Biedermeier

Biedermeier , name applied, at first in a joking spirit, to a period of European culture and a style of furniture, decoration, and art originating in Germany early in the 19th cent. and especially popular there and in Austria. It is believed to have been named for the worthy, bourgeois-minded "Papa Biedermeier," a humorous character featured in a series of verses by Ludwig Eichrodt, published in Fliegende Blätter. The Biedermeier period found expression in comfortable, homelike furnishings, simple in design and inexpensive in material, fitting the requirements of the German people in a time of little wealth following the Napoleonic Wars. Although the best Biedermeier furniture was produced between 1820 and 1830, the period is regarded as extending from 1815 to 1848.

Biedermeier designs were simplified forms of the French Empire and Directoire styles and of some 18th-century English styles, and were often elegant in their utilitarian simplicity. Later pieces, however, were frequently clumsy and tasteless. At their best, cabinets and other large pieces are handsome and severe in line and surface. Chairs and sofas show curved lines, frequently graceful, but sometimes exaggerated into swellings and contortions. Light-colored native fruitwoods were typically used, with contrasting bands of black lacquer often effectively substituted for the costly ebony of Empire pieces. Painted decorations reminiscent of peasant types were common. The furniture style regained popularity in the latter part of the 20th cent. and, in its stylized simplicity, has been cited as a forerunner of art deco , Bauhaus , and other modern styles of design. In painting, the preference during the Biedermeier period was for cheerful and detailed landscapes, historical subjects, and genre scenes. Artists of the era include Moritz von Schwind , Karl Spitzweg , Franz Krüger, and Ferdinand Waldmüller.

Bibliography: See studies by G. Hemmelheber (1976), W. Quoika-Stanka (1987), A. Wilkie (1987), and R. Pressler (1996).

Biedermeier. Term applied to an intimate, unassuming style characteristic of much German and Austrian art and interior decoration in the period from about 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic Wars) to 1848 (the Year of Revolutions). The name derives from an invented character, an unintentionally comic poet called Gottlieb Biedermaier [sic], who in the 1850s was a ‘contributor’ to the Munich journal Fliegende Blätter (Flying Leaves); bieder means plain or solid and Maier is a common surname, like Smith or Jones in English, so the character was meant to exemplify conventional bourgeois values. When the term was applied to the visual arts, it was originally used pejoratively, implying sentimentality and parochial dullness, but later it came to suggest more positive values, including comfort, good craftsmanship, and unostentatious charm. Biedermeier painting is concerned with the everyday world, in subjects such as portraiture and still-life, contrasting with the grand gestures of Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Spitzweg and Waldmüller are among the painters who best exemplify the style. The term is sometimes extended to cover the work of artists in other countries, for example Købke in Denmark.

Biedermeier. Central-European style of architecture, decorative arts, painting, and interior design from c.1815 to c.1860, especially in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich. The name derives from the fictional (1854) character, Wieland Gottlieb Biedermaier, a comfortable, middle-class figure of fun, Bieder meaning virtuous, and Maier being a common German surname, like Jones. The style was robustly comfortable, decently proportioned, essentially Neo-Classical, with Empire and Regency touches.

Bibliography

Chilvers, Osborne, & Farr (eds.) (1988);
Gentil (ed.) (1990)