this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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"Stadtliche luft macht man frei" is an old German saying. City air makes you free. Life in a small town can be stifling. That close-knit family wants you to be just like them. God forbid you want to do or see anything new. The moving-to-a-big-city trope is as old as cinema, and has strong roots in reality.
In the middle-ages in at least in what is now Estonia, if you ecaped to the city and lived there for a year and a day you would be set free from your serfdom. "Linna õhk teeb vabaks" same frase was used for that.
"Stadtluft macht frei" but yes, everything else is spot on.
The background back then was, that citizens of towns weren't owned by anyone in the feudal system unlike people that lived outside the walls.
There were free peasants outside cities. The specific reason is a serf could run away to a city, and if he managed to stay long enough, he stopped being a serf and became a citizen.
I agree with the sentiment, but Germans have a horrible track record on what makes you free.
Came here to try to make this joke. You did better than I could have, I was trying to create a Germanic folk hero named Arvid McFry
The prefix "Mc" or "Mac" is Celtic anyway, not Germanic, so you failed in that sense too.
And Arvid is Scandinavian. That's why I didn't do it.