Baedeker Friedrich's widow Eva Baedeker, née Konitz (1913−1984), piloted the firm until she died in 1984. She was the last Baedeker to play an active role in running the Baedeker publishing house founded in 1827, and negotiated the sale of the Freiburg branch to Langenscheidt before she died. However, the "Karl Baedeker" brand name has been retained by all subsequent owners of the company, in one form or another. Since 1979 Baedeker travel guides have appeared as "Baedeker Allianz Reiseführer" (travel guides), published in collaboration with the German insurance group Allianz. Multi-coloured with copious illustrations and in many languages, they now
Baedeker also persuaded Eduard Wagner, the Baedeker cartographer in Darmstadt, to move to Leipzig and establish a new company with Ernst Debes, a talented cartographer from "Justus Perthes" a leading cartography firm in Gotha. The new company was named "Wagner and Debes" with offices adjacent to the new Baedeker address. Herbert Warren Wind, the author of "The House of Baedeker" wrote: He added: Michael Wild, the Baedeker chronicler, refers to the Baedeker maps as "a feast for the eye." The expansion was fast and furious. New editions were now printed by several Leipzig printers, but the bulk of the revised editions