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181 points

“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.

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49 points

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.

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42 points

“Stadtluft macht frei” but yes, everything else is spot on.

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25 points
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22 points

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.

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15 points

I agree with the sentiment, but Germans have a horrible track record on what makes you free.

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7 points

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

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2 points

The prefix “Mc” or “Mac” is Celtic anyway, not Germanic, so you failed in that sense too.

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