Aeternus Verlag
Green Series · Volume 1
1857–1941
A handbook that set off a world movement.
Officer, scout, draughtsman, and storyteller: in 1908 Baden-Powell wrote a book of instruction for boys — and unintentionally founded one of the largest youth movements in the world.
Explore the worksAuthor & context
A military handbook for scouts, rewritten for fourteen-year-olds — and out of that detour came a worldwide youth movement.
Born in London in 1857, Baden-Powell served as a British army officer in India and southern Africa. The siege of Mafeking in 1899–1900 made him famous across the Empire.
In 1907 he tested his idea at a camp on Brownsea Island; the book that set off the movement followed in 1908. He died in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1941.
Scouting for Boys is not a treatise but a handbook: campfire yarns, games, tests, maxims, and drawings alternate in short, practical units.
The tone speaks directly to young readers — vivid, demanding, often dryly funny. A translation has to hold exactly that register.
Within a few years Scout troops had formed on every continent; the book ranks among the most widely circulated books for young readers of the twentieth century.
It is at the same time a document of the British Empire and carries its worldview plainly. Aeternus preserves the historical wording and makes that context visible rather than smoothing it away.
New edition
The 1908 handbook in full: campcraft, tracking, tests, and yarns — completely translated into German, with the first-edition drawings, 41 new plates, and editorial context. Paperback and hardcover have been submitted to KDP; order links will follow after approval.