Background
The Biedermeier period does not refer to the era of time 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. There were two driving forces for the development of the period. The first was the growing urbanization and industrialization leading to a new urban middle class, which created a new kind of audience for the arts. The second was the growing political oppression under Clemens Wenzel von Metternich following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The restrictive policies led artists and the society in general to concentrate on the domestic and (at least in public) the non-political. 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.
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