Bored with his bookstore, intrigued by the Rhine, Baedeker began to spend more and more of his time exploring its banks, jotting down notations of the sights. One afternoon in 1827, when neglect had brought his bookstore to the verge of bankruptcy, Baedeker was rowing a dinghy along the river. Suddenly, he saw a small dog tumble into the water. The dog’s master stood helplessly on shore, calling for help, as the animal floundered. Baedeker rowed to the dog’s aid and rescued it. The grateful owner of the animal, a Dr. Wilhelm Klein, explained that he was author of a new guidebook, Klein’s Rheinreise—The Rhine Journey; A Handbook for Travellers in a Hurry—prepared for rushed tourists using the new river steamboat service. Dr. Klein presented Baedeker with a copy of the guide, and later, Baedeker was able to tell him, “I only saved your dog—but you saved my future with that little book.”
Reading the Rhine guide, Baedeker saw that it was useful, but incomplete. He felt that he could improve upon it a hundredfold. And at once, he knew what he wanted to do—combine his knowledge of bookmaking with his love for sightseeing and fact-gathering. Learning that the ailing Dr. Klein was prepared to liquidate his business, Baedeker set about raising money. He got rid of his bookstore, borrowed money from his father, and took over Klein’s guidebook. He rewrote it completely, drawing heavily upon the notes he had made during his Rhine excursions, and adding detailed maps. He retained Dr. Klein’s name on the new edition, had it published, and waited. He didn’t wait long. It was a sensational sellout within three weeks. Baedeker was ecstatic. He had found his vocation. He looked about for new worlds to conquer.
Baedeker realized that while guidebooks were nothing new (pilgrims had used them in the Middle Ages), there was a desperate need for the special kind of volumes he had in mind. The Napoleonic Wars were over, and ordinary citizens, so long locked in, were eager to travel. There was only one Continental guide available, a handbook to the Lowlands and Germany, brought out by John Murray, the English publisher. But this guide, like the lesser ones, was designed to serve travelers who possessed money, leisure, and education. It was taken for granted by these guidebooks that those who traveled had available luxurious carriages, previous knowledge of Europe’s capitals, and socially prominent friends abroad.
But what about the middle-class tourist? The shopkeeper who had only four weeks? The student with limited means? The eldest daughter who’d never been outside her home and didn’t know a soul? For them, nearby foreign countries were as impenetrable as the African jingles. Toward travelers without money or contacts, every hotel porter, every restaurant owner, every guide acted like a beast of prey. There were no big travel agencies to arrange protective group excursions. There were no newspaper columns or magazine articles offering handy advice and tips. If these travelers dared venture forth, they were bedeviled, exploited. It was this growing army of the world’s timid tourists that Karl Baedeker determined to help. He would make each and every one of them, he decided, “independent of hotel keepers, commissionaires, and guides.”
But he realized that, to accomplish this, he must learn firsthand if it was really possible to travel quickly, cheaply, comfortably—and yet see everything of importance, and understand what had been seen. Immediately, he embarked upon his first swing through Europe. Thereafter, unceasingly for thirty-two years—leaving his wife, Emilie, four sons, and two daughters behind—he moved about Europe, observing, experiencing, recording. He traveled by foot, on bicycle, on horseback, and in stagecoach. He even took the first railroad journey across Belgium, covering a whirlwind six miles in three-quarters of an hour, and excitedly reported to his father, “What a thrill! Objects near the track seem to merge!”
Throughout the Continent, his serious round face, with its wide forehead, piercing eyes, full lips, set atop a barrel of a body, became a familiar sight. On the road, he usually wore a shawl over flannel shirt, rough breeches, old boots, and he always carried a knapsack. On hot days, he would open an umbrella or shield his eyes from the sun with green crepe paper. In cities, he often changed to long black coat and black cravat. His prejudices became as renowned as his appearance. He liked rooms with a southern exposure, beer, horse racing, mountain views, Paris by night, and Honesty.
In his guidebooks, he placed Honesty next to Cleanliness. He went to great lengths to ferret out all who conspired against tourists, and tourists appreciated this and consequently trusted him. Assuming shabby, frayed attire, and a country-cousin manner, he would often register in some swank Zurich hotel. If the management proved snobbish, relegated him to an overpriced room, treated him to the companionship of bedbugs, he would promptly remove the hotel’s star from the Baedeker guidebook. At various recommended restaurants in Vienna, he would sit down to dinner incognito. If he received watered soup, another star fell.
Although essentially a kindly man, he could be exceedingly blunt. In the beginning, he severely censured slipshod hotels. When France retaliated by banning his books for a brief period, he changed his policy to one of criticism by omission, remarking drily, “Hotels which cannot be accurately characterized without exposing the editor to the risk of legal proceedings are left unmentioned.” Sometimes, how—ever, he was unable to contain himself, as in his comment on a Belgian restaurant, “The waiter’s arithmetic is occasionally at fault.”
Besides dishonest hotelkeepers and restaurant owners, the other villains mentioned in his volumes were bandits who drove carriages, guides who overcharged, and pickpockets. He was equally firm about opposing handouts to beggars, overtipping, and missing a two-star sight. And as for those who were embarrassed to be recognized as tourists, who fought to get off the beaten path, he was positive this attitude was overrated; hence his constant cautioning against out-of-the-way lodgings: “The Traveler is warned against sleeping in chalets unless absolutely necessary. Whatever poetry may be theoretically in a fragrant bed of hay, the cold night air, the ringing of cowbells, the grunting of pigs hardly conduce to refreshing slumber.”
Despite his trials on the road, he never lost his enthusiasm for sightseeing. “Europe is for me like a wonderful garden with many lovely flowers,” he wrote a friend. “I try to be a good gardener.” That he was a good gardener became evident from the public clamor for his meticulously detailed guides on Belgium and Holland, Germany and the Austrian Empire, Switzerland, and finally, the last one he wrote himself four years before his death, on Paris. In these books, poetry walked hand in hand with practicality, as in his advice on Lourdes: “The torchlight procession presents a fairylike scene (Beware of pickpockets).” Or again, in discussing hiking trips, “Over all the movements of the walker, the weather holds despotic sway (West winds usually bring rain).”
Not only the general public, but eventually members of royalty and celebrities, adopted Karl Baedeker’s little red books. Countless famous people like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thackeray, Hawthorne, Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, made the Grand Tour, Baedekers in hand. The greatest number of these readers favored the volume on Switzerland, with the Rhine following closely, and Paris just behind. It is a tribute to old Karl that Baedeker’s Switzerland still remains the top best seller of all time on the firm’s large list.
Baedeker’s Switzerland appeared first in 1844. Its immediate success, and continuing popularity for over a century (it went into twenty-eight editions), was due not only to the attraction Switzerland held for the middle-class tourist, not only to Karl’s elaborately detailed advice and suggestions, but also to the attention he gave to the interests of outdoor enthusiasts. “The maps alone were the most expensive and valuable the firm ever produced,” says Otto Baedeker, old Karl’s great-grandson in London. “Each map showed accurate mountain climbing routes, almost all tried out by Karl himself. These map plates were destroyed during the war, and now have to be replaced from scratch.”
Old Karl was at his best in this volume. Nothing was too minor to be overlooked. “A light rucksack suffices to contain all that is necessary for a week�
��s excursion,” wrote old Karl. “A pocket-knife with a corkscrew, a drinking cup, a tin-opener, a pocket flash, stout gloves, a compass, and a pocket first-aid outfit should not be forgotten. Useful, though not indispensable, are a pair of binoculars, sewing materials, a piece of cord, and an electric torch.” But before the climber took off, old Karl stayed him a moment, admonishing, “The enthusiast must curb his ardours at the outset.” For countless problems had to be anticipated. The climber’s feet, for instance. For an overdose of “ardour,” Karl suggested, “The feet may be rubbed morning and evening with brandy and tallow. Soaping the inside of the stocking is another well-known safeguard against abrasion of the skin.” As to meals: “Glacier water is dangerous and cold milk is also prejudicial. A little cold tea, slightly sweetened, or a dried prune now and then, will suffice.” As to the inevitable diarrhea: “Fifteen drops of a mixture of parts of tincture of opium”—though later, Baedekers took a dimmer view of opium, and finally dropped the medical suggestion from the book.
As tourists continued to scramble and puff up Jungfrau and the Matterhorn, Karl prepared them for real dangers. Perhaps a slip, perhaps an avalanche. In that case, “Distress signals may be made by waving a flag or handkerchief on the end of a stick, by shouting, whistling, or by showing a light (lantern, fire, etc.).” In the event of a thunderstorm, “it is best to seek refuge from the lightning in some sheltered spot, carefully avoiding single trees and other prominent objects, while on the open mountain it is sometimes advisable to lie flat on the ground.” Finally, after achieving the summit and making a safe return, the greatest danger of the entire excursion: the tip. But old Karl, ever watchful for his purse-poor reader, surmounted it nobly. “Among the Swiss mountains the judicious traveller knows well when to make the tender of his cigar-case or spirit flask.”
When Karl, aged fifty-eight, his immortality secure among those afflicted with wanderlust, lay on his deathbed in Coblenz, he gathered his four sons about him. “I have shown my fellow men Europe,” he told them. “I leave you to show them the rest of the world.”
Two of the sons, Fritz and Karl II, undertook this task. But when Karl II suffered sunstroke in Egypt, and retired, Fritz Baedeker carried on alone. While old Karl had established the firm, and set the high standard for its continued excellence, it was Fritz who made Baedeker truly international. He insisted that his employees think not as Germans, but as world citizens. Toward this end, he quickly introduced the French and English language editions. One of his most pleasurable moments occurred on the occasion when he sat in a depot rereading Baedeker’s Switzerland in German, and an American lady tourist, noticing the book, exclaimed, “Oh, you have the translation!”
As the automobile and the railroad supplanted the stagecoach, enabling tourists to cover more ground, and as more and more vacationers went to the Near East, Africa, the Orient, Fritz Baedeker’s job became increasingly complicated. He realized that the guidebook was no longer a one-man job. He began to hire foreign editors to prepare the volumes on their native lands, professors and other experts to assist with specialized chapters, and “spies” to deliver lesser material. In preparing his first book on London, in 1862, he hired cab-drivers and street sweepers to report to him, and was then able to write in the guide, “The stranger is warned against going to any unrecommended house near Leicester Square, as there are several houses of doubtful reputation in this locality.” In preparing his Sweden and Norway in 1879, his Scandinavian “spies” reported on certain discomforts in their vicinity, and Fritz passed them on to his readers: “Visitors to Lapland and the Swedish Norrland should also be provided with veils to keep off the gnats.”
In Coblenz, and later in Leipzig, where the firm established larger headquarters, Fritz employed as many as twenty assistants to help him coordinate the information that poured in.
In the years that Fritz headed the firm, Baedeker blanketed the world. Not only was London covered, but such widely varied localities as Palestine, Egypt, Italy, Sweden, North America, Spain, Canada, the Riviera, Constantinople, India, and Russia. Where his father had given Baedeker its first big best seller in Switzerland, Fritz supervised the company’s most distinguished later volume, which was on Egypt, and was regarded by the Manchester Guardian as “one of the most astonishing guidebooks ever put together.”
Baedeker’s Egypt, first published in 1878, went into eight editions, the last appearing in 1929. The special editor assisting Fritz Baedeker was Professor Georg Steindorff, an Egyptologist from Leipzig University who eventually moved to New York. The 495 pages of the guide ranged through a potpourri of subjects such as Arab cafes, Egyptian dialects, the Nile, Mohammedan manners and customs, the major Egyptian deities and sacred animals. Full chapters were devoted to hieroglyphics and Islamic architecture.
But though it was a scholarly masterpiece, and everywhere regarded as a work of art, at no time did Fritz Baedeker forget his primary audience. One hundred and six maps and town plans filled the book, and the Great Pyramid was covered to the satisfaction of the most retiring tourist. “The ascent of the Pyramid, though fatiguing, is perfectly safe,” Fritz assured his readers. “The traveller selects two of the importunate Bedouins and proceeds to the N.E. corner. Assisted by the two Bedouins, one holding each hand, and, if desired, by a third (no extra payment) who pushes behind, the traveller begins the ascent of the steps.” Often the guides rushed the tourist. But Fritz advised, “The Traveller should insist on resting as often as he feels inclined. ‘Quiet, or you shall have no pay’ is a sentence that may often be employed with advantage. All requests for bakshish should be refused, and it is well to keep an eye upon one’s pockets.” As to exploring the interior of the pyramid, Fritz warned: “Travellers who are in the slightest degree predisposed to apoplectic or fainting fits, and ladies travelling alone, should not attempt to penetrate into these stifling recesses. The floor is often very slippery and the air smells strongly of bats.”
If Fritz fathered Baedeker’s greatest guide, he also helped produce a number of others that held lesser records of distinction. Baedeker’s India, published in 1914, was the most difficult and wearisome volume the firm ever put together. It took four years to prepare, and sold poorly, because of the lack of tourist traffic in India. Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria, first published in 1875, fared somewhat better, even though it helped defeat Fritz’s homeland in World War I. For General Allenby, a Baedeker fan, used his 1912 edition of Palestine and Syria in his fight against the Turks and the Central Powers.
Baedeker’s Italy, published by Fritz in 1872, proved to be the most controversial volume on the firm’s list. Fritz found Naples wanting in cleanliness, oppressively hot in September, and swarming with beggars (who, he wrote, could best be dismissed by “a slight backward movement of the head accompanied by a somewhat contemptuous expression”)! The Naples Chamber of Commerce protested, officially, to the German government. At the same time, the Italian pharmacists in Rome threatened legal action because Baedeker advised tourists in the Eternal City to confine their medical popping to drugstores owned by Americans and British The gondoliers of Venice felt similarly put upon. Baedeker, they screamed, assaulted their gallantry (he had merely said that they often insulted ladies, and advised the sensible escort not to push the offenders into the canal but simply to lodge a complaint”). Baedeker, they wailed, deprived them of their livelihood (he had merely suggested caution in stepping out of a gondola, “steps slimy,” then added the death phrase, “gratuity not obligatory”).
Baedeker’s North America, prepared at a cost of over $100,000 and published in 1893, was the firm’s first venture into the New World. Great care was taken with the guide. Viscount James Bryce, British Ambassador to the United States, was hired to write an entire chapter on the United States Constitution. Baedeker found much to recommend in America Two stars were awarded Yellowstone National Park the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery in Boston, and Niagara Falls (“perhaps the greatest and most impressive of the natural wonders o
f America”). On the other hand, there was much that disturbed Baedeker. Public toilets were lacking in New York City, San Francisco architecture was abominable, and the Chicago stockyards could interest only those whose nerves are strong enough to contemplate with equanimity wholesale slaughter and oceans of blood” Other barbarisms were duly noted, but happily, in the 1909 edition, Baedeker was able to add: “Throughout almost the whole country travelling is now as safe as in the most civilised parts of Europe, and the carrying of arms is unnecessary.”
The present Karl Baedeker admits that the firm’s greatest financial failure occurred in that period. “At great expense, Fritz Baedeker prepared and brought out a guide on Russia. It appeared in 1914, on the eve of World War I. The war, and new Communist government, quickly outdated our book. We lost a fortune.”
Nevertheless, Baedeker’s Russia—with Teheran, Port Arthur and Peking—A Handbook for Travellers remains a fascinating curiosity of recent times past. There was no Iron Curtain before 1914 (“the visa is good for six months”), and Baedeker researchers were able to prepare 40 detailed maps, 78 town plans, and 590 pages of exact information. Still, tourists were warned of difficulties. “Passengers are strongly advised not to send their luggage in advance. Un-printed paper should be used for packing, to avoid any cause of suspicion.” Fritz found only one hotel in Moscow, the National, worth even a single star. As to historic sights, there were few musts. One of the few was the Kremlin: “In the centre of the city, on a hill rising 130 feet above the Moskva and dominating the whole of Moscow, rises the Kremlin [two stars], in which all the reminiscences of Moscow’s past are united. For the Russians the Kremlin is a holy spot.” Even though few tourists ever found use for this volume, one purchaser found it invaluable. During World War I, the British General Staff bought up all available copies to guide its officers on the customs, manners, and favorite landmarks of the Russians.
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