Biedermeier

Borrowed from German Biedermeier.

Biedermeier

1. (historical) A period in Central Europe between 1815 and 1848 during which the middle class grew in number and the arts appealed to common sensibilities and a sense of parochialism, starting with the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and ending with the onset of the Revolutions of 1848.
   • 1913, Stanley Shaw, William of Germany‎^[1]:

     When Frederick died, there followed that time of which Germans themselves are ashamed—the hole-and-corner time, the time when the parochial spirit was abroad and no German burgher saw beyond the village church and the village pump; the Biedermeier time (that comic figure of the German Punch), the time of genuine German philistinism, when the people were lapped in an idyllic repose and were content, as many are to-day, with the smallest and simplest pleasures.

The period is named after the fictional poet Gottlieb Biedermaier, a pseudonym used by Adolf Kussmaul and Ludwig Eichrodt in poems they published in the Munich satirical weekly Fliegende Blätter in 1850. The particular choice of name is a reference to Biedermann and bieder (“simple-minded”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbiːdɐˌmaɪ̯ɐ/

• Audio:

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das Biedermeier n (proper noun, strong, usually definite, definite genitive des Biedermeiers)

1. (historical) Biedermeier

• bieder

Biedermeier m or f (proper noun, surname, masculine genitive Biedermeiers or (with an article) Biedermeier, feminine genitive Biedermeier, plural Biedermeiers or Biedermeier)

1. a surname

• Biedermeier on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de
• “Biedermeier” in Duden online
• “Biedermeier” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache