Karl Baedeker name, would, in its heyday which lay ahead, become the premier and most successful travel guide publishing house in the world. Karl Baedeker died in Koblenz on October 4, 1859. He was only 57. In The New Yorker profile of the "House of Baedeker" Herbert Warren Wind wrote: "For years, he had attempted to do the work of several men, preparing the new guidebooks single-handedly and periodically revising the older ones. At length, his sturdy physical endowment had worn out under the strain." Michael Wild wrote in his article mentioned earlier: "It is a moot point whether he invented tourism
Baedeker he published his first offering—10,000 copies of "Schleswig-Holstein". This was printed in Glückstadt near Hamburg and contained some advertising to balance the books, as did some of his other contemperaneous titles. Allen & Unwin, the London publisher, once again helped the Baedeker firm with another loan and he published more city and regional guides in the years that followed. In 1951, Karl Friedrich and Oskar Steinheil, a pre-war Baedeker editor, signed an agreement with Shell AG, the subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, and Kurt Mair (1902–1957), the German printer and publisher based in Stuttgart, to produce a series of motoring