Was Nicht im “Baedeker” Steht: Exploring Art, Mass Culture, and Antitourism in Weimar Germany

This article focuses on visual culture and the guidebook series Was nicht im “Baedeker” steht, published by Piper Verlag in Weimar Germany. The Berlin guide, written by Eugen Szatmari in 1927, shared attitudes toward tourism championed by the journal Der Querschnitt. Szatmari’s portrayal of Berlin—eschewing mass tourist sites—was informed by his role as a prominent journalist among intellectual circles in the Romanisches Café. Instead of maps, advertisements, or photographs, the guidebook promoted caricatures by such artists as Rudolf Großmann and Benedikt Fred Dolbin and combined these with the literary reportage style of Egon Erwin Kisch. Its similarity to Der Querschnitt reveals the dialectical engagement of Berlin’s artist and journalist circles with mass cultural forms, including tourism. While guidebooks diversified to accommodate a modern “art-loving” demographic that ridiculed both the elite traditions of Baedeker and the republic’s political impasse, this article posits that during this period it was difficult to travel outside established tourist infrastructures.