Didn’t Know That
Posted by Lex, on September 18, 2009
The Adidas and Puma sportswear companies share differing sides of the same river in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria. Their location in that bucolic hamlet is anything but a coincidence:
Adi and Rudolf Dassler started making sports shoes together in their mother’s wash-room in the 1920s.
They fell out during World War II, probably over political differences, and founded firms on either side of a river in southern Germany.
On Monday 21 September, employees of both companies will shake hands and then play a football match.
It is a big deal in the cobblestoned Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, where two of the world’s largest sportswear companies are based.
Adolf (Adi) Dassler and his brother Rudolf worked together until the Second World War, with both of them joining the Nazi Party. Rudi was apparently the more fervent of the two, was captured and suspected of being a member of Hitler’s SS. Rudi suspected Adi of diming him out to the Allies, the two fell out and never spoke to each other again until the day they died.
They are both buried in the same cemetery at Herzogenaurach. On opposite sides.