Albrecht Diskont

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a shop shutter, a cash register, a line drawn on a map)
ALdi. ALbrecht DIskont. Two brothers. Again.

[Verse 1]
Karl and Theo Albrecht took their mother's little grocery
in Essen, after the war, and they made a rule about it:
carry almost nothing, sell it cheaper than anyone,
no frills, no displays, no advertising, no delay.
It worked so well it changed how Europe buys its food.
And then, in 'sixty-one, they had an argument.

[Chorus]
Cigarettes! The argument was cigarettes!
One of them said sell them at the till, the other said we won't —
he said they'll bring the shoplifters, and that was the whole of it,
and they split the entire country on a line across a map!
ALDI NORD. ALDI SÜD. Two companies. One name.
Two brothers who could not agree about tobacco.

[Verse 2]
And the line is real, it's called the Aldi-Äquator,
it runs across Germany and it has held for sixty years,
and the two firms buy separately and brand a little differently
and mostly do not compete, because the map says where they are.
Two brothers. One idea. One disagreement. Two halves.
It's the Dasslers again, in groceries, forty miles away.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And Theo was kidnapped, in 'seventy-one, held seventeen days,
and the story that survives — which may be polished, but survives —
is that he questioned the ransom, queried it, negotiated it DOWN,
and afterwards tried to claim the payment as a business expense.
That is either the coldest thing I have ever heard
or the most completely consistent. I think it's the second one.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the register closes)
It was about cigarettes.
Sixty years of a divided country. Over cigarettes.