Brigitte Baenkler, the third daughter of Adi Dassler, died last weekend after a short illness. Like her brother and three sisters, Baenkler started helping out at Adidas once she left school, specializing in contacts with East European countries and Russia. She sold her 20 percent share of the company at the same time as her sisters, in 1990, to the French entrepreneur Bernard Tapie, for about 110 million deutschemark ? the equivalent of €55 million (see our stock chart in this issue for Adidas'current market capitalization). However, she remained in Herzogenaurach, the small Franconian town where Adidas is established. More business-minded than her sisters, she bought back from Tapie the former Sportshotel, which had been built in Herzogenaurauch by her parents ahead of the Munich Olympics in 1972 to welcome athletes and officials. Baenkler turned it into the Herzogspark Hotel, a comfortable hotel and conference center, adorned with pictures of the Dassler family with assorted sports stars. In the last years Baenkler had been at the forefront of efforts to normalize relations between the two sides of the Dassler family, which was acrimoniously split when Adi and Rudi Dassler parted ways to form Adidas and Puma in 1948. She also remained an active link between the Dassler family and Adidas, where her death was described as a major loss.