The topic of the following thesis is cruelty in fairy tales. For the work on hand the following fairy tales were used to examine the historical roots of the topic as well as pedagogical background: Red Riding Hood from the Brothers Grimm and Perrault as well as Han-sel and Gretel another tale of the Grimm Collection, the Tom Thumb-Version of Perrault and Ninillo und Nennella from Basile. Af-ter a short introduction to the meaning of fairy tales, the stories are retold and analyzed as well as compared to their most probable historical background and it shows that what seems to be cruel to-day had a very different meaning in the past.