{"id":6175,"date":"2017-03-14T07:35:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T12:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/?p=6175"},"modified":"2017-03-08T13:21:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T18:21:30","slug":"march-19-2017-sibling-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/march-19-2017-sibling-rivalry\/","title":{"rendered":"March 19, 2017–Sibling Rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Tucker, Radford, VA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warm-up Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever had a sibling rivalry or a family feud? What was that like? If it resolved, how did that happen?<\/p>\n

Sibling Rivalry
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This isn\u2019t new news, though it may be news to you. Before World War II, Adidas and Puma were the same shoe company, run by brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler. Yet, the power of sibling rivalry and the fog of war led to a split between not just the companies, but the brothers. While Rudolph and his wife were hiding in a bomb<\/p>\n

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shelter during an air raid, he remarked, \u201cThe dirty !#$!@%*& are back again,\u201d almost certainly in reference to the Allied squadrons. Yet, he said it just as Adolf and his wife were climbing into the bunker. Stress already existed between the brothers, who shared a home despite a sour relationship between their wives. Hearing this remark, Adolf was convinced that his brother referred to him and his bride and not to the B17s overhead. By 1948, the businesses had split from one another, following the separation that already existed within the Dassler family. It\u2019s fabled that the brothers never spoke again after the division.\u00a0 While they were buried in the same cemetery, the separation remains visible: they demanded to be buried at opposite ends of the graveyard.<\/p>\n

Yet, the feud didn\u2019t end with the brothers\u2019 deaths in the 1970s. Adidas and Puma had antipathy toward one another for nearly forty years, and with headquarters in the same town, that anger bled over into the social loyalties for the townsfolk.\u00a0 In 2009, workers from both companies played a friendly soccer match, though residents of Herzogenaurach still suspect tension between the two companies. It\u2019s incredibly difficult to bury fifty years of antipathy.<\/p>\n

You can read <\/a>more about the Dassler brothers here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, this isn\u2019t the only story of such rivalry within business. For instance, another German family feud led to the development of Aldi and Trader Joe\u2019s in the U.S., known in Germany as Aldi S\u00fcd and Aldi Nord, respectively. What makes the story of Adidas and Puma so powerful is that, even under threat of death from another enemy, the vanity of the Dassler brothers rivalry played such a prominent role to shape the future of their families, businesses, and industries for decades to come.<\/p>\n

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Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n