Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Pedagogy - General, grade: 1,9, University of Cooperative Education Breitenbrunn, language: English, abstract: In this day and age of mass media, the Internet and constant progress, it is hard to believe that there are stories that have existed for centuries and yet are still widely current. The stories of brave princes, poor or sad girls, good fairies, evil witches and many other magical creatures never seem to fade from the memory of adults and also inspire children again and again. Due to this great popularity of fairy tales I would like to present in this work on the one hand the reasons for it and on the other hand above all on the effect, which fairy tales have on children. In this consideration I refer both educational and psychological aspects, which I would like to explain also on the basis of some well-known fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. With this representation I will refer, apart from other texts, above all to the book "Kinder brauchen Märchen" by Bruno Bettelheim.