William Radde

By 1835 Radde was settled in New York city at 498 Greenwich as an "agent of Wesselhoeft, and importer of German books."[10] He married Christina Hoffmann[11] in September 1835;[3] his first son, William, Jr., was born in October 1836, the same year Radde was "agent of Wesselhoeft, importer of French and German books," and providing a German intelligence office at 471 Pearl Street.[12] In 1837, Radde was "importer of German, French, and Spanish books, wholesale and retail, 471 Pearl."[13] By 1839, Radde had established his business at 322 Broadway, opposite New York Hospital.

In 1835 Johann Georg Wesselhoeft sold The Homoeopathist, or Domestic Physician, by Constantine Hering, through his three bookstores in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York city.[14]

Radde earned a living assisting immigrants, selling Wesselhoeft's newspaper, and importing books. More risky were his efforts to develop a publishing business; his earliest efforts were not successful. He wrote:

Encouraged by good friends, I had Goethe's Faust printed at the Staats-Zeitung printing office and with it began the publication of a selection from the best German classics. I was promised active support and the prospect of mountains of gold were held out to me. To those who placed large advance orders, I guaranteed 40-50 percent discount. However, the majority of Germans [German Americans] at that time showed no mercy in judging Faust not to be a genuine classic. The same fate was suffered by selections made from other classical writers like Schiller, Jean Paul, Körner, Novalis, Uhland, Hölty, Hauff, Spindler, E. T. A. Hoffmann, etc. The sales price for this entire anthology in 24 fascicles amounted to six dollars, while these works issued by me could not be imported for twelve dollars. In spite of everything, I could sell as good as nothing, indeed even the previously ordered copies came back and I had to sell almost the entire edition as waste paper. The German [German American] press mocked these unsaleable books as spurious classics; one should offer genuine classics to the Germans of America, the old Volksbücher and tales of robbers, they would sell better. This joke spread like wildfire and one of the first affected was Johann Hoffmann, colporteur in Reading. He wrote me: "I need immediately the following genuine classics for cash: 100 Schinderhannes [famous outlaw, folk hero], 100 Heilige Genovefa [St. Genevieve], 100 Bayrische Hiesel [Bavarian poachers or highway robbers], 100 Eulenspiegel. Larger orders will follow." He kept his word, and I have since sold to him and others many thousands of chapbooks.

Letter from William Radde to Friedrich Kapp, February 19, 1877[15]

The 1837 edition of Goethe's Faust was the first American edition of Faust, published by "Verlags-Handlung, 471 Pearl Street, New York."[16] Verlags-Handlung was a short-lived partnership between Radde and Georg Heinrich Paulsen.[17] The financial panic of 1837 may have hurt sales. The New York Morning Herald praised its beauty:

New Edition of Faust.—The proficients in German literature have a great treat before them in a beautiful and perfect edition of the Faust of Goethe, just published by Mr. Radde, 471 Pearl street. It is elegantly printed — so elegantly that it would almost tempt one to learn the language to have the pleasure of reading the great philosophical tragedy in the original. [18]

In 1837, Radde used public listings of German American newspaper agents' names and addresses to send selections of his books "on approval" to newspaper agents all around the United States—postage due. The New-Yorker Staats Zeitung printed a complaint against Radde's "aristocratic insolence," noting that their agents would return unopened any future unpaid shipments. One of the books he was importing and distributing at the time was a manual on sex hygiene by A. F. Krause.[19] The publicity probably did Radde more good than harm.

By 1841, Radde had adjusted his business to market demands. Museum der Deutschen Klassiker (Museum of German Classics) became a bound book printed by Heinrich Ludwig, published by Radde, and widely distributed.[20] Two of Radde's other early publications for the German American market also exist: Die Glocke (The Bell) by Friedrich Schiller,[21] and Die Räuber: Abeneuer zweier Frende auf einem Schlosse in Böhmen (The robbers: adventures of two friends at a castle in Bohemia) by E. T. A. Hoffmann.[22]

None of Wesselhoeft's other agents would attempt to make a living selling only books and newspapers; in America, most books and newspapers were sold as any other commodity in general stores offering hardware, toys, stationary, groceries, notions, and feed.[23] In Germany and France, Radde had worked on academic books for wealthy customers and universities. In America he learned to sell inexpensive popular books through colporteurs, through local stores, and directly to primary and secondary schools (textbooks), though his English language advertising emphasized imported books and his own publications. Wesselhoeft was heavily influenced by Heinrich Zschokke to print cheap American progressive textbooks for German-American schools; in 1839 he published a German textbook for primary students, modified for American students.[24] In 1837 Heinrich Ludwig in New York city published a German primer;[25] he would later publish other inexpensive school books.[26] Radde and Ludwig worked together as publisher and printer over the years, but few of their cheap pamphlets have survived.[27] In English language newspapers and periodicals, Radde advertised his more expensive books.

The printer Heinrich Ludwig (Henry Ludwig) (?-1872) was a Palatine German American from Columbia County, New York. He started a retail book business in New York city selling German schoolbooks and hymnals printed in Philadelphia; in 1834, he established his own printing house and published the newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung (General Newspaper) (1835-1840?); in the 1840s he printed and imported German books; from 1852 to 1872 he published and edited Der Lutherische Herold (The Lutheran Herald) for the New York State Lutheran Ministerium.[28] Ludwig and Radde, both German Lutheran printers of similar age, collaborated for many years. Radde was an energetic entrepreneur and philanthropist who did not set up his own printing press in America but rather used skilled local printers. Henry Ludwig printed The North American Journal of Homeopathy from 1856 to 1870, initially as "Book & Job Printer, 45 Vesey-st.," later as "Book and Job Printer and Stereotyper, Nos. 39 and 41 Centre Street."[29] A hymnal printed by Ludwig in 1834 was stereotyped by Henry W. Rees.[30] By 1854, a Ludwig publication was "to be had of all the principal Booksellers throughout the United States"[31]

Hahnemann Hospital in New York City, 1884

"Homeopathic books and materia medica were the most profitable specialties pioneered and cultivated by Wesselhöft and his associates.... For most of the nineteenth century German-American firms dominated this market."[32] Radde dominated the market for homoeopathic drugs in the United States from 1840, when he purchased Wesselhoeft's drug inventory and also became the United States agent for the Central Homoeopathic Pharmacy of Leipzig, to 1869, when he sold his homoeopathic interests to Boericke and Tafel of Philadelphia.[33]

In the 1830s there was some evidence that homeopathic treatments had a lower mortality rate than mainstream medical practices of the time.[34] Bloodletting and "purging" (induced vomiting) were mainstream medical practices for such illnesses as cholera and yellow fever. There were no antibiotics or vaccines in Radde's lifetime. "Allopathic medicine"[35] was used to refer to mainstream medical practices of the time, and there was heated debate between allopaths and homeopaths. Radde supported homeopathy, particularly homeopathic research—as did the Wesselhoeft family[36] and William Cullen Bryant, President of the New York Homeopathic Society in 1842.[37]

Some Homeopathic Books Published by Radde

• Jahr's New manual of Homoeopathic Practice (Vol 1, 1841)[38] (Vol 2, 1842),[39] by Gottlieb Heinrich Georg Jahr. 2nd American Edition, from the third Paris Edition
• A Popular View of Homoeopathy (1842),[40] by Thomas Roupell Everest (brother of George Everest)
• New Homœopathic Pharmacopœia and Posology (1842),[41] by Gottlieb Heinrich Georg Jahr
• Homoepathic Domestic Medicine (1842),[42] by Joseph Laurie
• Hydriatics, or, Manual of the Water Cure, 3rd Edition (1843),[43] by Francis Graeter
• Enchiridion Medicum: The Practice of Medicine, 2nd Edition (1844),[44] by Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland
• Short Elementary Treatise upon Homoeopathia (1845),[45] by Gottlieb Heinrich Georg Jahr
• Chronic Diseases: their specific nature and homoeopathic treatment, Vol 5, Anti-psoric remedies (1846),[46] by Samuel Hahnemann, translated by Charles Julius Hempel
• Jahr's New Manual (1848), Volumes 1-2, translated and edited by Charles Julius Hempel[47][48]
• New Homœopathic Pharmacopæia & Posology (1850), by Charles Julius Hempel, Buchner, Gruner and Jahr[49]
• Jahr's New Manual (1853), Volume 3, or, Complete Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica, translated and edited by Charles Julius Hempel[50]
• Hydriatic Treatment of Scarlet Fever in Its Different Forms (1857), by Charles Munde[51][52]

Radde also published The North American Journal of Homeopathy, volumes 1-17, from 1851 to 1869.[53]

Radde published The New American Lawyer in the United States of America from the 1850s to 1880s, which provided immigrants with "up-to-date regulations of each state on wills, liens, contracts, and similar practical matters, accompanied by sample legal forms."[54] In 1870 he published Polyglot Pocket-Manual with English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese words and phrases for "Students, Businessmen and Travellers."[55]

Radde was a member of the German Society of the City of New York from 1839 until at least 1883,[63] during a period when the German Society and other immigrant Societies were trying to assist an influx of immigrants from many nations. From 1826 to 1832, the Society was essentially without funds and moribund. In 1833, they published the first printed guide for immigrants. In 1834, the Society noted "it is recommended to establish a German Library and a Scientific Society in connection with the German Society, in order to attract new members to the latter," and "resolved to establish an agency for the benefit of German emigrants." In 1837, they added two physicians to their Board of Directors. In 1838, John Jacob Astor, president of the Society from 1837 to 1841, donated $5,000 to the Society.[64] Over the following years, the Society was very active in assisting immigrants arriving in New York ports.

Radde did not become an admitted member of the Society until 1839. His acceptance was expeditious: in contrast, in 1838, "Mr. Charles M. Burkhalter, who has belonged to the Society for 45 years, and is its oldest member, was admitted to membership."[65]

In 1841, Georg Heinrich Paulsen — Radde's partner in publishing the 1837 edition of Goethe's Faust, and also Radde's associate at Wesselhoeft's New York information agency — was appointed as the Society's first paid agent for assisting immigrants.[66] He served in that position until 1845.[67]

In 1871, Radde served on the Committee of Seventy to oppose fraud by New York City public officials,[68] and he later served as a member of the board of Aldermen.[3]