Adolf Dassler

Adolf "Adi" Dassler was born on 3 November 1900 and died on 6 September 1978. He worked as a cobbler, inventor, and businessman, and he founded the sportswear company Adidas. He was the younger brother of Rudolf Dassler, who later founded Puma. The two brothers had once been partners in a shoe company that Adolf started, called Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). Rudolf joined the business in 1924. After World War II, a feud split them apart, and in 1948 each brother went his own way, founding his own company. Dassler was an innovator in sports shoe design and an early promoter who got athletes to endorse his products in order to boost sales. From his ideas, he built Adidas, which by the time of his death had 17 factories and annual sales of one billion Deutschmarks. To support himself while getting his business off the ground, Adi repaired shoes in town. In post-war Germany, with no reliable supply of materials or credit for equipment, he scavenged army debris from the countryside: army helmets and bread pouches provided leather for soles, and parachutes supplied silk for slippers. He became skilled at modifying available devices to mechanize production without electricity. For instance, he rigged a leather milling machine to a mounted stationary bicycle, powered by the company’s first employee. The business was driven by his vision of specialized sport designs. He made one of the earliest spiked shoes, with spikes forged by the smithy of his friend Fritz Zehlein’s family. He experimented with materials like shark skin and kangaroo leather to create strong but lightweight shoes. Years later, his widow Käthe said: "Developing shoes was his hobby, not his job. He did it very scientifically."

After the war, Rudolf wanted to become a policeman, but after finishing his training, he joined Adi’s firm on 1 July 1923. With the Zehlein smithy supplying spikes, Adi registered Gebrüder Dassler, Sportschuhfabrik, Herzogenaurach on 1 July 1924. They operated in a former washroom converted into a small workshop with manual electricity generation. By 1925, the Dasslers were making leather football boots with nailed studs and track shoes with hand-forged spikes. Two factors helped turn the business from a small regional factory—moved in 1927 from their parents’ home—into an international shoe distributor. First, former Olympian and German Olympic track-and-field coach Josef Waitzer took an interest. After learning about the plant and Adi’s experiments, Waitzer traveled from Munich to Herzogenaurach to see for himself. A long friendship developed, based on improving athletic performance with better footwear, and Waitzer became a consultant. This relationship gave Adi access to athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As early as the 1928 Amsterdam Games, Dassler footwear was used in international competitions. Lina Radke, a German middle-distance runner who won gold in 1928, wore Dassler track shoes. A German gold medal runner also wore them at the 1932 Los Angeles games. The second key factor was the role sport played in Adolf Hitler’s racial-nationalist philosophy. With the rise of the Nazi Party, athletic teamwork was emphasized. The Dassler brothers saw how their economic interests would benefit from politics and joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933, three months after Hitler became Chancellor. Rudolf was said to be the most ardent believer. In 1935, Adi decided that becoming a coach of and supplier to clubs affiliated with the Hitler Youth was essential to expanded production. During his denazification proceedings after the war, he pointed out that he had confined himself to coaching and avoided political rallies. He testified that he was involved in clubs with other political affiliations, such as a liberal gymnastic club, Herzogenaurach’s conservative KHC football club, and a workers’ sports club called "The Union." Both Adi and Rudolf were members of the National Socialist Motor Corps, and in their correspondence they used the complimentary closing "Heil Hitler."

In the early 1930s, Adi enrolled in the Schuhfachschule (Footwear Technical College) in Pirmasens. One instructor was Franz Martz, a master producer of lasts. Dassler became a frequent house guest of Martz, who allowed him to begin a relationship with his fifteen-year-old daughter Käthe. They married on 17 March 1934. Unlike Rudolf’s wife Friedl, Käthe was self-assertive and suspicious of the brusque ways of Franconians. She had frequent run-ins with Adi’s parents and with Rudolf and his wife, all of whom lived in the same house. Years later, in a letter to Puma’s American distributor, Rudolf blamed the rift entirely on Käthe, claiming she "tried to interfere in business matters" and that the brothers’ relations were "ideal" until 1933. Käthe gave birth to their son Horst in March 1936, their first daughter Inge in June 1938, and their second daughter Karin in 1941. After the war, two more daughters were born: Brigit in May 1946 and Sigrid in 1953. Adi saw the Berlin Olympics as the key springboard for international exposure. Although his relationship with Waitzer ensured that most German athletes wore Dassler footwear, he had another athlete principally in mind: American track and field star Jesse Owens.