The Biedermeier period was an era in Central European art and culture between 1815 and 1848 during which the middle classes grew in number and artists began producing works appealing to their sensibilities.

"Biedermeier" derives from the fictional mediocre poet Gottlieb Biedermaier, [sic] who featured in the Munich magazine Fliegende Blätter (Flying Leaves).

[1] It is used mostly to denote the unchallenging artistic styles that flourished in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design.

The Biedermeier period does not refer to the era as a whole, but to a particular mood and set of trends that grew out of the unique underpinnings of the time in Central Europe.

Writers, painters, and musicians began to stay in safer territory, and the emphasis on home life for the growing middle class meant a blossoming of furniture design and interior decorating.

[4] The term Biedermeier appeared first in literary circles in the form of a pseudonym, Gottlieb Biedermaier, used by the country doctor Adolf Kussmaul and lawyer Ludwig Eichrodt in poems that the duo had published in the Munich satirical weekly Fliegende Blätter in 1850.

The verses parodied the people of the era, namely Samuel Friedrich Sauter, a primary teacher and sort of amateurish poet, as depoliticized and petit-bourgeois.

[citation needed] Due to the strict control of publication and official censorship, Biedermeier writers primarily concerned themselves with non-political subjects, like historical fiction and country life.

Adalbert Stifter was a novelist and short story writer whose work also reflected the concerns of the Biedermeier movement, particularly with his novel Der Nachsommer.

Original early 19th century Biedermeier furniture was manufactured to be publicly displayed, with less concern for convenience and private enjoyment.

Social forces originating in France would change the artisan-patron system that achieved this period of design, first in the German states, and then into Scandinavia.

Biedermeier furniture used locally available materials such as cherry, ash, and oak woods rather than the expensive timbers such as fully imported mahogany.

Reflecting the moderately conservative and generally apolitical ethos of the movement and its audience, Biedermeier painting actively shunned the radical commentary used in other circles, though later works like The Bookworm (c. 1850) left space for some lighthearted satire.

[citation needed] The biggest collection of Viennese Biedermeier paintings in the world is currently hosted by the Belvedere Palace Museum in Vienna.

The so called Schubertiad were people who gathered around the composer Franz Schubert to provide a forum or meeting place for political secret societies.

The most famous writers of the period were Božena Němcová, Karel Hynek Mácha, František Ladislav Čelakovský, Václav Kliment Klicpera, and Josef Kajetán Tyl.