Baedeker city guide

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City Guide Lübeck , 1st edition (1963)

Baedeker City Guides are travel guides published by Karl Baedeker Verlag , which appeared from 1963 to 2010 as red brochures in classic Baedeker style and describe cities that are predominantly in the old Federal Republic. In addition, there were issues for almost all districts of West Berlin, East Berlin and Leipzig as well as for some cities in Switzerland, Austria and France. The series followed on from previous editions before the Second World War and after 1945.

Preliminary remark

After the end of the war, the Baedeker publishing house in Leipzig found itself in the Soviet occupation zone . He was thus subject to the licensing requirements of the local military authorities . Karl Friedrich Baedeker (1910–1979), a great-grandson of the company's founder, was granted a personal publishing license with the number 345, so that he could initially continue his work. In view of the destruction of the publisher's archive, as a result of which all map templates and the other records necessary for the production of travel guides were lost, it was not possible to quickly build on the publishing program before 1945. In addition, the devastation of the war and the post-war economic hardship brought holiday travel and educational tourism, for which the Baedekers were primarily tailored, largely to a standstill.
As the political developments in the Soviet occupation zone meant that political restrictions were to be expected in publishing in Leipzig, Karl Baedeker founded a new publishing house in Malente in 1948 under the old name , for which he received a publishing license from the British occupation authorities. The city guides, furnished in the classic manner, later appeared in this, whereby the company headquarters of Baedeker moved to Freiburg i.Br. in 1956 . was relocated.
The editions of this series in the narrower sense did not begin until 1963. However, the previous editions for the German cities of Frankfurt (1951), Leipzig (1948), Munich (1950) and Stuttgart (1949) are to be added to this series program as a precursor, especially since all editions of these titles published from 1963 onwards were only edited under the title of the series and its equipment while continuing the edition count.
The volumes for the now divided former capital of Germany (“Berlin. Small Edition” from 1933) and for Bavaria's metropolis (“Munich and Augsburg” from 1935) followed on from the pre-war editions, which was also reflected in the edition count. Finally, the "Big Issues" for Berlin from 1954 (1st edition 1936 for the Olympics ) were listed in the respective backlists at the end of the volume of this series, although they were the two editions between 1986 and 1992 due to their size and equipment even tied in cardboard tape and full linen, sometimes with a dust jacket - strictly speaking, they did not belong to it. However, from 1986 the editions were even given the title “City Guide” after they had previously been edited as a “Travel Guide”, probably in contrast to the Baedeker Allianz editions for Berlin that ran parallel from 1981.

In the case of the volumes for Koblenz (1977, 1983), the number of editions is even linked to a first edition published "c. 1830 by Carl Bädeker, Koblenz", which is referred to on the title page with a footnote. It is unlikely that one can speak of a genuine previous edition in terms of content.

Special features of the previous editions

Leipzig (1948)

Regardless of the difficult post-war conditions, the publisher succeeded in working with the Leipzig Bibliographical Institute in 1948 to bring out a volume for Leipzig, its own place of publication, which had been planned before the war and which was to have six editions in the city guide series by 2002. The brochure with a foreword by the then Mayor of Leipzig, Erich Zeigner , written by Hans Baedeker (1874-1959), on the one hand reflected the destruction of the city during the war, but on the other hand also documented the unbroken will of the people of Leipzig to rebuild. Due to the entry of the location of the Soviet military administration in Leipzig in an attached city map, after their intervention - there was also a brief arrest of Hans Baedeker - the as yet unsold inventory had to be provided with a retouched map from which the object description had been erased. Only in this first edition did the Paulinerkirche , which was blown up in 1968, still receive a detailed description. a. pointed out to the princely house which was destroyed in the war .

Stuttgart (1949)

A year later, a guide for Stuttgart with a total of 96 pages, an official city map of the city surveying office, a street directory, a traffic plan and a map of the area in an edition of 20,000 copies was published in a similar format to the Leipzig volume, with a print run of 20,000 copies the Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung in Stuttgart drew and, in addition to Leipzig, Hamburg is also named as the place of publication . In the same year the publishers mentioned also edited an English-language extract from Baedeker's Stuttgart (32 pages); the translation came from the city administration of Stuttgart.

With this edition, the more than 70 years of publishing activity of Baedeker Verlag in Leipzig, from where the company had achieved international renown, came to an abrupt end; it was not revived there even after German reunification .

Munich and surroundings (1950)

The first post-war edition appeared in 1950 (1st edition 1935). It is possible that in the late 1950s there was still resentment among some Baedeker authors towards some of the writers exiled during the Nazi regime. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann , who died in 1955, was not mentioned in the 1960 edition of Munich and the surrounding area among the famous personalities listed there in the “memorial plaque”, although the omission was also related to his critical Munich Wagner lecture from 1933, Leiden and Richard Wagner's greatness . Incidentally, he shared this fate with Joachim Ringelnatz and Lion Feuchtwanger , who are only mentioned in the 1972 edition.

Frankfurt am Main (1951)

Just in time for the International Motor Show , which had meanwhile moved from divided Berlin to Frankfurt , in April 1951, the band Frankfurt am Main was available to its visitors . For today's reader, the detailed description of the enormous war damage in the city center should be of great historical interest. For example, a map of Frankfurt's old town from 1950 with white spots for the totally destroyed city quarters vividly shows the enormous extent of the historical building fabric that was lost in the hail of bombs of the Second World War.

Hamburg and the Lower Elbe (1951)

In the remarks by Otto U. Brandt and Kurt Eitner in this volume from 1951 on the Port of Hamburg with the shipping companies operating there (e.g. F. Laeisz , Rickmers Rhederei AG , Robert Miles Sloman Jr. ) and shipyards ( Blohm & Voss , Deutsche Werft , Howaldtswerke ), a level of detail never reached again in later editions due to changed user interests.

Cologne and Surroundings (1956)

This title was limited to two editions, which were paperbacked in 1956 and 1960 and published in a plastic cover. A continuation in the city guide series was planned; however, the third edition, announced in 1972 and again in 1984, did not appear.

General Information

Furnishing

On the front cover of the mostly narrow brochure volumes in the classic Baedeker format, which initially appeared under the title Baedekers Stadtführer by Karl Baedeker in the Karl Baedeker Verlag, the respective city arms were depicted.
The spine of the book was still unprinted in the first, laminated editions, but from 1968 it bore the name of the city and, in the 1980s, the volume number that was assigned to the individual volumes and was used in advertising. With the exception of the issues for Munich and Stuttgart as well as some issues for Berlin, the series indication “Baedeker (s)” can only be found on the back of the large formats.
The back cover was initially adorned by a building or monument from the city. In addition to the tourist information about the location and the traditional, multi-colored map of the city and / or inner city, the brochures mostly also contained a historical city view based on Merian or from Schedel's world chronicle . Like the regional volumes from 1951, the city guides were provided with black and white illustrations. Floor plans and site plans were also supplemented with red picture elements. Advertisements for the current travel guide production of Baedeker could very often be found in the tapes. External advertising also appeared in many small-format city guides in the 1970s. Quite often the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung advertised full-page for readership as the sole advertiser.

The format was slightly enlarged from 1983, with the texts being completely re-set in larger font sizes for better legibility . The back cover illustration was replaced by standardized advertising text for the city guide series, and a barcode and the ISBN were added. From 1988 the coats of arms supralibros were replaced by a photo with a striking building. The photo motif remained unchanged until the series ran out. Only the Nuremberg volume was given a new front photo in the 12th and last edition of 2008, revised by Pablo de Riestra . At the end of the 1990s, drawings and descriptions of the most important sights of the city described were printed on the previously empty book mirror . And at the turn of the millennium , the title on the front cover and spine changed to “Baedeker” without the genitive “s”. The ISB number was supplemented by the preceding number “978” ( book country -EAN) in the editions from 2003 onwards .

The sales price had been printed on the back of the book next to the barcode title since 1994. The last volumes cost € 6.50 to € 8.95, depending on the size .

Series authors and illustrators

Among the series authors from the publishing family are Florian Baedeker († 1980), who died early, historians such as Kurt Pomplun , but also local researchers such as Erich Mulzer ( Nuremberg 1986) or Otto U. Brandt ( Bremen / Bremerhaven , Celle ), as well as travel journalists, like Helmuth Bischoff.
Gerhard Peters, who had worked for Baedeker Verlag in Leipzig from 1925–1934 before the Second World War, also edited two volumes: Detmold (1974) and Vienna and Surroundings (1979)

The drawings very often come from the pen of Gerhard Gronwald († 1965), Katja Ungerer and Renate Liertz, e.g. T. also by Vera Solymosi-Thurzó .

Cartographic material

The city plans and maps were mostly supplied by the Lahr- based companies Georg Schiffner and Christoph Gallus.

Series development

The content of the volumes was constantly updated in subsequent editions. This can often be recognized by the weaker pressure on the changed text passages. The German-German policy of détente can also be read in the volumes that had geographical points of contact with the GDR . Ended z. For example, in the 1977 edition for Lübeck the bathing beach of the nearby Priwall was still at the “ zone boundary ”, it had already become the “GDR border” in the subsequent edition of 1983. In contrast, the quotation marks that were still placed in the small edition for Berlin from 1968 when the 'German Democratic Republic (GDR)' was mentioned in the subsequent edition had already disappeared from 1975.

The title canon of the series, which had its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, was thinned out further and further after 1989, when almost four dozen titles were still available according to publishing house advertising. All that remained was issues for a few larger cities, such as Basel, Berlin (small edition), Hanover or Leipzig, as well as for tourist strongholds such as Bamberg , Konstanz or Trier , so that at the turn of the millennium there were only a good one and a half dozen city guides on the title list. The majority of the other locations had been incorporated into the regional volumes of the Baedeker Alliance series or had received separate editions there.

Old Federal Republic

Supplement to the IGA from Hamburg and the island of Helgoland (1963)

The “city guides” for cities in the Federal Republic of Germany appeared from 1963 onwards at a price of DM 2.40 or DM 2.80 ( Hamburg ) and were brought onto the market in a slightly different format until 2012. The hardcover guides for the larger cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, which were published in the 1950s, were also integrated into this series. It began with the volumes Kiel and Lübeck as well as Hamburg and Insel Helgoland , which appeared in 3500 copies for the 1963 International Horticultural Exhibition and provided information about this with a supplement that is now quite rare. All texts and plans of the first three city guides were taken almost unchanged from the 3rd edition of the Schleswig-Holstein travel guide from the current year, only Hamburg was supplemented by the trip to Heligoland ( Elbe trip and seafaring ). Only in the subsequent editions were they processed independently. In the following, major cities that are particularly attractive for tourists were described, including a. Braunschweig , Freiburg and Nuremberg, until the series program also turned to smaller towns such as Idar-Oberstein , Nördlingen and Rottweil . Occasionally, city anniversaries or connections to the Baedeker publishing house, such as Essen , the seat of GD Baedeker publishing house , were an issue. Almost all of the volumes that were advertised as "in preparation" also appeared. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, z. B. Volumes for the university town of Göttingen , the town of the Pied Piper Hameln , the town of Elisabeth of Thuringia Marburg or the old Hanseatic town of Soest .

In 1986 a city guide for (West) Germany was drawn up on the basis of the city guides, which described the most important cities of the old Federal Republic and West Berlin, but also contained a brief “Excursion to Berlin (East)” and came up with colored city center maps and coats of arms.

Expenditures for Greater Berlin

In 1968 the Berlin volume, which conceptually belongs to this series, was presented, but still as a "travel guide ... small edition" (2nd edition). The two subsequent editions from 1975 and 1979 also had this title addition. As an exception, as can be seen from the table of contents, a city map of the Berlin company "Richard Schwarz Nachf." On a scale of 1: 30000 was loosely added to these, but mainly through Most of the volumes were lost because of their oversize format after they were folded, so that today they are mostly offered in antiquarian fashion without it.

Only in 1987 did the title page show that the band belonged to this series. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification were first reflected in the 6th edition of 1991 under the phrase coined by Willy Brandt , "Now what belongs together grows together" (preface). Up to the 8th edition of 2001, which appeared again with changed prices due to the introduction of the euro in 2002, this title reflected the rapid development of the new German capital, such as the development of Potsdamer Platz , the conversion of the Reichstag building for use by the German Bundestag and the opening of the new picture gallery and the Hamburger Bahnhof .

The district editions for West Berlin districts

  • expenditure

In view of the division of the city of Berlin , which existed until 1990, district volumes should be edited for all western districts in order to improve their tourist development. These began in 1967 with Schöneberg and ended with Zehlendorf in 1987. The last reprints appeared in 1988 for Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg . Only for the Neukölln district was there ultimately no edition, although the publisher made a reference to its preparation (“1. A. iV”) for this in 1982 in the current other editions.

  • Forewords by the district mayors

These expenditures, probably organized with previously agreed public purchase quotas , very often contain forewords by the incumbent district mayors , such as Alfred Gleitze (Schöneberg 1974) Heribert Baumann (Wilmersdorf 1975), Wilhelm Kabus (Schöneberg 1976, 1980), Herbert Kleusberg (Spandau 1977), Werner Salomon (Spandau 1980, 1987), Erika Heß (Wedding 1983) or Jürgen Klemann (Zehlendorf 1987), so that the party-political development in the districts can be followed on the basis of the conditions. In the case of the Schöneberg volume from 1967, this led to the omission of the foreword by Josef Grunner at a later binding rate , as he only served until 1969.

  • Authors

Some of the texts were written by renowned authors. Georg Holmsten was responsible for six volumes alone , including Wilmersdorf (1975), Wedding (1976) and Kreuzberg (1977). Kurt Pomplun wrote the volume for Tiergarten (1984) and Sabine Bohle-Heintzenberg wrote the volume that concluded the series for Zehlendorf (1987). The furnishings corresponded to the federal German volumes. However, deviating from this, the enlarged editions for 5 districts also retained the rear cover illustration. In addition, the cover bears the addition "District Leader".

  • Advertising part

Many Berlin wristbands from the 1970s also had advertisements on the back, mostly on several pages, of companies from a wide variety of industries that had their headquarters or branches in Berlin at the time, from the individual districts. These include, for example: Berliner Sparkasse , C. Bechstein , Coca-Cola , DeTeWe , Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin , Deutsches Reisebüro , Dugena , General Motors , GSG , Gillette , Karstadt , Leineweber , Mercedes-Benz , Orenstein & Koppel , Philips , Prelate Schöneberg , Quelle , Preuß & Temmler , Sarotti , Schindler Aufzüge , Siemens , Strabag or Westermanns monthly books . With 22 advertisements, around half of them from local providers, the only edition of the Steglitz volume from 1980 contained the most extensive advertising block.

Berlin-Tiergarten (1984), correction slip for the district plan
  • particularities

For the Reinickendorf band from 1980, historical floor plans for Tegel Castle by Schinkel were used.

A leaflet with a self-adhesive outline map of Greater Berlin was printed for the volume Berlin – Tiergarten from 1984. It should be glued over the map already in the tape in order to correctly map the new urban district structure in the east of the city. Parts of the districts of Weißensee and Lichtenberg had been spun off and formed the new, independent district of Marzahn with effect from January 5, 1979 .

GDR territory and East Berlin during the division

Due to the relatively easy entry of German citizens into East Berlin, its famous museum landscape was a worthwhile additional travel destination for visitors to West Berlin. The Berlin Guide of 1954 contained extensive parts that deal with the districts of the Eastern sector and the museums located there were dedicated. The reason for the publication of a separate edition from the complete Berlin volume from 1968 only for East Berlin may have been easier handling and perhaps also border passage with this travel guide in 1969.

The 1954 Berlin Guide contained a section to the former Prussian residence city of Potsdam . However, there was only planning for a Potsdam volume announced in several city guides in 1972. Only with the second edition of the Leipzig volume ( first edition: 1948 ) was a volume published on a city in the GDR in 1973, owing to its status as a hub of east-west trade and probably also a tribute to the former Baedeker publishing location was.

Accession area from 1990

Even after German reunification , no other East German city was included in the city guide series. Dresden , which immediately caught the eye , had already been given a more extensive Baedeker Allianz band in 1986 . The descriptions of other places to be considered, such as Erfurt , Weimar or Eisenach in the south and Rostock, Schwerin or Wismar in the north, have been incorporated into the respective Baedeker Alliance regional volumes. Separate editions did not seem promising enough to the publisher, and this Baedeker series had generally already passed its zenith.

The Leipzig volume with the publisher's internal series number 025 was regularly revised and at least continued in its 6th edition until 2002. This was kept available until around 2010 before it was replaced by the Baedeker Allianz Band Leipzig-Halle in the same year . Tourist Verlag
wrote the first post-reunification edition in 1991 ; the vignettes (including the remaining editions) were made by Heinrich Greiss from Freiburg, who had already supplied these and the text for the second edition from 1973. The subsequent editions were then edited by the Bonn art historian Roland Kanz (1993) and the Leipzig author Wolfgang Knape (1997, 2002). A special edition of the DKB is available from the 5th edition (1997) .

Austria

The first volume in 1964 included a description of the Mozart city of Salzburg by Kurt Pomplun, which was published three times until 1988. It followed in 1969 Graz and Innsbruck (3rd edition 1983, also by Kurt Pomplun) as well as the Austrian capital Vienna , edited by Gerhard Peters , which came onto the market in August 1979 in 6,000 copies. The extensive Vienna volume, however, was already overburdening the small format and was therefore continued - despite the availability of a revised manuscript in 1984 - after the merger of the two Baedeker publishers in the new Baedeker Allianz series.

Switzerland

Here are Geneva 1972 (3rd edition 1986) and Basel from 1978 - the last edition was published in 2005 - to name. A volume announced for Zurich in 1975 , however, was never published.

France

Although Strasbourg , conquered by Louis XIV in 1681 , which again belonged to the German Empire between 1871 and 1919 and was occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1944, is not strictly speaking a purely German-speaking city, it was probably due to its special historical and linguistic development as well as the proximity to the border with Germany. Between 1973 and 1983 the description of the city was given 3 editions.

Foreign language editions

The tradition of English and French language city editions was also resumed after the Second World War, although this only happened to a considerably reduced extent. The city volumes of Frankfurt am Main , Munich , Cologne , Berlin and Salzburg were joined by their counterparts, which were mainly sold abroad: Frankfurt and the Taunus (1951, 1953 and 1960), Munich and its environs (1950 and 1956), Berlin ( English editions: 1965, 1971 and 1975; French edition: 1971) and Salzburg. A short guide (English edition: 1964, translated by Hermann Augustine Piehler (1888–1987)).

A 21st edition of Paris and its Environs (previous edition from 1932) planned in the 1950s did not go on sale. This also applies to the other city editions planned for 1961 in English with around 360 pages each, Hamburg and its Environs (1st edition), Rome and its Environs (17th edition) and London and its Environs (22nd edition), as well as those for 1965 planned 3rd edition of Munich and its environs . In 1961 the English-language large Berlin guide was also to appear in its 7th edition. Possibly due to the building of the wall , the appearance was postponed until 1965.

lili rere
City guide Baden-Baden , English and French version from 1974

On the other hand, the publishing house dared to translate into French in 1974 for the comparatively small spa town of Baden-Baden , which however maintains a traditional casino (gambling concessions in Baden-Baden since 1801), created by the later co-founder of the International Oldtimer Meeting Baden-Baden , Jean-Marc Culas, and into English (HA Piehler). Surprisingly, both volumes are not listed in the German National Library , although these, according to their collecting mandate, a. to collect all foreign-language literature published in Germany from January 1, 1913, should have been submitted by the publisher as deposit copies, as was the case with the comparable titles in Salzburg. A short guide (1964) and the foreign-language Berlin editions (1965, 1971 and 1975) were mostly the case for both library locations. However, entries for the library locations Karlsruhe (Badische Landesbibliothek) and Stuttgart (Württembergische Landesbibliothek) are available for both "Baden-Baden" versions. All in all, all these foreign-language volumes are likely to have lacked publishing success, as there were no successors for most of the other cities. The extremely rare occurrence of foreign-language editions for Baden-Baden and Salzburg also suggests either extremely low print runs or, what is more likely, the spoiling of unsold remnants.

advertising

For the book series, the publisher initially advertised the book series through bookstores with leporellos or simple leaflets in which only the available and planned series titles are listed. The series was also listed in brochures that presented the entire publishing house production. This was increasingly the case especially after 1990, when only a relatively small number of titles were kept available through re-editions, so that separate brochures were no longer necessary. After all, many of the city guides themselves listed the titles that were also in the publisher's program. For individual volumes, abdominal bindings and inserts were used as special advertising material, such as for the Munich and Surroundings edition from 1960 or the 7th edition of the English-language edition Berlin. Handbook for Travelers (1965).

  • Advertising sheet from: Munich and the surrounding area ( 3rd edition, 1955)

  • Baedeker Munich (4th edition, 1960) with a belly band

  • Complete directory for Baedeker 1974 (Leporello) with a list of city guides

  • Advertising for city guides 1984

literature

  • Peter H. Baumgarten, Monika I. Baumgarten (eds.): Baedeker. A name becomes a global brand. Karl Baedeker, Ostfildern 1998, ISBN 3-89525-830-X .
  • Alex W. Hinrichsen: Baedeker's travel guides 1832–1990. Ursula Hinrichsen Verlag, Bevern 1991.
  • Ursula Hinrichsen (ed.): Messages for Baedeker friends (from 1986/3: travel life and from 1987/15: travel and life ). Ursula Hinrichsen Verlag, Holzminden 1980–1992 (24 issues) - ISSN  0936-627X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A compilation of all volumes published from 1948 to 2002 can be found under the short title list of the so-called "Freiburg editions" 1948–2002 .
  2. ↑ In this volume, Baedeker cooperated with the Munich-based Richard Pflaum Verlag until 1960 (4th edition) .
  3. ↑ Leipzig. City guide from Karl Baedeker . 2nd edition, Freiburg 1973, p. 4 [nn]. The author was not named in the 1948 edition.
  4. ↑ cf. Munich and the surrounding area. Karl Baedeker, Hamburg, and Richard Pflaum Verlag, Munich 1960, p. 33 (memorial plaque)
  5. ↑ Frankfurt am Main . Karl Baedeker Verlag, Hamburg 1951, p. 76
  6. ↑ Baedekers Flensburg . 2nd edition, Freiburg 1977, p. 59 [nn] (advertising for city guides)
  7. ↑ Baedeker's Berlin Tiergarten . Freiburg 1984, p. 60 [nn] (advertising for city guides)
  8. ↑ Gerhard Peters: Editor of Baedeker's travel manuals 1925–1934. In: Travel and Life. Issue 15, 1987 ( online version )
  9. ↑ Baedeker's Lübeck . 4th edition, Freiburg 1977, p. 37, and 5th edition, Freiburg 1983, p. 48
  10. ↑ Baedekers Berlin. Small edition . 2nd edition, Freiburg 1968, p. 7, or 3rd edition, Freiburg 1975, p. 12
  11. ↑ The DNB only cataloged the editions up to the 7th edition of 1995, although the further partial editions would also have had to be recorded as a separate edition due to their updated content.
  12. ↑ Compare e.g. B. Baedeker's Wurzburg . 4th edition, Freiburg 1982, p. 34 [nn] or Baedekers Mainz . 4th edition, Freiburg 1982, p. 152 [nn] (advertising for city guides).
  13. ↑ Surprisingly, the map printed in the volume already contained the new east Berlin (21st) urban district "Marzahn" without any further explanation of its new formation, which the correction slip now gives, but no longer depicts it, but only provides the outdated district structure in terms of cartography. Gluing in would only make the textual deficiency worse.
  14. ↑ Carrying along current West German publications could easily lead to complications when entering the GDR if their content was not immediately recognizable as apolitical and did not propagate the Western way of life.
  15. ↑ Cf. u. a. Baedekers Dortmund . Karl Baedeker Verlag, Freiburg 1971, p. 55
  16. ↑ Most of the volumes are offered antiquarian today by foreign dealers, so that their original sale abroad is obvious.
  17. ↑ See the announcement on the extension of Baedeker's Frankfurt and the Taunus . Third Edition, Karl Baedeker, Freiburg 1960.
  18. ^ "Stadtführer Baden-Baden" in the Baden State Library ( French ) and the Württemberg State Library ( English ).