History of travel

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It will probably never be possible to say with certainty when a change of location resulted in travel in the sense of an only temporary absence from permanent residence. In the beginning, it was practical reasons such as the search for food, water or avoiding natural disasters that turned people into travelers , but the reasons changed after people settled down.

Antiquity

Pilgrimages were probably the first real journeys . Pilgrimages to the temples of the deities have been documented for ancient Egypt. Among the Greeks , a distinction was made between work and leisure, with leisure being referred to as "schole" and work with the negation of leisure "a-scholia".

The higher strata of Greek society did not have to do any physical work (slave-holding society) and could therefore acquire knowledge and wisdom through learning, reflection and conversation ( rhetoric ). But the slaves and the lower class also had free time, which they spent around 60 days a year at the Olympic Games or other festivals.

Among the Romans , too , the term for work “ne-gotium” was derived from the term for leisure “otium”. The ruling "otium class" had the task of directing the state and was also able to pursue individual comforts. The Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or by the sea and traveled to their villa urbana or villa maritima . Numerous villas were located in Campania , around Rome and in the northern part of the Adriatic such as in Barcola near Trieste. The plebeians also had individual free time due to the economic development and slavery, whereby "the explosive power of this free, unbound time was soon recognized by the rulers". For this reason they organized “bread and games” or chariot races in the Circus Maximus , public baths as well as parks and sports arenas were created and also visibly changed the cityscape of Rome from an architectural point of view. One traveled to these games from afar, which can then be seen as a journey .

In Roman times people mainly traveled on foot. Only a privileged few could afford a trip on horseback or with a team. You covered between 25 and 35 kilometers per day on foot, up to 80 kilometers by car and even a little more by horse. The imperial post, the "cursus publicus" even covered more than 200 kilometers a day with urgent couriers .

The location of the rest stops and hostels were tailored to the road network and the needs of travelers. There were rest stops and hostels on every highway , where horses could be changed, wagons repaired and travelers cared for. A distinction was made between “mansiones”, “stationes”, “mutationes” and “hospitia”.

The “mansiones” or “stationes” were already very well equipped inns with refreshment stops and overnight stays , stables and supply stores. "Mansiones" originally served to supply an imperial travel company and "stationes" were the service buildings of the road police .

At particular locations such as river crossings or mountain passes , there was the " hospitia ". They also offered accommodation for longer periods of time if it was not possible to pass the particular stretch of the route. Otherwise, the permitted length of stay in the accommodation on the street was limited to a maximum of three days.

The Romans maintained their road network throughout the empire. This was just as important for the courier services for the rapid deployment of troops. Pilgrims and business travelers also benefited from this .

Ship trips led mainly in the Mediterranean to the provinces of the Romans. We also know of the travel activities of the first Christians, especially the apostles, who traveled to Asia Minor , Greece and came to Rome . But there were extensive voyages that led to the Atlantic coast of France and Great Britain .

From the decline of Rome to the beginning of the Middle Ages

Section from the Tabula Peutingeriana

After the end of Roman rule in Western Europe, the streets fell into disrepair. For a while there were still travel routes through remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire in Italy ( Ravenna , Aquileia ). Then came the migration of peoples , which basically also represented travel. After the Great Migration, the countries only slowly recovered from their economic and political decline.

But early on, a lively missionary activity developed, initially for church motives , and on the other hand a flourishing pilgrimage- foreign trade. According to legend, the relics of Saint James were washed ashore in a boat in Galicia , northern Spain, and were buried by the hermit Pelagius in 813 or 822 on Mount Liberedón after the appearance of heavenly lights: on the campus stellae , the field of stars , today Santiago de Compostela . When Moorish armies destroyed the Shrine of St. James in 997, a quasi politically motivated pilgrimage began: Santiago de Compostela became a Christian pilgrimage site. These had to be preserved and pilgrimages began to be organized from all over Europe on special routes: the Camino de Santiago .

The most important pilgrimage routes led via Maria Einsiedeln along the Alps to southern France, where a road from Maastricht , Brussels and Paris came from the north . Combined in this way, the route followed over the Pyrenees to Spain via Roncesvalles and Pamplona , Puente la Reina and Santo Domingo de la Calzada to León and even to Santiago de Compostela.

In Germany, the relics of St. Wolfgang and Bishop Ulrich von Augsburg were already the destination of pilgrims in the middle of the 10th century. Then trips to Rome began. Here it was not only pilgrims, but also business people and tourists . One traveled across the Alps on the Franconian Road ( Cisa Pass , Pisa , San Miniato , Siena , Bolsena )

The middle age

Commercial centers emerged along these pilgrimage routes, which in turn produced commercial travelers. Sea routes developed into travel routes, the Maritime Republic of Venice should be mentioned here. The "Serenissima" had regular shipping connections with Constantinople ; One of the great travelers of the late Middle Ages was the Venetian Marco Polo , who - according to his own account - traveled to China by land .

Until a few centuries ago, pilgrims were dependent on board and lodging in church hostels, as they usually had no assets ( see also: Martin Luther's trip to Rome (1510–1511) ). Travel in today's sense was reserved for the wealthy part of the population for a long time. In particular, trips for educational purposes were largely a privilege of the nobility, who sent their sons on so-called cavalier journeys , and later a privilege of the upper middle class. Recreational trips were not known. These only appeared in the 19th century - Thomas Cook is considered to be the inventor of the package tour , but this is doubted.

Modern times

At the beginning of the 17th century, Matthäus Merian was a great pioneer of travel literature. So he brought out travel books to the Far Eastern countries. Most people avoided travel until modern times. That changed now. Research expeditions, educational trips and later vacation trips began.

Explorer and Explorer

With the rediscovery of the “New World” in 1492, Christopher Columbus opened up a new dimension in sea voyages. After Columbus, a series of sea voyages began: Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India , Ferdinand Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the world;

Alexander von Humboldt is one of the most famous researchers around 1800 and is considered a co-founder of geography as an empirical science.

The grand tour of the nobility

Main article: Grand Tour

In the 16th century , the so-called Grand Tour came into fashion in British aristocratic circles . The youngsters were sent on a mostly multi-year trip to Europe and especially Italy , where they were supposed to expand their education and language skills, make contacts and acquire prestige and cosmopolitanism. Later this institution was also taken up by the nobility of other European states and finally by the middle classes.

Soon hostels and inns flourished along the routes. In this way, aristocratic rulers created the prerequisites for improving routes and internal security, building summer residences, and building city centers and spas.

The British became “pioneers of mass tourism ”, because the more they became a powerful colonial power, the greater the number of them traveled to the big cities of Italy.

Bourgeois travel

In the Romantic Age (1795–1840) the number of travelers increased considerably. There were also those who felt a "longing for the infinite", who wanted to have fun and find themselves. This was in keeping with the mindset of that age.

As people were very close to nature at this time, they discovered the Alps as a travel destination. So in 1857 the first alpine club in England, the Alpine Club, came into being . Hiking clubs were founded, for which Goethe's insight applied: "You don't travel to arrive, but to travel".

The business world was also discovering that profits could be made as the desire to travel increased. In this upswing, the first German publishing house for travel guides was founded by Karl Baedeker in 1827 . Since the infrastructure was not sufficiently developed, the travel manuals became very important because they contained important tips and information for travel preparation. In 1841, what was probably the first tourist group tour, organized by Thomas Cook , followed. In 1845 Thomas Cook founded the first travel agency in Leicester, England. In 1863 the first travel agency in Germany was opened by Carl Stangen in Breslau . This offered trips to Egypt in 1873 and even world trips in 1878 .

With the beginning of industrialization , the new bourgeoisie (capital bourgeoisie) tried to copy the aristocratic leisure behavior (visits to the theater, travel), but it was also subject to the new constraints of the performance society and capitalism.

As a result of this behavior of the new urban bourgeoisie, the classic nobility turned to new tourist areas: the sea and the high mountains as a new summer destination . Until then, stays at the sea were only for medical reasons. The nobility, however, discovered remote fishing villages and individual stretches of coast as segregation targets . The sporty and scientifically motivated alpine tourism was promoted by Rousseau's "Back to Nature" as well as by the founding of various alpine clubs (1862: Austrian Alpine Club and 1869: German Alpine Club , 1873 merger of the two clubs to form the German and Austrian Alpine Club DOeAV).

As 1870, the skiing in Switzerland was invented, the Alpine tourism expanded on the winter out, with classic "winter tourism centers" emerged. The times before the First World War and the interwar period are characterized by the classic summer vacation: the workers receive vacation regulations and vacation pay with the intention of financing tourism through their leisure activities . The geographical direction of this leisure activity is concentrated on “country life”, whereby accessibility with one's own automobile or motorcycle becomes important. In the country itself, the "holiday loyalty" to the host family / guest house plays an important role.

In 1891 the German businessman Albert Ballin set off from Hamburg for the Mediterranean with the ship Augusta Victoria . The first worldwide cruise ship was the Princess Victoria Luise, built in 1901 . This was the beginning of cruise ship travel.

Wandering fellows

Since the Middle Ages until today, journeymen have deepened their knowledge and skills by wandering from one master to the next. This time is called the years of travel .

Travel in the 20th century

In the 19th and 20th centuries, travel was no longer the privilege of the wealthy, but simple workers were largely excluded from it. This is due to the industrial revolution and the conditions of the workers that came with it. The wages were very low, the working hours were often 15 hours or more per day, even Sundays had to be worked and there were seldom holidays. Despite these poor conditions for workers, the politicians did not recognize the great need for vacation. They believed that physical activity was not harmful to health and therefore workers did not need rest. Officials, on the other hand, only do intellectual work and are therefore not physically busy. For them, a vacation is therefore justified.

In 1895 the group of friends of nature was founded , who campaigned for the workers to be able to relax at least on Sundays and public holidays. The Friends of Nature also organized day trips to nearby destinations after the workers succeeded in getting their way for a short annual vacation. Even so, until the 1930s they remained far from realizing their dreams of a longer journey. The National Socialists took advantage of this by granting six to twelve days' annual leave. This enabled them to win a large number of workers as voters. It was claimed that this annual leave was legally binding, but this was not the case until 1963.

This new direction of tourism was made possible by the industrial revolution and technical progress ( railroad and steamship ): high capacities could be transported at high speed and at low cost. In this way, lower social classes were also able to cover greater distances within a day (excursion, bathing and tourist traffic).

The National Socialists founded the organization " Kraft durch Freude " (KdF). These offered attractive trips at very reasonable prices, which the workers could also afford with their low wages. With the guaranteed annual vacation and the organization “KdF”, the National Socialists created a huge wave of travel.

But the emerging tourism is also used as a political means: On May 1, 1933, the National Socialist German government imposed a thousand-mark ban on Austria in order to weaken the neighboring country, which had previously been banned by the NSDAP, economically. Leisure time under National Socialism was organized and regulated by the state: leisure organizations “Kraft durch Freude”, the “ Hitler Youth ” and the “ Bund Deutscher Mädel ” ensured that all parts of the population were organized in terms of leisure time. This tradition of state supply of holiday offers is continued in tourism in the GDR .

In the early 1950s, the economy experienced a huge boom after World War II . The belief in “prosperity for all” grew from year to year. The mail order companies Neckermann and Quelle as well as the ADAC , which initially did not even belong to the tourism industry, suddenly launched very affordable travel offers on the market. They did this by keeping their costs very low by building cheap hotel buildings abroad. This also forced other companies to lower their asking prices; so the generally addressed mass got bigger and bigger.

After the turmoil of the Second World War, there was no way of organizing leisure time during the reconstruction or occupation period. It was not until the economic upswing of the 1960s that “boom factors” and requirements for the later tourism industry emerged:

  • Increase in real income : Vacation as a new social prestige for all social classes and a change in values ​​due to falling working hours
  • Urbanization : promotes an escape from stressful stress factors (vacation = valve) and a change in the occupational structure due to the increase in the service sector
  • Mobilization: as an approach to mass tourism . Compensation function from the anonymity of the big city "The attractiveness of the distance has something to do with the downgrading of the vicinity" or "Is it still worth arriving?"
  • demographic reasons: high proportion of older, well-educated people
  • the airplane was increasingly becoming an important means of tourism and from the 1970s onwards the prices of airline tickets fell

These boom factors created a prototype of the modern vacation trip. Industrial series production, standardization, production based on the division of labor and a high number of items per unit were also a condition and necessity for modern package tourism. In this process, tour operators have taken on functions that go beyond those of a normal producer: they offer worldwide transport, the solution of vacation problems and the organization of vacation situations ( club vacation , incentive ).

Interrail travelers 1985

As an alternative to the classic family and package tours that had developed in Europe during the 1950s and 1960s, the hippie trail established itself as an alternative form of travel among young people of the 1968 movement . Traveling in mobile homes , hitchhiking and InterRail became more important.

With the introduction of low-cost airlines , short and long-haul travel became affordable for a wider social class.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source: www.roemerstrasse-via-claudia.de
  2. ^ Eberhard Straub: Albert Ballin. The emperor's shipowner. Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-88680-677-4 .
  3. ↑ Stefan Wolter (Ed.): "What an overwhelming sight is presented to our astonished eyes". The Pietsch couple on a pleasure trip 1908/1912 , Halle 2008, ISBN 978-3866344600