The pair had made shoes together in the 1920s in their mother's kitchen, trading as Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. But the relationship soured and Rudolf left to set up Puma, and Adolf renamed the company adidas. The split spawned decades of fierce business rivalry, split a town in two, and led to the establishment of two of the best-recognised sporting brands in the world. But now, after more than 60 years of enmity, Puma and adidas have chosen to call a truce. On Monday, employees of both companies will shake hands in Herzogenaurach and play a football match, the first joint activity since the Dassler brothers fell out. In a joint release, adidas and Puma said they were committing to the "historic handshake" in support of the "Peace One Day" organisation, which celebrates its annual non-violence day on Monday.

Although the Dassler brothers died in the 1970s, Monday's handshake will be significant for Herzogenaurach residents, whose psyche for years was shaped by their choice of footwear and its consequences. "Some of the stories you hear are just mind-blowing," Puma marketing manager Filip Trulsson said. "Puma people not marrying adidas people, adidas and Puma gangs in the schools, pubs loyal to one firm refusing to serve workers from the other, it's all gone on here," he told The Independent in 2006. Herzogenaurach had become nicknamed "the town of bent necks", because townfolk would not strike a conversation with a stranger until they had first looked down at the shoes that person was wearing, said author Barbara Smit, who chronicled the history of adidas and Puma in her book Pitch Invasion. "The town was really split in two like a sort of mini-Berlin with this little river as a partition in the middle," she told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Bakeries and stores proclaimed their loyalty to either Puma or adidas. Two soccer teams emerged - ASV Herzogenaurach and FC Herzogenaurach - each sponsored by one of the rivals and intermarriage between supporters was frowned upon, Deutsche Welle said. Some exploited the enmity to their advantage, said Rudolf Dassler's grandson, Frank. Handymen would come to work at his grandfather's house wearing adidas shoes on purpose. When Rudolf saw their footwear, he would instruct them to go to his basement and pick a pair of Puma shoes that they could have for free. "Rudolf simply couldn't stand the fact that someone was wearing an adidas shoe in his private home," Frank told Deutsche Welle. Initially the brothers had worked well together, despite their differences.

"They complemented each other very well to begin with," Smit told Deutsche Welle. "Adi Dassler was always more thoughtful, a craftsman who enjoyed nothing more than fiddling with his shoes. Whereas Rudolf Dassler was a more abrasive, loudmouthed salesman," she said. Theories abound about what drove the brothers apart. Smit believed it was politics. Both men had joined the Nazis, but Rudolf was more devoted to the cause, she wrote in her book. And when Rudolf was arrested by American forces and sent to a prisoner of war camp, he was convinced it was Adi who had turned him in.

But town gossip, predictably, rested on more salacious reasons. Adolf had slept with Rudolf's wife, or perhaps Rudolf had fathered Adolf's son, town folk chattered, The Independent said. Others believed Adolf had also caught Rudolf stealing from the company's petty-cash box, it said. But it's an incident during an Allied bomb attack on Herzogenaurach during World War II in 1943 that is used most to highlight tension between the brothers, and frequently cited as the moment they fell out irrevocably. "The dirty bastards are back again," Adolf had said while sitting in a bomb shelter just as his brother and his family came down the stairs. Adolf had referred to the Allied war planes, but Rudolf was convinced his brother was speaking about him and his family.

"We will probably never know the real reason why Adi and Rudi fell out," Ernst Dittrich, head of Herzogenaurach's town archive, told The Independent in 2006. "It was like a marriage that goes terribly, terribly sour." Tensions between the two firms appeared to have eased in recent years, with neither company in the hands of the founding families any longer. The rift in the town also appeared to be have mended. Teens in the town square could be seen hanging together wearing Puma, adidas and even Nike, The Independent wrote. But when Rudolf Dassler's grandson Frank took a job with adidas in recent years, there was a bit of a stir. Local newspapers were critical.

"My stepmother and my stepbrother weren't very happy about this decision. They thought it would be a betrayal against my grandfather," he told Deutsche Welle. "But this rivalry was years ago, it's history now," he said. - with wires