image sourceGetty Images
- author, Mirza AB Baig
- position, BBC Urdu, New Delhi
There is a famous saying that ‘no friend is better than a brother, no enemy is worse than a brother.’ We see this in our normal lives too, but the fight between two German brothers not only divided an entire city, but their fight created a rivalry that led to a sponsorship competition in the world of sports. What continues to this day.
Be it the rivalry between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in the beverage world or the rivalry between Airbus and Boeing in the aviation sector, none is as intense as that between shoemakers Puma and Adidas.
After the end of the First World War, two German brothers Dessler brothers established a shoe manufacturing company called ‘Gida’, but this company was closed during the Second World War.
After World War II, the two brothers set up their own separate companies. This was followed by a rivalry between Rudolph Dassler and Eddie Dassler that continues in one form or another to this day.
More recently, the rivalry between the two companies has also been seen during the Hamas-Israeli war, when Puma pulled out of sponsorship of the Israeli soccer team, while the CEO of Adidas ended its sponsorship in Palestine, saying that there There have been mass child deaths, but on the other hand, the company has removed Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid from an advertising campaign for its ‘timeless classic’ show ‘SL72’, created for the 1972 Munich Olympics, which says ‘ Boycott adidas’ trends were seen.
Both these companies have a history of supporting and opposing Jews in the past.
image sourceAdi & Käthe Dassler Memorial Foundation
A company is the result of brotherly love
The elder brother Rudolf Dassler was born in 1898 in Herzogenurch, Bavaria, Germany, and his younger brother Adolf Dassler was born two years later in 1900.
At the age of 21 and 19, both of them opened a shoe manufacturing company named Gabruder Dassler Schoofebruck or Dassler Brothers Shoe Company.
While Barbara Summitt wrote a book called ‘Sneaker Wars’ on their rivalry, a movie ‘Adidas vs. Puma’ was also made on them.
Author Barbara Smit wrote in ‘Sneaker Wars’ how the two brothers started the company in their garage and within a few years had grown so busy that they had to move.
In 1933, he joined Hitler’s Nazi Party. Speaking to a magazine, Barbara Schmitt said that at that time it was difficult for a German company to be separate from Hitler’s party, and that too for a company that was in the field of sports, because Nazi Germany used sports as their propaganda machine. was doing
However, the joint company of the two brothers, ‘Gida’, sponsored the African-American athlete Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was no less than a coup against Hitler.
When he won the gold medal, all eyes were on his shoes. He was wearing Gida shoes. However, Hitler did not shake hands with Owens even after winning the gold medal.
Apart from this, Geda also sponsored other German athletes who won many gold and bronze medals and thus the company of the two brothers went beyond the borders of Germany to international fame and importance.
image sourceHannah Schwär/businessinsider
Origins of Enmity
The author of ‘Sneaker Wars’ explains in her book that his wife was behind their enmity because the two women did not get along at all. Until World War II broke out. Apart from this, Eddie was also said to attract women or attract them towards him and he is also said to be the cause of enmity.
During World War II, their shoe factory was turned into a munitions factory while older brother Rudy was drafted into the German army. When Rudy is called into service, he suspects that Eddie and his wife have planned to send him to the front to keep him away from the factory. Later, Rudy was first arrested for deserting his post and then arrested by the Allies in 1945 on suspicion of working for the Gestapo (Nazi German secret agency).
On both occasions, they became convinced that Eddie had set them up and informed them. According to a report published in the business magazine Fortune, his suspicions were confirmed by the report of an American investigating officer. However, while Rudy was imprisoned in a war camp, Eddie rebuilt the business, making shoes for American soldiers.
But after the end of World War II and his release, Rudy launched the Roda Shoe Company as an abbreviation of his name Rudolph, and the assets of the Gida Company were divided.
image sourceGetty Images
Establishment of Puma and Adidas
According to Babra Summitt’s book ‘Sneaker Wars’, the whole city was divided because of it. Two-thirds of the employees decided to go with Eddie, while one-third held Rudy’s hand because of Adolf’s sympathetic attitude.
Eddie Dessler also named his company Adidas based on his initials, but since there was already a company with that name, Eddie added an ‘I’ to make it Adidas.
The name Roda didn’t seem very appropriate for sports, so someone suggested to Rudy that he change the company’s name to Puma. Rudy liked the idea and renamed his company Puma, and so began a long-running rivalry that lasted until the death of the two brothers.
image sourceGetty Images
The split that divided the entire city
This enmity continued among his descendants and other inhabitants of the city. Historian Manfred Welker told Business Insider magazine that there were no houses in the city that survived the division.
These companies employed at least one man in almost every household in this small town.
The Orakh River runs through the center of the city and the river witnessed this divide as Adidas founded its company north of the river while Puma founded its company south of it.
For years the two companies sponsored the city’s two football clubs. While Puma was sponsoring FC Herzoggenurch, Adidas is still the sponsor of AVS Herzogenurg.
Both the teams did not lack anything as from boots to kit and other equipments were being provided by both the companies.
Not only the employees but also other people look at each other’s feet to see who is wearing which brand of shoes. They would see each other because no new style or brand had been launched. Hence, Herzogenurg was also known as the ‘crooked neck city’ in Germany due to the attitude of the townspeople to stare at each other’s feet with crooked necks.
The Dessler family feud is said to have divided the town so much that the families linked to Puma and Adidas bought from separate bakeries, had their own butchers, as well as their own pubs.
image sourceGetty Images
1954 World Cup
But Michael Dessler, the grandson of Puma’s founder, recalled that it was actually because of the river that the city was split in two, otherwise no one would have thought that Adidas and Puma didn’t go together.
In the 1954 FIFA World Cup for the first time since World War II, when West Germany were allowed to play after the ban, Adidas secured the team’s sponsorship despite Rudi’s long-standing relationship with the coach of the soccer team.
In the final in Switzerland, Germany made history by defeating the team Hungary, which was declared as the favorite for the World Cup, by three goals against two.
In this match, the Hungarian team had scored two goals in the beginning, but later it was said that the Adidas boot made of new technology gave Germany the lead.
Rudy said that this technique was introduced by him. However, after this victory, adidas had already moved beyond the borders of Germany to other cities in the US and Europe, while Puma still had a long way to go.
image sourceBarbara Smith
The popularity of adidas can be gauged from the fact that they also sponsored famous boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
While the film on Nike and Adidas shows that basketball player Michael Jordan did not want to wear any other brand than Adidas before his stardom, Nike’s promoters put everything on the line to get him and Nike. The new show ‘Air Jordan’ is launched which focuses more on Jordan than Nike and in the end Nike wins the battle.
Mohammad Abdul Hafeez, a Chennai-based marketing consultant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and former Indian roller hockey player, points out that rivalry or competition is not always bad, and an example of this is the rivalry or competition between Puma and Adidas. If it wasn’t for that, sports sponsorships and these companies wouldn’t be where they are today.
He said that American companies Nike and Reebok also established their foothold in this field, but Reebok made jerseys and other sports-related goods for a few days, but then Adidas took them away.
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The biggest antagonism is the violation of the ‘yellow packet’
Until the 1970 FIFA World Cup, Pele of Brazil was the most famous player in the world. For their sponsorship, the two companies entered into an agreement known as the ‘Yellow Packet’.
It was stipulated that no company would bid on Pele as it would skyrocket their bids, but just before the final the world noticed that Pele was wearing Puma sneakers.
The New York Times reports that Pele was apparently unaware of the ‘Pele deal’ but things got interesting when Puma sent one of their representatives, Hans Henningsen, to the Brazil team.
Pele and Henningsen spent some time together and Pele was angry that Henningsen was trying to sign all the other players in the Brazilian team without talking to them, but then Henningsen without Puma’s approval. offered Pele $25,000 for the World Cup and $100,000 for the remaining four years.
He also asked to give them a certain percentage on the sale of his brand of shoes.
Henningsen presented the offer to then-Puma boss Armin Dessler, who agreed regardless of the contract.
Part of their deal was that Pele would deliberately ask the referee for time before the start of the final match and that all cameras would be on his Puma-branded boots while he was tying his shoelaces.
You can imagine Adidas was furious at this breach of contract and once again their shoe wars intensified.
Muhammad Hafeez says that a series on this competition in the world of sports, “Royals Forever: The Sneaker Battle”, was also shown on German TV, but he said that Nike is the biggest brand right now, while Adidas with 12 billion dollars. Another is Puma with four billion dollars.
image sourcepuma
Their competition in India too
ITF tennis player Syed Babar Mehmood Zaidi says that his competitiveness can be seen in India as well.
He said that if Adidas had made tennis star Sania Mirza its brand ambassador, Puma had made cricketer Virat Kohli a part of its advertising campaign in the past years. He is accompanied by his wife and famous actress Anushka Sharma.
With his jersey number 18, he launched a whole range.
Syed Babar said that although Adidas is more active in the field of tennis and football, after the end of their rivalry, Puma is more active and prominent in car racing and Grand Prix etc.
He said that while the rivalry between the two brothers benefited both of them, it also benefited the sport and their competition in shoe technology was enhanced by the arrival of Nike and Reebok.
Both brothers, Rudy and Eddie, who passed away in the 1970s, are buried in a cemetery on either side of the city, while their grandchildren have a bar in their hometown where they occasionally gather in the evenings.
