Reformists and protesters launched comfortable footwear from Germany on its way to fame. In 1945 Klaus Maertens, a young Bavarian doctor temporarily handicapped thanks to a skiing accident, began thinking about how he could re-model traditional footwear by inventing a particularly comfortable shoe with a shock-absorbing sole.
Together with the engineer Herbert Funck he developed a shoe with air cushions in the sole that acted as shock absorbers. The idea was utterly unique and was later copied again and again. Yet while they were ideal for health and work shoes, for a long time the ‘orthopaedic’ Dr. Maertens air-cushioned sole technology was not used for fashion footwear.
Shoes as a form of protest
However, this was to change drastically with the advent of the punk movement in England in the late 1970s. Skinheads and punks alike considered a rough work shoe, as worn by England’s dustmen and postmen, to be just right for their protest outfits. It represented a protest against the consumer society as well as Birkenstock-toting hippies and environment freaks. That shoe - the Doc Martens shoe- was to become the cult youth footwear.
Today it still features the German Dr. Maertens air-cushioned sole, the license for which British footwear manufacturer R. Griggs purchased in 1959 to use for his army and work boots. 
From cult youth footwear to an all-round shoe for everyone
Under the name Dr. Martens Air Wair the range of Docs, or DMs, stretches from the actual cult shoe itself, the 1460 boot with eight eyes and yellow stitching, via the ‘classic’ 1461 Oxford style to the ‘elegant’ brogue with its typical hole pattern. With some styles sporting a steel toe, Doc Martens shoes enjoy high quality workmanship with a welt sewn sole, are exceptionally robust and - as work shoes - are VAT exempt. Rock and pop groups love Doc Martens, including pop icon Madonna who once matched hers with sexy corsets and fishnet stockings.
In the late 1990s DMs liberated themselves from the traditional connotations of high fashion and politics. Today they are once again valued as comfortable, traditional shoes. This is true also for the authentic Dr. Maertens air-cushioned shoe which is still manufactured in Seeshaupt, a small town on Bavaria’s Lake Starnberg, and sold also on the internet.
Birkenstock in Woodstock
Similarly, reforms and protests also triggered the invention and subsequent popularity of an entirely different kind of health shoe. ‘Many visitors to Woodstock wore our sandals,’ states the manufacturer Birkenstock. This orthopaedic shoe, or ‘Birkenstock sandal’, experienced an astronomical rise in popularity thanks to hippies and proponents of the alternative lifestyle. It finally became a fashion item with the ‘68 protest generation who declared this dedicated health shoe to be a prime example of ‘anti-fashion’, a perfect accessory with which to express their socially critical opinions.
During the late 1980s, when perfect styling determined the fashion on the street, the Birkenstock sandal lost some of its outsider attraction. However, as the name had long since become a symbol for health shoes the brand was subsequently used for a number of new products and continued to maintain the upswing. Today, the Birkenstock range includes elegant ladies and men’s shoes, boots, sneakers and hiking shoes as well as clogs and hiking sandals.
Sandals for stars
In 2003, to mark the 30th anniversary of one of Birkenstock’s most successful styles, the Arizona sandal, several celebrities including Cindy Crawford, Robin Williams and Whoopie Goldberg were invited to design their very own version of it. The highlights of the campaign included the Birkenstock as designed by supermodel Heidi Klum, an elegant suede leather sandal with studs and stones, and another trendy style made of denim with frayed edges.
Behind the name Birkenstock are almost 230 years of development and a product philosophy which can be summed up as follows: deep heel cups, medial and lateral arch support, toe grips and foot bed edges of light cork/latex, all covered in suede leather. The successful family business is headquartered in Bad Honnef on the Rhine.
Comfortable shoes conquer the fashion market
While Birkenstock and Dr. Maertens Air Wair are the best-known comfortable German footwear brands, they are not the only ones. For instance, in 1992 the Munich-based traditional footwear manufacturer Eduard Meier launched the Peduwear collection, a range of modern business shoes manufactured using asymmetrical lasts. Later, asymmetrical lasts were used first by trendy fashion label Prada, then by producers of mainstream fashion footwear. For the first time in footwear history orthopaedic shoes broke away from their niche existence as health or ‘protest’ footwear and conquered the mainstream fashion mark.
Dr. Ingrid Loschek
is a professor of fashion history and fashion theory at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Pforzheim, Germany, and author of several fashion books
online-redaktion@goethe.de
June 2003
