Baedeker
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.
1827−1859: Karl Baedeker (1801–1859) descended from a long line of printers, booksellers and publishers from Essen, Germany.
The company also published the local newspaper, the Essendische Zeitung, and the family expected that Karl, too, would eventually join the firm.
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 Rheinreise von Mainz bis Cöln; ein Handbuch für Schnellreisende (A Rhine Journey from Mainz to Cologne; A Handbook for Travellers on the Move).
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.
Ernst Baedeker died unexpectedly on 23 July 1861 of sunstroke in Egypt[3] and his younger brother, Karl, assumed charge of the publishing house.
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.
[3] 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.
Karl Baedeker III, the fourth son, entered academia and rose to become a professor of physics at the University of Jena.
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.
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.
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.
He received a loan from Allen & Unwin,[3] 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[2] by holding a reception at the Leipzig "Harmonie",[6] 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.
[3] 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, and 1939's Madeira, Canary Islands, Azores, Western Morocco.
Here, he worked in local government until 1948, latterly sorting out the Schleswig-Holstein archives when he decided to revive the family publishing business under the name of Karl Baedeker.
"Some American, British and German publishers had tried hard to buy the 'Baedeker' name, which was still a world brand, thinking that Karl Friedrich would be only too pleased to sell.
In 1951, Karl Friedrich and Oskar Steinheil, a pre-war Baedeker editor, signed an agreement with Shell AG, the subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, and Kurt Mair (1902–1957), the German printer and publisher based in Stuttgart, to produce a series of motoring guides.
Florian also carried out most of the work involved in preparing the city guides titled Baden-Baden, Constance, Strasbourg and Wiesbaden, published in the mid-1970s.
Following the death of Florian, his mother, Karl Friedrich's widow Eva Baedeker, née Konitz (1913−1984), piloted the firm until she died in 1984.
[9] The new English Baedekers produced by MairDumont dispensed with the Allianz logo in the title, with the German editions doing the same in 2013.
This marked the beginning of a new era in the appearance and content of modern Baedekers under the catchphrase "Wissen öffnet Welten" ("Knowledge opens worlds").
