Baedeker running of the firm. 1859−1861: Following the death of Karl Baedeker, his eldest son Ernst Baedeker (1833−1861) became the head of the firm. After his training as a bookseller in Braunschweig, Leipzig and Stuttgart, he had spent some time at the English publishing house "Williams & Norgate" in London. On New Year's Day, 1859, he had joined his father's publishing firm as a partner and just ten months later he was running it on his own. His tenure at the helm of the firm saw the publication of three new travel guides in 1861 viz the first Baedeker travel guide
Karl Baedeker appeared in 1861 after Karl Baedeker's death. However, in 1836 he published "The Traveller's Manual of Conversations" in English, German, French and Italian. The 352-page book also contained many useful Dutch expressions and vocabulary. The manual was founded on the works of Boldoni, Mad. de Genlis and others, acknowledged on the title pages, which were in both English and German, unusual then, but he was an astute businessman and primarily a bookseller at the time. Unusually, too, the German page was on the left and the traditional title page on the right was in English. Whereas the German title page