Ferdinand Theinhardt did not cut the punches for Royal-Grotesk or Akzidenz-Grotesk — he might not have even ever cut sans serif type at all. The only collection of type specimen from his foundry I have found that can definitively be dated to the time when he still owned the company includes just two sans serifs. Ferdinand Theinhardt gave this folio to the German printer and author Theodor Goebel in January 1884, about a year before he sold his business. The first of the folio’s two sans serifs was simply called Grotesque. This was a duplicate of the Moderne Steinschriften types created at the Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger typefoundry of Frankfurt am Main, published in 1865. The second was an italic named Cursiv-Grotesque, which probably came to Theinhardt from the J.H. Rust & Co. foundry of Offenbach am Main and Vienna. Rust had imported the larger sizes of this typeface from America. They then created the three smallest sizes themselves, publishing them in 1875.

The first proper bound type specimen catalogue from the Theinhardt foundry dates to the late 1880s or 1890s, after Ferdinand Theinhardt had sold the business, and after its new owners had moved it from the northern part of Berlin to the city’s southwestern district. The catalogue features six sans serifs, including the two mentioned above. Of the other four designs, only one was actually created by the Theinhardt foundry. As this was published just after Ferdinand Theinhardt had sold his business, it is difficult to gauge what his exact role in the typeface might have been. Originally called Neuste schmale fette Zeitungs-Grotesk, the design was listed in this catalogue as Enge fette Grotesque. It was a straight-sided sans serif with rounded terminals, and it bears no relation to any styles of Akzidenz-Grotesk.

The remaining three sans serif designs in that undated, post-sale catalogue were Schmale magere Grotesque, Breite Grotesque, and Breite fette Grotesque. Where did these come from? Schmale magere Grotesque was a design sold under various names by at least seven other nineteenth-century German foundries. I do not know where it originated. The matrices may have come from Britain or the United States. Breite Grotesque probably came via the Krebs foundry. Krebs had produced the larger sizes for this design in-house; they called it Halbbreite Steinschrift. The typeface was different from the other Breite Grotesques sold by e.g., Ludwig & Mayer and Schelter & Giesecke. I have not found any mentions in primary or secondary sources that suggest who the authors of the Halbbreite Steinschrift design’s smaller sizes might be. I think it is quite likely that Krebs imported them from Britain or the United States, too. The visually unrelated typeface the Theinhardt foundry called Breite fette Grotesque was originally published in the mid 1870s as Zeitungs-Grotesk. That came from the Francke foundry in Danzig. Like most of the other sans serifs that the Theinhardt foundry featured in this catalogue, many German companies carried the Zeitungs-Grotesk design during the nineteenth century’s last two decades.