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
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