Puma and Adidas are both clothing and shoe brands that are recognizable wherever you go in the world. But not everyone knows the story behind the creation of these brands. They were created by the rivalry of two brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler.
Their life
The two brothers were born in the city of Herzogenaurach, Rudolf in 1898, while Adolf in 1900. The younger brother Adolf was supposed to become a baker, but his passion was actually sport . Both boys were then enlisted to the German army to fight in the First World War. When they returned home, Adolf understood the importance of wearing good shoes to practise certain sports, so in 1924 he decided to found a sports shoes factory with his brother Rudolf , the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik.
Rudolf didn’t have the same passion as his brother, but he was very good at business. They produced the first shoes with iron spikes in history and immediately captured the interest of many people, including the coach of the German Olympic athletics team, Josef Waitzer. Many athletes in the Olympics of 1928 in Amsterdam and in 1932 at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles wore the shoes produced by the two brothers, who later joined the Nazi regime and were very successful among the German youth.
The real boom came during the famous Berlin Olympics in 1936. By now all Germans, athletes and boys wore their shoes, so the brothers, especially Adolf, decided to make their shoes known also to sportsmen from other nations, challenging the Nazi regime.
So they made a deal with Jesse Owens, famous African American athlete, who was wearing Dassler shoes in two of the competitions in which he won four gold medals in the presence of Adolf Hitler. This collaboration made them known all over the world and, at the end of the Second World War, after the fall of Nazis, the Americans allowed them to continue their business for having also given a hand to their athletes.
The quarrel between the two brothers
After the Second World War the problems between the two brothers began. Their relationship had never been a bed of roses, but everything got worse when Adolf married Käthe Martz; Rudolf, in fact, claimed that the real problems were born because of the girl. The conflict between the two brothers was fuelled mainly by the Nazis. Rudolf asked his brother to help him being enlisted for the war by getting him a permission as an essential worker, which had been granted to Adolf. Another reason was that Rudolf hated the fact that Adolf became the head of the Dassler family, even though he was the younger brother.
Another problem, again linked to Hitler’s regime, arose when the two were tried for joining Nazism: Rudolf, however, who was more attached to the regime, was investigated for having taken the opportunity to become an SS soldier. Many people, including him, claimed that the accusations were made by Adolf.
After being acquitted, in 1947 the two were able to return to work in the factory, but the tensions regarding the past did not allow them to continue working together, so they shared the assets and the earnings. The employees split into two factions, those who worked in the commercial sector followed Rudolf, while those who were in charge of design and research went with Adolf.
The following year, Adolf gave life to the Adidas brand by representing it with three stripes. The name comes from the combination of the diminutive “Adi” and the initials of the surname AdiDas; while Rudolf initially called his company Ruda, shortening his name, but after a few months he decided to change it to Puma. Since then, the two brothers no longer got along.
The reconciliation between Adidas and Puma
The choice of 21 September as the day of the reconciliation between the two companies is not accidental. In fact, since 2001 ONU has set this date as World Peace Day, after the symbolic handshake between the workers of Adidas and Puma.
Since 2016 this story has become a film directed by Oliver Dommenget that tells the story of the two brothers in a very realistic way.
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