Biedermeier

style period from about 1815-1850, especially in furniture art

After the Gedichte des schwäbischen Schullehrers Gottlieb Biedermaier und seines Freundes Horatius Treuherz by Ludwig Eichrodt and Adolf Kussmaul.

They were published in 1853 in the Fliegende Blätter to ridicule the poems of the good schoolmaster Samuel Friedrich Sauter (1766-1846) to the point of kitsch.

Bieder means 'well-behaved, respectable', and Biedermeier came to mean 'mean-spirited, self-satisfied middle-class man'. The furniture style is characterized by comfort and homely solidity.

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