Two-Star Civilization

For kings and governments may err But never Mr. Baedeker.

--A. P. Herbert

At the stroke of noon one day, as the imperial military band began its daily concert in front of Berlin's imperial palace, Kaiser Wilhelm interrupted a conference of state by jumping to his feet. "With your kind forbearance, gentlemen," he said, "I must excuse myself now to appear in the window. You see. it says in Baedeker that at this hour I always do."

For more than a century, kings, governments and hotelkeepers did their best to live up to Mr. Baedeker; so did millions of tourists who followed the famed little red books to far corners of the earth, trying to keep their eyes at once on the great sights and on the small grey type. Last week, after a blackout of more than a decade, a brand-new Baedeker (on the West German Land Schleswig-Holstein) was again in the hands of travelers. Many a king and government had since become tourists in oblivion, but Mr. Baedeker was back in business.

Absolute & Lesser Musts. The guide was founded by Karl Baedeker, a book-dealer's son from Essen, Germany, who in 1827 published a thin booklet on the best ways & means of traveling along the Rhine. For the rest of his life, Baedeker traveled about Europe, by bicycle, on horseback and by coach, notebook in hand, eyes peeled for grandeur to praise or bedbugs to warn against. In time, Karl and his sons, who took over the business, were assisted by legions of conscientious observers combining the qualities of master spies and bons 'vivants. By the eve of World War II, the Karl Baedeker firm had published more than two million copies of its 87 guides, in English, French and German.

Baedeker catalogued and annotated the seven major and countless minor wonders of the world. Absolute musts were designated by --**, e.g., the Louvre, Yellowstone Park, Windsor Castle, St. Peter's, the Pyramids, the Colosseum and the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery in Boston. Lesser musts rated *, e.g., the Arc de Triomphe, the Paris Ritz, the WaldorfAstoria, the Jungfrau, Harvard and Yale (but not Princeton), Broadway, and the Brooklyn Post Office. Many a hotel offered handsome bribes for recommendation, but Baedeker remained the raspberry-red incorruptible.

Baedeker supplied complete chronicles of dynasties and even a list of the major Egyptian Deities and Sacred Animals, from Amon to Wto. Baedeker history, usually as dry as the Sahara, sometimes managed to achieve a touch of poetry. Discussing the London Bridge area, Baedeker relates: "In one of the houses dwelt Sir John Hewittf Lord Mayor in the time of Queen Elizabeth, whose daughter, according to the romantic story, fell into the river and was rescued by Edward Osborne, his apprentice. The brave and fortunate youth afterward married the young lady and founded the family of the present Duke of Leeds."

Torchlight & Pickpockets. Baedeker's supreme duty was to take the tourist by the hand and lead him gently through the pitfalls of foreign lands. Thieves of all kinds were among Baedeker arch foes; speaking of Lourdes shrine, Baedeker says: "The torchlight procession presents a fairylike scene (Beware of pickpockets)."

But there were other villains: taxi drivers, gondoliers and tourist guides who overcharge. The deadly Baedeker sin--apart from ignoring two-star sights--was overtipping. Says Baedeker sternly, speaking of Middle-Eastern baksheesh-seekers: "If [their] attacks are not silenced by an air of calm indifference, the traveler may use the word ruh or imhsi (be off!) or uskut (be quiet) in a quiet but decided and imperative tone."

Baedeker worried about everybody's health. "The traveler is cautioned against sleeping in chalets unless absolutely necessary," said Baedeker on Switzerland. "Whatever poetry there may be theoretically in 'a fragrant bed of hay,' the cold night air piercing abundant apertures, the ringing of cowbells, the grunting of pigs, and the undiscarded garments hardly conduce to refreshing slumber."

Baedeker tackled the U.S. through four editions, but never really felt at home. "Throughout almost the whole country, traveling is now as safe as in the most civilized parts of Europe," says the 1909 edition, "and the carrying of arms [is] unnecessary . . ."

Acropolis & Kommandatur. World War I, which redrew the map of Europe, cramped Baedeker's business (tourists were beset by more & more passports, visas and miscellaneous prohibitions); World War II destroyed it. In 1942 Hermann Goring ordered his Luftwaffe to destroy "every historical building and landmark in Britain that is marked with an asterisk in Baedeker." In accidental retribution for the "Baedeker raids," an R.A.F. bomb reduced the Baedeker plant in Leipzig to rubble; most of the old Baedeker plates melted into shapeless blobs.

Throughout the war, the present Karl Baedeker (the founder's great-grandson) dreamed of carrying on the family tradition. Preparing a guide to Yugoslavia, young Karl, as conscientious as his ancestor, once personally tried out twelve different ways to climb a Yugoslav mountain (12,467 ft). Drafted into the German army and sent to the Balkans, he kept voluminous notebooks on everything he saw, conducted fellow soldiers on sightseeing tours of the -- Acropolis and the -- Parthenon.

After war's end, Baedeker managed to publish two thin guides to German cities, ran into trouble with the Russians who protested because the guidebook gave the location of the Russian Kommandatur building in Leipzig.

Amid Europe's ruins, tourism has now resumed, and Karl Baedeker, 39, hopes that he will soon be able to publish other Baedekers for other countries. He hopes to bring out a new guide for South Bavaria and a new guide for Britain aimed at the U.S. tourist trade.

A great many of the world's tourists share Baedeker's hope, but they know it would never be the same again. Wrote British Author V. S. Pritchett in a recent burst of longing: "Bring me my loud check suit, my whiskers, my tendency to ask for articles not in common usage, my easily insulted ladies . . . my sketching block (not to be used near fortifications), my luggage pilfered by a rascal, my bill with the so-much-regretted error in addition. Let me roll around the town in a cab at a franc an hour and give a tip (small). It was civilization."

*Baedeker erred: he was Sir William Hewett (d. 1567).

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