Adidas and Puma bury the hatchet after 60 years of brothers' feud. The two firms played a friendly football game to symbolise the end of six decades of rivalry sparked by a family row that not even death reconciled.
It started when shoe-firm owners Adolf and Rudolf Dassler – both Nazi party members – began their feud in the war.
“We will probably never know the real reason why Adi and Rudi fell out,” said Ernst Dittrich, the head of Herzogenaurach’s town archive. “It was like a marriage that goes terribly, terribly sour.”
Elderly residents in this 13th century town have their own opinions – they say the brothers split because Adolf slept with Rudi’s wife, that their wives loathed each other, that Rudi fathered Adolf’s son and that Rudi had his hands in the till.
Then there was the comment Adolf made, apparently directed at the Allied bombers flying overhead in 1943 on a nightly mission to bomb Germany.
“There come those pig dogs again!” he raved as his brother clambered down the steps of the air raid shelter to join him. From that moment, Rudi was certain Adolf had been talking about him, not the RAF. It didn’t help things that the following year Rudi was shipped off to a POW camp, not returning until 1948, his bitterness now fuelled by his harsh treatment and lousy food.
He decided to break with Adolf and set up a rival sporting shoe business he called Puma. Adolf settled for Adidas – Adi being short for Adolf, and das for Dassler. Since then, rivalry has been too small a word to describe the animosity between the two firms as they squandered huge amounts of money in lunatic court fights.
Over the years if one firm hired a celebrity to promote its products the other tried to go one better. When Adolf turned down sponsoring an aspiring tennis player called Boris Becker, Rudi signed him up – not because he thought he would amount to anything, but to spite his brother.
Rudi Dassler died on October 27, 1974 of lung cancer at the age of 76, Adolf four years later aged 78. Their respective graves in the town churchyard symbolise their unending hatred and they could not be further away from each other.
The bad blood between them translated into what was one company town splitting down the middle. Puma people did not date Adidas people, let alone marry them. Residents became known as ‘Bent Necks’- you always looked down at someone’s feet to see which trainers they wore before deciding whether to speak to them.
Yesterday employees of both companies shook hands and stepped out to play a football game in support of the Peace One Day organisation which has chosen September 21 as an annual non-violence day.
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