visits the children about to fall asleep, in order to steal their hot tears, and then inject them into his veins.



The comparison does not end there. If Till voluntarily occults a big part of Hoffmann's story, both texts have lexical fields and topics in common. First, the eyes, as Nathanael thinks that Coppelius wants to steal his own. The heart too: Nathanael falls in love with Olympia, a girl who lives across the street, and feels the need to "scratch his chest" in order to defend her. The gesture is the same in Mein Herz brennt, where the monster rip off his heart from his chest. Finally when Olympia (actually an automaton) is dismembered by its creators, the heart of Nathanael literally burns, and that lead him to madness and death. It reminds us the chorus and title of the song, "Mein Herz brennt" (My heart burns).



The evil beings also appear in both texts, wether they are Coppelius' owls or "schwarze Feen". Coppelius' shenanigans, presented as a demon, are often described as "infernal" by Nathanael. Moreover, when Olympia sings, Nathanael associates her with "ghosts". These "ghosts" resemble those of Mein Herz brennt, which interfere in children's dreams, like Olympia in the spirit of Nathanael.



Till gives in Mein Herz brennt a very personal vision of the Sandman, which is the narrator of the text, largely inspired by Hoffmann. Till was also inspired by other elements of the German culture, such as "Das Sandmännchen" (The Little Sandman), a 1950s German TV show for children. It systematically began with the sentence "Nun, liebe Kinder, fein Gebt Acht. Ich habe euch etwas mitgebracht", an expression very close to the chorus of Mein Herz brennt.

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