The Struwwelpeter boy disobeys his mother and is mutilated for it.

Evidence

The story of Struwwelpeter, which has usually been published in picture-panel for­ mat, begins with a mother telling her young son that she has to go out, that he must stay in the house while she is out, and warns him ominously that, if he disobeys her, she will take him to the tailor. The moment she leaves the house, Struwwelpeter bolts out the door. The mother returns, discovers that her son has ignored her wishes, and drags him to the tailor. The last picture panel in the story shows the boy crying, with fingers severed, dripping blood. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 670

Categorization

• XREF: Example of the ‘legitimate authority + illegal order’ structure Milgram exploited in his scripts, but placed inside children’s literature — connects to how obedience norms get culturally transmitted.
• DEFINE: Documents the specific text Milgram used as his pilot-testing inspiration for the obedience scenario’s affective framing.
• SEED: Angle: how children’s cautionary tales deploy threatened physical mutilation as a stand-in for the illegitimate-destructive order — the nursery as an obedience laboratory.