Baedekers Guidebooks is one of the most prominent publishing houses that existed out there. Hence, it is important for you to take a look at the history of this publishing house and understand how it has been able to evolve from the past as well. Baedekers Guidebooks could introduce the concept of family publishing of books as well. In fact, the business ownership was passed from one generation to another in the family, which contributed further towards ensuring its success.
The starting of Baedekers Guidebooks
Baedekers Guidebooks was started by Dietrich Baedeker, who was born back in the year 1660. He worked as a printer in the city called Bielefeld. However, his successor generation, or Karl Baedeker was able to start the Baedekers Guide books business and take that to the next level. Karl was born in the year 1801. He got the opportunity to have a first-hand experience with publishing as he was from one of the publishing families. He obtained his education from the Heidelberg university, and then started working as an apprentice for the books. On top of that, he spent a considerable amount of time in his life while going through books in Berlin.
The starting of Baedekers Guidebooks
Baedekers Guidebooks was started in the year 1827. Karl Baedeker was only 25 years old by this time. However, it didn’t start as a book publishing business. It was converted into a full-time book publishing business in the year 1832. Rare Books Supplier – Shapero.com told us that he got the help of few others to work on the book publishing work that was did. This helped him to write one of the bestselling tourist guides, and it was able to change the overall future of Baedekers Guidebooks. It was not an original book, but a French translation. However, the very first guidebook could receive lots of positive attention and Karl was motivated to take his business to greater heights along with the success that he could secure.
During the 1830s, Karl went ahead and published numerous books. However, he noticed that publishing guidebooks is helping him to gain more attention than other varieties of books. This is the main reason that tempted Karl to focus on the publishing of guidebooks than other forms of books.
By the year 1850, Karl was able to take Baedekers Guidebooks to a great level, where travelers across Europe were looking forward to purchasing the guidebooks published under this book publishing house. For example, there were travel guides published around Athens, Berlin, and Paris. All of them were quite successful and popular. Along with that success, Baedekers Guidebooks published travel guides to few other countries such as Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland as well. moreover, a massive-single volume guidebook was published for Austria and Germany.
The sons of Karl Baedeker taking the business to the next level
Karl Baedeker had three sons. They were able to take Baedekers Guidebooks to the next level after his death. Ernest Baedeker was the first son out of them. He was able to go ahead and publish the very first English language guidebook. Along with that, he could grab the attention of people in his home country towards Baedekers Guidebooks.
The second son of Karl, Karl Junior could also contribute a lot towards the overall success of Baedekers Guidebooks. For example, he was able to publish new guidebooks to Germany, London, and France. In the meantime, the third son, Fritz was able to continue as a partner for the company and proceed more on enhancing the retail bookselling efforts.
Back in the year 1872, Baedekers Guidebooks business was moved all the way to Leipzig. This is where the headquarters of the book publishing house was established. Along with that, it could also become the center for German publishing. Back in the year 1878, the book publishing house could further enhance its boundaries, where volumes were made available for Syria and Palestine as well. During this time, it seemed that French language was overtaken by English. That’s because a large number of books written in English language were published during this time.
Success during the Pre-war period
Fritz, who was the third son of Karl could eventually take ownership of the business during the pre-war period. This is where he was able to go ahead and publish hundreds of travel guides. All these guides could share lots of valuable information for the tourists as well. In fact, he could publish a total number of 30 guidebooks in German language. Moreover, he could publish 22 guidebooks in French and 26 guidebooks in English.
Fritz had three sons. Out of them, Hans was the first son. He was able to obtain the ownership of Baedekers Guidebooks after Fritz. Hans had to steer Baedekers Guidebooks during the most challenging times. In other words, he had to survive World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression. There was a time where Baedekers Guidebooks even lost its headquarters building. However, Hans was able to reconstruct that with his efforts.
The end of Baedekers Guidebooks
The management of Baedekers Guidebooks was officially passed over to the three sons of Fritz Baedeker back in the year 1925. This is where the sons went ahead and published numerous additional books. In the meantime, they continued to revamp the books that were already published. For example, text that was included in the already published books were revamped. They also had to revamp the maps, which helped them to deliver up to date information to the tourists who are relying on Baedekers Guidebooks.
Along with the outbreak of Second World War, Baedekers Guidebooks had to pause its business operations for quite some time. However, the business could still start its operations after the world. However, it was not so successful. The grandson of Fritz could restart the business that was stopped in the year 1948. He could even publish some travel guides, but they failed to get attention.