The Leipzig firm of Wagner & Debes was formed specifically to provide maps for the Baedeker�s travel guides. Fritz Baedeker, youngest son of company founder Karl Baedeker, convinced three prominent cartographers, Eduard Wagner and his son, Heinrich, of the Darmstadt cartography firm, and Ernst Debes, an outstanding cartographer from the firm of Justus Perthes in Gotha, to join forces and make maps for his guidebooks starting in 1872