Baedeker to have three of his four sons − Hans, Ernst and Dietrich − beside him in the firm, as editors and writers. Karl Baedeker III, the fourth son, entered academia and rose to become a professor of physics at the University of Jena. He was killed in action at the Battle of Liège in August 1914. It was his son Karl Friedrich who revived Verlag Karl Baedeker after the Second World War. During his reign, which lasted over 50 years, Fritz produced 73 new "Baedekers", as they came to be known universally. The Baedeker travel guides became so popular that
Karl Baedeker Herbert Warren Wind, had spent a considerable amount of time at the contemporary Baedeker publishers in Germany, researching the history of the firm. He gave the following account, related by Gisbert von Vincke, a German Shakespearen scholar, of the famous "Milan Cathedral" story, which has acquired a legendary status of its own, because of its manifold variations: On descending from the roof, Baedeker reversed the pea-transferring process, thus ensuring that there was no error in his calculations. The number of peas multiplied by 20 plus any steps remaining had given him the correct count. A few years after Karl Baedeker