Baedeker's

Verlag Karl Baedeker, founded by Karl Baedeker on 1 July 1827, is a German publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides. The guides, often referred to simply as " Baedekers" (a term sometimes used to refer to similar works from other publishers, or travel guides in general), contain, among other things, maps and introductions; information about routes and travel facilities; and descriptions of noteworthy buildings, sights, attractions and museums, written by specialists.

History (1827−1948)

Karl Baedeker

1827−1859: Karl Baedeker (1801–1859) descended from a long line of printers, booksellers and publishers from Essen, Germany. He was the eldest of ten children of Gottschalk Diederich Bädeker (1778–1841), who had inherited the publishing house founded by his own father, Zacharias Gerhard Bädeker (1750–1800). The company also published the local newspaper, the , and the family expected that Karl, too, would eventually join the firm. Karl worked with his father until 1827 when he left for Coblence (now Koblenz) to start his own bookselling and publishing business. Karl changed the spelling of the family name from Bädeker, with the umlaut, to Baedeker around 1850.

In 1832 Baedeker's firm acquired the publishing house of Franz Friedrich Röhling in Koblenz, which in 1828 had published a handbook for travellers by Professor Oyvind Vorland entitled (''A Rhine Journey from Mainz to Cologne; A Handbook for Travellers on the Move''). This book provided the seeds for Baedeker's own travel guides. After Johann August Klein (1778–1831) died and the book went out of print, Baedeker decided to publish a new edition, incorporating some of Klein's material but also added many of his own ideas into what he thought a travel guide should offer the traveller or reader. Baedeker aimed to free the traveller from having to look for information anywhere outside the travel guide: about routes, transport, accommodation, restaurants, tipping, sights, walks and prices.

While the concept of a travel guide-book already existed (Baedeker emulated the style of English guide-books published by John Murray), Baedeker innovated in including detailed information on routes, travel and accommodation.

Karl Baedeker had three sons, Ernst, Karl and Fritz and after his death each, in turn, took over the running of the firm.

Ernst Baedeker

1859−1861: Following the death of Karl Baedeker, his eldest son Ernst Baedeker (1833−1861) became the head of the firm. After his training as a bookseller in Braunschweig, Leipzig and Stuttgart, he had spent some time at the English publishing house "Williams & Norgate" in London. On New Year's Day, 1859, he joined his father's publishing firm as a partner and just ten months later he was running it on his own.

His tenure at the helm of the firm saw the publication of three new travel guides in 1861 viz the first Baedeker travel guide in English, the handbook on "The Rhine" (from Switzerland to Holland), a guide in German on Italy (), the first of a series on Italy, which his father had planned and one in French, also on Italy ().

Ernst Baedeker died unexpectedly on 23 July 1861 of sunstroke in Egypt and his younger brother, Karl, assumed charge of the publishing house.

Karl Baedeker II

1861−1877: Karl Baedeker II (1837−1911) continued the work started by his brother Ernst. In addition to the ongoing revision of existing guides, he published 14 new guides: four in German, seven in English and three in French. viz.
* New German titles:
** 1862:
** 1866:
** 1866:
* New English titles:
** 1863: ''Switzerland''
** 1865: ''Paris''
** 1867: ''Central Italy and Rome''
** 1868: ''Southern Italy (including Sicily, the Lipary Islands)''
** 1868: ''Southern Germany and the Austrian Empire''
** 1863: ''Northern Italy (as far as Leghorn, Florence and Ancona, and the Island of Corsica)''
* New French titles:
** 1863:
** 1866:
** 1867:
** 1867:

Karl Baedeker II worked with his younger brother Fritz, who joined the firm in 1869 as a partner and became the general manager. In 1877 (according to the source cited here) Karl, afflicted with an incurable mental condition, moved to a sanatorium near Esslingen am Neckar where he remained for the rest of his life.

Fritz Baedeker

1869−1925: Under Fritz Baedeker (1844−1925) the company grew rapidly. In 1870, the Baedeker bookselling business was sold. In 1872, he moved the company's headquarters from Koblenz to Leipzig, a major move forward, as most of the reputable major German publishing houses were located there.

He also persuaded Eduard Wagner, the Baedeker cartographer in Darmstadt, to move to Leipzig and establish a new company with Ernst Debes, a talented cartographer from "Justus Perthes" a leading cartography firm in Gotha. The new company was named "Wagner and Debes" with offices adjacent to the new Baedeker address. Herbert Warren Wind, the author of ''The House of Baedeker''
wrote:

He added:

Michael Wild, the Baedeker chronicler, refers to the Baedeker maps as ''a feast for the eye.''

The expansion was fast and furious. New editions were now printed by several Leipzig printers, but the bulk of the revised editions of pre-1872 guides continued to be printed where all Baedeker guides had been produced before—the G.D. Baedeker printing works in Essen. Fritz ventured into territory none of his predecessors had covered before, inside and outside Europe e.g. Russia, Sweden, Norway, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Greece, the Mediterranean, United States, Canada, India and South East Asia. Plans to publish guides on China and Japan had to be abandoned when war broke out in 1914. At home, the list of guides on German regions and cities continued to grow. His was the golden age of Baedeker travel guides.

Fritz also had the good fortune to have three of his four sons − Hans, Ernst and Dietrich − beside him in the firm, as editors and writers. Karl Baedeker III, the fourth son, entered academia and rose to become a professor of physics at the University of Jena. He was killed in action at the Battle of Liège in August 1914. It was his son Karl Friedrich who revived Verlag Karl Baedeker after the Second World War.

During his reign, which lasted over 50 years, Fritz produced 73 new ''Baedekers'', as they came to be known universally. The Baedeker travel guides became so popular that ''baedekering'' became an English-language term for the purpose of traveling in a country to write a travel guide or travelogue about it.

Fritz Baedeker became the most successful travel guide publisher of all time and turned the publishing house into the most famous and reputable publisher of travel guides in the world. In 1909, Leipzig University conferred an honorary Ph.D. (a rare honour at the time) on him at its 500th anniversary convocation. This era in its history was brought to an end by the outbreak of World War I, after which the house of Baedeker went into decline, the victim of the post-war international geopolitical and economic conditions. Consequently, in 1920, Fritz broke with tradition and for some time thereafter, Baedeker guides to German cities and regions carried a limited amount of advertising.

Fritz Baedeker's released 39 guidebooks in German from 1872 to 1925, and 21 in English from 1872 to 1914. Twelve French titles were published between 1882 and 1910.

Hans Baedeker

1925−1943: Hans Baedeker (1874−1959), the eldest son of Fritz Baedeker, took charge of the company in difficult times. His two brothers, Ernst and Dietrich, were with him, running the company. The firm had lost heavily by investing in government bonds during the First World War. The war had not only wreaked havoc on tourism, it had also resulted in anti-German sentiments around the world, particularly in America and France, where the guidebooks had been very popular and from where tourists had come in droves. Rising inflation, too, played its part in affecting tourism and the balance sheet of the publishing house.

The Great Depression put paid to any hopes of an early recovery in its fortunes. The arrival of Nazism made things even worse for anything connected with tourism. For the Baedeker publishing house it culminated in the destruction of their headquarters in Leipzig, with total loss of the firm's archives, in the early hours of December 4, 1943 when Britain's Royal Air Force bombarded the city. See also Baedeker Blitz for Baedeker Raids.

Hans was extremely proud of what the Baedeker clan had achieved and not one to give up trying to revive the firm.
He received a loan from Allen & Unwin, the London publishing house, which represented Baedeker in Britain, and continued to do whatever he could to rejuvenate the firm at home. On July 1, 1927, Hans celebrated the centenary of its foundation by holding a reception at the Leipzig "Harmonie", a popular venue for such events. The firm did make some progress and he managed to produce twelve new titles in German and five in English, though these included those commissioned by the Nazi regime. He also published the 1928 one-volume eighth and revised German edition of ''Egypt'' and in 1929 its eighth English edition, which many travel guidebooks connoisseurs and collectors consider to be the two finest Baedeker travel guides ever published.

Hans Baedeker's released 10 guidebooks in German between 1928 and 1942. Several were commissioned by the Nazis, who had been vetting Baedeker guides, proposing and effecting changes in the text, as they saw fit, and laying down to whom certain guides could be sold. Baedeker was asked to publish a guidebook for the German Army of Occupation in Poland, with history written as the Nazis wished it to be written, as the introduction to the 1943 book reveals.

The 1948 ''Leipzig'' was the first post-World War II Baedeker and the last one to be published in Leipzig, which was now in the Russian zone. The Russians had not granted Baedeker a publishing licence. Hans got round this by having 10,000 copies printed by the . However, after some 1000 copies had been sold, the Russians said the guidebook contained military secrets in the form of a map showing the site of their , and confiscated the remaining copies.

New English titles during this time were 1927's ''Tyrol and the Dolomites'', 1931's ''The Riviera'' (including South Eastern France and Corsica), an edition of ''Germany'' for the 1936 Olympic Games