The word 'Biedermeier' got mentioned today in the German news. It's a term that I hadn't read across before.....so I pulled out the research.
'Biedermeier' was invented for a particular era of Europe....between 1815 and 1850. Oddly enough, it came to be identified in two ways.
The first was a design, 'look', taste, musical effort, or fashion. It was a doorway or path to advancing changes. In simple terms, things were changing or evolving.
The second was a characterization that you'd use for a non-progressive type guy who was middle-class, happy, fairly content, but awful prone to frustrations when public events, economic conditions, or cultural things were happening or evolving without their input or support.
The word got around to being used a fair amount by German journalists in the second half of the century because of continual German government pressure/censorship, and usually signified a fairly negative view of government directed directions or behavior.
Are we living (in Germany) in a Biedermeier-era today? Well, this gets to being an interesting topic.
If you sat in a working-class pub and asked an average German, they'd say that a lot of thing frustrate them....from politics, to the economy....from crime, to immigration.....from youth, to pensions. They can generally tell you that things are crapped out, but the resolution or repair? That's not as simple to lay out.
Are we living (in Germany) in a Biedermeier-era because of government censorship? No. In fact, most might suggest that the public TV devices are helping to motivate and increase Biedermeier feelings.
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