The Town of Bent Necks.

Note: This is a true story.


Back in 1920s Germany, there was a man named Cristoph Dassler who worked in a shoe factory. He lived in a town named Herzogenaurach, and this town was unique as it was split almost in half by a river, the Aurach.

Cristoph had three sons, but for the sake of this tale we only need to know the ones named Rudolf and Adolf. Now, being brothers the two were close, but they were also very different. Rudolf was the loud, outgoing one whereas Adolf (or 'Adi', as was his nickname) was more reserved and quiet.

Adi (left) and Rudolf Dassler. Picture courtesy of the Internet.

When World War I broke out, Rudolf was sent to the trenches. He managed to keep himself alive, and after the war ended he took up a job in Nuremberg, about 15 miles away from his hometown.

In early 1920, Adi set up his own shoe factory just 500 feet north of the Aurach river, and he decided to concentrate on the production of sports shoes. Four years later his older brother Rudolf joined him and they formed a formidable partnership: Adi would use his craftsmanship to make the shoes and Rudolf would use his marketing skills to sell them to the world.

Nevertheless, their company was a great success. At the 1928 and 1932 Olympics German track-and-field athletes wore Dassler shoes, and in 1936 Adi personally delivered a suitcase full of spikes to American sprinter Jesse Owens and persuaded him to use them. Owens went on to win four gold medals, and the company's reputation grew. Business boomed and the Dasslers were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes each year before World War II.

A rift grew between the brothers, but nobody was ever really sure how it happened. What we do know was that Rudolf eventually packed up his things and his family and set up camp in one of the company's factories just north of the river.

And thus, the old company was discontinued and in its place two new companies were formed. Two companies who, as it turned out, were not only out to dominate the market but to also destroy its rival from the other side of the river.

The company south of the river was named after its founder, Adi Dassler: Adidas. And the company north of it? Well, at first Rudolf tried to do the same thing, naming his company "Ruda", but it just didn't sound right so in the end he went with the name Puma.

Thus the Dassler family was torn into two feuding halves.And the town of Herzogenaurach, too, was split on the issue. The town then came to be known as "the town of bent necks", because people who met in the street would first look down to see what shoes the other was wearing, to know whose side they were on.

Sadly, the two brothers never reconciled. When they died, they were buried in the same cemetery, but spaced as far apart as possible.

In the 1980s both Puma and Adidas experienced a bout of decline. This was because the two brothers' sons and successors, Horst (son of Adi) and Armin (son of Rudolf) were so constantly at war with each other that they simply missed the coming of Nike and Reebok.

Rudolf's clan finally lost Puma in 1989, as Armin was dying of cancer. Horst had died two years earlier, but his side of the Dassler family managed to hold on to their company for a bit longer: Adidas was finally lost in 1990.

We can never know what could have happened had the feud never existed - maybe the Dassler brothers could have monopolized the entire sport shoe industry up 'till today. Well, we'll never know for sure. But one thing we do know is which brother's company came out on top: Adidas has been sponsoring the Germany national football team's kit since 1954.

Picture courtesy of soccerbible.com

So, the next time you put on an Adidas or Puma shirt, or a pair of Adidas or Puma shoes, spare a thought for that family feud all those decades ago. Had it not happened, the world of sporting fashion might just have turned out quite differently.

Sources: ESPNsoccernet, Wikipedia.