The Brothers' Rupture — The Birth of adidas and PUMA

Last time, we saw the shoe brand that Adi, the brother who made, and Rudolf, the brother who sold, built in lockstep in the small German town of Herzogenaurach. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, those shoes reached the summit of the world. But from here, the story descends into a dark and long valley.

What we trace in this installment is the matter of why the two brothers parted ways, and how that rupture gave birth to two world-famous brands — adidas and PUMA. The detailed inner workings of the feud contain much that only the parties themselves could know. Here, within the range of what has been publicly told, we wish to look at the course of events as neutrally as we can.

The Trust That War Destroyed

When, and triggered by what, did the discord between the Dassler brothers become decisive? It is hard to pin down with a single event. What is certain is that the immense violence of the Second World War ate away at the relationship between the brothers and their wives at an accelerating pace.

In the 1930s, when Hitler rose to power, it is said that both brothers joined the Nazi Party together. That said, the elder brother Rudolf is held to have been the more ardent of the two, more so than the younger Adi. In wartime, over the management of the shoe factory and matters of conscription, the two men’s positions and intentions gradually came to differ.

There is an anecdote often told as a symbol of the rupture. One day when an Allied air raid struck the town, into the air-raid shelter where Adi and his wife had fled, Rudolf and his wife came in afterward. A single remark Adi is said to have let slip at that moment — ‘those dirty bastards are back again’ — did it refer to the Allied bombers, or to his brother and sister-in-law? Rudolf took it as the latter and is said to have been deeply wounded. The truth is uncertain. But the very fact that such an anecdote is passed down speaks to the depth of the distrust that lay between the two men at the time.

A Single River Divided the Town

And so in 1948, the moment finally came. Rudolf made the decision to leave the company he had long built together with his brother. The brothers began to walk their separate roads, dividing up the staff, the equipment, the customers — and even the bonds of family.

The elder brother Rudolf set up his own factory on the opposite bank of the Aurach river. At first he combined his own name, ‘Rudolf,’ with the surname ‘Dassler’ to call it ‘Ruda,’ but before long he changed it to a more dynamic and memorable name. That was the name of a supple, pouncing feline beast — PUMA.

The younger brother Adi, too, gave his own company a new name. He combined his nickname ‘Adi’ with the first three letters of the surname, ‘Das’ — adidas. In time, three lines, serving both as reinforcement and decoration, came to run along the sides of his shoes, and these grew into the three-stripe symbol known around the world.

In this way, one company split into two brands. And, frighteningly, the rift did not stay within the company alone.

The Small Town Broken in Two

With the Aurach river between them, the town divided, quite literally, into two camps. On this side of the river stood the adidas factory; on the other side, the PUMA factory. Because many of the residents worked for one company or the other and earned their living there, people naturally came to belong to one ‘side.’

That division reached into every corner of life, it is said. Those who worked at adidas did not marry people from PUMA. The bakery, the butcher, the tavern they frequented — they chose the shops of their own camp. Children grew up on separate sides and avoided association with the other side. As we touched on last time, when people passed one another, they dropped their gaze toward the other’s feet to check which shoe they were wearing. The nickname ‘the town of bent necks’ was born in just this way.

The brothers’ personal feud repainted the culture of an entire town. This is not merely a story of a family quarrel. How widely, and how long, the tangled emotions of a single human being can cast a shadow over society — this small town would embody that universal truth for half a century. The two brothers never reconciled in their lifetimes, and even in the cemetery they are said to have been buried in the spots farthest from each other.

The Legacy Called Competition

Ironically, this painful rupture became, as a result, a driving force that pushed the history of sporting goods greatly forward.

Right before one’s very eyes is a competitor going to desperate lengths to make a better shoe than the other. adidas and PUMA, intensely conscious of each other, honed their technology, wooed athletes, and fought over the market. When one devised a new ingenuity, the other tried to surpass it. The presence of this too-close archrival forged the products and the commercial skill of both companies at a frightening speed.

As a story of brothers it was a tragedy. But as a story of companies, it was the opening of a rivalry as dense as any the world has seen. And the first grand stage on which these two brands would prove their true ability to the world was soon to arrive. Two brands born across a river. The first stage to decide their contest was the football World Cup.