The roots of the shoemaking dynasty can be found in 1774 when Johannes Birkenstock is mentioned in a church archive document at a time when he was already a shoemaker. He later even became ‘master craftsmen in shoemaking’.

The Birkenstock brothers lived the simple life of rural craftsmen, hand-making shoes from start to finish: processing leather, fitting it to the last, attaching an insole and a sole. People living in Germany’s countryside were often poor and could only afford one pair of shoes, which had to be functional and robust. This pair of shoes would be repaired over the years by a local shoemaker. Among poorer communities, shoes would even be handed down from generation to generation. The fact that the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dedicated his 1776 work Hans Sachsens Poetische Sendung to a shoemaker, speaks volumes about the reverence in which the shoemaking craft was held.