When two brothers called Johannes and Johann Adam Birkenstock began making shoes in a tiny hamlet near Frankfurt in the 1770s, they could never have imagined what they were starting.
History doesn’t record much about the first shoemaking Birkenstocks, who can be traced to a document written in 1774, the year after the Boston Tea Party. But 251 years, eight unbroken generations and many Johanns, Johanneses, Carls and Karls later, the company that emerged from that first family business has become one of the most rampagingly successful footwear brands on the planet.
