Biedermeier

Biedermeier refers to work in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in the period between the years 1815, the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848, the year of the European revolutions and contrasts with the Romantic era which preceded it.

Literature and Music

The term Biedermeier comes from the pseudonym Gottlieb Biedermaier, taken by Joseph Victor von Scheffel in 1848 from the poems Biedermanns Abendgemütlichkeit (Biedermann's Evening Cosiness) and Bummelmeiers Klage (Bummelmeier's Complaint). Later it was used by the country doctor Adolf Kussmaul and the jurist Ludwig Eichrodt in poems, printed in the Munich Fliegenden Blättern (Flying Leaves), parodying the poems of the Biedermeier era as depoliticized and petit-bourgeois.

Related Topics:
Joseph Victor von Scheffel - Adolf Kussmaul - Ludwig Eichrodt - Munich - Fliegenden Blättern - Petit-bourgeois

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Typical Biedermeier poets are Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Eduard Mörike and Wilhelm Müller, the last two of which have well-known musical settings by Hugo Wolf and Franz Schubert respectively.

Related Topics:
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff - Eduard Mörike - Wilhelm Müller - Hugo Wolf - Franz Schubert

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Biedermeier can be identified with two trends in early nineteenth-century German history.

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The first trend is growing urbanization and industrialization leading to a new urban middle class. The early Lieder of Schubert, which were performable at the piano without substantial musical training, serve as examples. Further, Biedermeier writers were mainly middle-class, as opposed to the Romantics, who were mainly drawn from the nobility.

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The second trend is the growing political oppression following the end of the Napoleonic Wars prompting people to concentrate on the domestic and the non-political.

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