Matt MacNabb - A Secret History of Brands - The Dark and Twisted Beginnings of the Brand Names We Know and Love

Rudolf eventually joined forces with his brother on 1 July 1924, when he and Adi established the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory (translated from the German Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik). Their goal was to create high-quality footwear for athletes of all kinds. It was a brave venture that the brothers undertook to open their own business in post First World War Germany. On the surface the brothers appeared to be a perfect match. Adi was the soft-spoken and thoughtful craftsman, a master of the workbench, while his brother Rudolf was a gregarious and outgoing salesman. Rudolf was very personable and easily mastered the commercial aspects of the business.

The Dassler brothers had a lot in common and got on quite well, although Rudolf had the assertive and dominant personality of an older sibling. As boys, Rudolf and Adi spent their spare time outdoors playing various sports, where there was always a healthy rivalry and sense of competition between them. Adi had the drive of a younger brother who wanted to outdo Rudolf in some realm and that realm was sports. No matter how hard Rudolf tried, he couldn’t match Adi’s natural talent and athleticism. Adi seemed to understand sport in a more organic way, which would end up translating into his ability to create and craft innovative sporting shoe designs.

Rudolf may not have been a master at sports and the physical, but he did consider himself to be a man of the world. In the early days of the business he was already a young father, husband and businessman. Rudolf married Friedl Strasser on 6 May 1928 and the couple had two sons, Armin and Gerd. Always seen carrying his pipe, he was quite popular with the ladies; his dapper, smooth confidence earned him a lot of affections outside of his marriage. He was well known as a lady-killer and it didn’t amuse his wife Friedl one bit. Although she was well aware of his dalliances, he would usually hide them from her and engage in them while on holiday, sparing her embarrassment and pain. He didn’t always keep to this way of doing things however; he once had an affair while she was pregnant, which destroyed her emotionally.

Rudolf may have been a ladies’ man, but by contrast Adi was a bachelor through and through, that is until he met Käthe, the woman who would become his wife. The two married on 17 March 1934 and went on to have five children together; one son and four daughters. The two families of the Dassler brothers would become quite wealthy and well-to-do within their town, and their two families got along well for a time. The brothers found so much success under the Nazi regime that they soon needed larger factories to cope with the rapid growth. Rudolf’s wife Friedl began to play a very active role in running the family business as a bookkeeper, but Adi’s wife Käthe was less interested in the day-to-day operations.

Käthe was expected to participate and work, but she had only been 17 when she married Adi, and when their first child was born she refused to go to work. She lacked a work ethic, but had plenty of vision for what Adolf’s role in the company should be. Käthe would eventually be the inspiration behind Adolf growing bold enough to move on his own. The two families moved into a joint house next to the factory, despite their personal differences. The families rarely got along and the Dassler brothers became increasingly bitter towards each other, though the subject of many of their early feuds is pure speculation. Adolf and his family resided on the ground floor; Rudolf and his family were on the next floor up and their parents above that. The close living quarters and stresses at work began to culminate in fighting and family disputes.

During the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam the Dassler brothers equipped German athlete Lina Radke with her running shoes. Radke went on to be the very first athlete to win an Olympic gold medal for Germany. This accomplishment would reflect well on the Dassler brothers and brought some notoriety to their burgeoning company.

Fate would intervene in the lives of the Dasslers when Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party assumed power of Germany in 1933. Adi and Rudolf both became members of the Nazi party, a practice that was not uncommon amongst German business owners, at least the ones that wanted to stay in business. It is also likely that Adi, as a veteran of the First World War, would have had strong feelings about the promises being touted by Adolf Hitler for rebuilding German society and the economy. The Dassler brothers, ever industrious, saw the opportunities that could come along with the new era of Aryan dominance sweeping through Germany. It wasn’t long before the Swastika was all over their hometown of Herzogenaurach and the brothers weren’t about to be left out of progress. In May 1933, focussing on what was best for the company at that time, the brothers officially joined the Nazi Party; it was a decision they would later come to regret. As party members however, the brothers were able to obtain a lot of benefits from the government and the Nazis were anxious to get young Germans involved in Nazi-approved sports to showcase their perceived physical superiority and Aryan prestige.

Fighting within the family may have begun, but by the summer of 1936 there was so much new business coming their way that the problems were kept at bay for a time. The Olympics were coming to Germany and with the Games came opportunity. The brothers would find an extreme level of notoriety when they convinced a young, would-be athlete to wear their shoes in the Olympic Games. The Dassler’s set their sights on romancing American runner Jesse Owens well in advance and made a plan to get near him so they could offer him a pair of their custom, hand-made, running shoes.

Thanks to Hitler, the eyes of the world were closely focused on the Olympic Games that year and the brothers knew it was the perfect venue to showcase their product. Hitler had every intention of using the Olympics as his personal propaganda tool to show the world the grandeur and power of Nazi Germany. In an effort to add mystique and bravado to the games, the Nazis invented many of the ceremonial aspects of the Olympics that are still celebrated to this day. The first ever running of the torch and the grand opening ceremonies were both established by the Nazis. The eerie video and imagery from the 1936 games often shows crowds giving the Nazi salute with the Swastika banners looming in the background.

The Dasslers managed to work their way into the Olympic village in order to get close enough to Owens to convince the runner that their innovative shoes were the right ones to wear in the most important sports competition in the world. It turned out that Owens was indeed impressed with Adi’s custom-fitted spiked shoe. Spikes had been around since 1890, when Reebok founder Joseph William Foster had introduced them to the United Kingdom. The Dassler shoes were so impressive that Owens allowed the Dasslers to fit the shoes directly to him.

Jesse Owens went on to bring home four gold medals for America. The sweeping victory made Owens famous and crushed Hitler’s hopes of dominating the games with Aryan supremacy. Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect, once recalled the Nazi leader’s aggravation with Owens. Speer described Hitler as ‘highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvellous coloured American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilised whites and hence should be excluded from future games.’ This win was what would legitimise the footwear of the Dassler brothers and ensure their future. It was a bold move to provide Jesse Owens with footwear, to say the least, because it’s not the kind of thing that would sit well with the Fuhrer. The Dasslers’ business got a huge boost out of the experience, and Jesse Owens went on to be regarded as the sprinter of the century; something that the company would highlight in their advertising thereafter.