On November 4, the Gewerbliches Tageblatt und Anzeiger für Kassel und die Umgebung appeared as a sample number with a circulation of 150 copies, produced on the wooden hand press that was still the only machine in the print shop 13 years after the company had been founded. The sample number had a total of four pages, printed on two sheets of paper. In November Adolph set out from Kassel on "forays into the surrounding areas and, despite the cold winter weather, doing the rounds in surrounding towns and villages" in order to gain subscribers for the young newspaper. With a few copies of the sample issue in his backpack, he traveled on foot or on a wagon heading in the same direction, to Fritzlar, Grebenstein, Felsberg, Melsungen, Großalmerode and Ziegenhain. The arduous journeys led over muddy paths. Once grandfather got stuck after getting down from the cart. This detail formed the climax of his narrative at the Sunday dinner table: against all etiquette grandfather rose from his chair and, with expressive movements, imitated holding his boots by the shank so as not to lose them, while pulling his legs out of the sticky mud.

 On December 5, 1853 the brothers published the first issue of the newspaper in 400 copies. Thus began their rise. The names of the first subscribers, who entrusted him with their good money in advance on his advertising trips through mud and snow for the subscription of a newspaper that could have folded after a few issues, were still mentioned with grateful respect by Adolph Gotthelft in his stories five decades later. Among them were district administrator Weber in Fritzlar, postmaster Veith and soap boiler Dietrich, in Großalmerode baker Wilhelm Geyer, in Melsungen the stationmaster Hoffmann and in Münden the miller Scheede. According to their possibilities they congratulated on the one-year, five-year, ten-year and twenty-year anniversary of the newspaper, to which they remained loyal throughout its ups and downs, with a card, a letter, a bouquet, a bouquet of flower or a gift basket.

The Tageblatt did not catapult the brothers forward in a few weeks or months. It grew slowly, in small steps that required tenacious, patient and painstaking work day in and day out. It was not until 1869, 16 years after the newspaper first appeared that the company had grown to the point where "a large composing and machine room could be built, as far as space allowed, a generator powered by steam and a double-barrel press could be purchased and an office and editorial room could be set up" (Memories, p. 63).

It took another ten years until income allowed the business to move from the narrow Mittelgasse to the wide Kölnische Strasse  and there into a large, stately and representative building at number 10. In 1879, 38 years after the founding of the company, Carl and Adolph Gotthelft had made the leap to the so-called newspaper district around the Kölnische Strasse where their competitors also resided with their companies. The material success, a prerequisite for the move, was the reward for a development effort that had taken almost two generations.

From 1896  a mighty coat of arms had been emblazoned in stone above the entrance gate in the central area of Kölnische Strasse 10. For any visitor coming in, it underlined that the company entering regularly carried out printing jobs for the emperor's court camp on Wilhelmshöhe and that its owners were therefore allowed to call themselves "royal court book printers".

The title "royal“ can be explained because of the power relations of the time: the German Emperor was also King of Prussia in a personal union to whose dominion Kurhessen and thus also Kassel had belonged since 1866. On the morning when the coat of arms was set into the gate‘s arch by two sturdy craftsmen, Wilhelm, Albert, Theodor and Richard Gotthelft, who in the meantime were running the company together, stood on the sidewalk along with old Adolph Gotthelft, heads lifted upwards, watching the progress of the work. In hushed voices they regretted that Carl - the brother, father or uncle - and his wife Therese, who had played a major role in the success of the Gotthelft project with her industriousness in business and household, her clever management and her care, were no longer able to experience the event that all of Kassel was talking about. Carl had died in 1880, barely a year after the print shop moved to Kölnische Strasse and his wife Therese had already died in 1869. Four floors of the building rose above the men with side wings to their left and right: the first floor of the left wing housed the paper and stationery store and the first floor of the right wing housed the business office.

Julie completed what she had heard with her own experience:  she would pass through the entrance gate and would swing the door leaf open under the pressure of her father's hand. With the other hand he would hold her‘s from since they would have left the apartment on the second floor of Spohrstraße 4. The walk would take less than ten minutes: after leaving the house they would change sidewalk by crossing the street, then they would turn left and stride down the street to its junction with Kölnische Straße. She would trot with her child-like stride at her father's side and well-behavedly greet back whenevr he and she were greeted, which happened very often. At the intersection they would go a few more feet to the left and then would stand infront of the imposing building. It also impressed Julie when one of the clerks who had seen the tall and short figure approaching, would beat her father to it and dutifully yank the door panel open and hold it until they had entered. The employees, who were busy at the counters of the receiving office on the right, would nod to her in a friendly manner, hint at a wave or hand her a sweet, for which she would thank them with a curtsy.