Baedeker's guide to Paris. in German.

Baedeker's guide to Paris. in German.

Leipzig. Karl Baedeker. 1912 470, 58 p., Fig., maps. Hard cover, colored edges, silk ribbon, size 11 x 16 cm. Good condition, lettering inside the back cover.

Karl Baedeker (German: 3 November 1801, Essen — 4 October 1859, Koblenz) was a German publisher who founded in 1827 in Koblenz the publishing house of travel guides to various cities and countries. During his lifetime, he was made famous by the unsurpassed reliability and publishing quality of the guidebooks bearing his name ("baedekers"), which quickly became a household name for publications of this type.

The eldest son of the bookseller and printer Gottschalk-Diedrich Baedeker (1778-1814), Karl Baedeker was born in Essen in 1801. He served as an apprentice in one of Heidelberg's bookstores and completed his education at the University of Heidelberg. Then in Berlin, he studied the book trade in practice, and in 1827 opened his own bookstore in Koblenz. Having acquired from the previous owner, together with the bookshop, the right to publish a local history work on the Rhineland, he revised it and published it in 1839 under the name "Rheinlande". Encouraged by this success, in the same year Baedeker published guides to Belgium and Holland, which later became one book ("Belgien und Holland"). Baedeker's model for these guidebooks was the English edition of the bookseller Murray's Handbooks, but the content of his books was completely independent.

Since 1844, the baedekers have introduced a five-star rating system for attractions, which has since been adopted by other guidebooks. Thus, the idea of mandatory places to visit began to form.

Karl Baedeker died in 1859, leaving his children a thriving business and name.

His sons continued their father's work. In 1872, they moved their firm to Leipzig. All the "baedekers" coming out, as well as their English and French processing, were widely distributed outside of Germany, including in Russia. Reliability and completeness of information remained the company's banner even under his heirs. The famous guide to Egypt and the Sudan (1 ed. 1877), the creation of which attracted the largest Egyptologists, is still in demand — and not only as a collectible, but for its intended purpose: as a short course in ancient Egyptian history, a guide to cuneiform writing, a guide to Ethnography… Seven German editions were published in Russia (1 ed. 1883), three French and one English edition, and two German editions were published in Saint Petersburg. The drafters believed that it was the best route to Tehran, Port Arthur, and Peking.

After 1944, the publishing house had a long hiatus due to the destruction of its building and most of its archives by Allied air bombs.

Now the publishing house Karl Baedeker (Verlag Karl Baedeker) continues to produce high-quality guides to countries and cities around the world. In 1958, the headquarters of the publishing house was moved to Freiburg (Germany, Federal state of Baden-württemberg); in the 80-ies it became part of the publishing group "Langenscheidt". Currently, the publishing house, once founded by Karl Baedeker, belongs to the MAIRDUMONT concern with its headquarters in Ostfildern (Stuttgart).