Dortmund: The Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach is a small town, but it houses two of the world’s top sportswear companies.

Dassler brothers, Rudolf and Adolf had started out making shoes together before falling out. Their argument resulted in the creation of two sports giants, Puma and Adidas, both still based in the provincial town.

Rudolf and younger brother Adolf — Rudi and Adi to friends — began their shoe business in their mother’s laundry room in the 1920s.

“They were very different characters,” says Barbara Smit, a Dutch journalist and one of the authors who tracked the story of the Dassler brothers, Rudolf and Adolf.

The Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory came into limelight in 1936 when they provided shoes for American Jessie Owens, who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

But after the war their relationship fell apart. In Smit’s book, “Pitch Invasion,” she thinks that it could have had something to do with Nazi party links and after Rudolf was picked up by American soldiers and accused of being a member of the SS, he was convinced that his brother had turned him in.

In 1948 the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory was split in two. “In the middle of the night, Rudolf Dassler packed his bags and moved on the other side of the little river,” said Smit. “He established Puma on the other side. From there on it, the town was really split in two like a sort of mini Berlin with this little river as a partition in the middle.”

The brothers never did reconcile. While they are buried in the same cemetery, their graves are about as far apart as possible. But one of their descendents decided the family feud had gone on long enough. Frank Dassler is the grandson of Rudolf Dassler and grew up on Puma. Growing up, he had no contact at all with his great-uncle’s Adolf’s family. But these days, Frank Dassler sits not in Puma’s headquarters, but in an office at the Adidas campus. Two years ago, he took a job as the Adidas Group’s head legal counsel.

“This rivalry was years ago, it’s history now,” he says. Indeed, young people today seem little concerned with the once-intense rivalry. Just to check the reaction from the younger generation I asked one of the fans in Dortmund. “Even we have heard stories about the intense rivalry between Adidas and Puma but it’s not that strong now. People don’t care so much these days,” said 18-year-old Rainer, who was wearing Adidas shoes.