The brothers behind Aldi: the dispute that split the chain in two

In Barcelona there are some, for example, on Sardenya street, on the Gran Via or on the Passeig de la Zona Franca. In Girona, Lleida and Tarragona, two more establishments in each capital. In total, Aldi has 109 supermarkets spread across Catalonia. The same logo hangs on all of them. But things change if we take a plane and travel to Germany. In Gummersbach, a city in the west of the country, the name no longer appears alone: there are Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd supermarkets separated by only a few kilometers. The same happens in another city, Siegen. In Berlin, on the other hand, all the establishments are Aldi Nord; in Cologne, Aldi Süd. Between one and the other snakes an invisible commercial border that in Germany has come to be known as the Aldi-Äquator, the Aldi equator.

It is not just a matter of logos. Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd are two different business groups, born from the same family and the same business. In Spain, all establishments belong to Aldi Nord, even though they operate simply under the Aldi brand. The division dates back to brothers Theo and Karl Albrecht, who in the sixties split an empire they had built together in two. But what happened for a chain that had grown under the same surname to end up turned into two companies?

A shop among ruins

The story begins in 1945, in Essen. The city had been devastated by the bombings of the Second World War and Theo and Karl Albrecht had just returned home after having fought on the front. The store that their family had managed since 1913 had survived and the two brothers decided to take charge of it.

The business fit well with the context of Germany at the time: money and products were scarce, and the Albrechts decided to focus on selling mainly basic food items, with a reduced assortment and at low prices. The idea was to eliminate everything that could make the purchase more expensive: there was little variety and little decoration in the stores. That austerity, born in large part from necessity, ended up becoming the family's business model.

And it worked. By 1950, the brothers already controlled around fifteen stores in the Ruhr valley and, a decade later, the network exceeded 300 establishments in West Germany. They were not yet called Aldi: the name would arrive later, from the combination of Albrecht and discount. Before that, however, the two brothers had to make a decision that ended up splitting the business in two.

The cigarette that divided the empire

The turning point came in 1961. After years of growing the family business together, Theo and Karl Albrecht decided to split it. The most widely held version of what happened places the origin of the rift on an apparently minor discrepancy: whether the stores should sell tobacco or not. Other sources, however, point out that that disagreement was part of a series of broader differences over how the company should be managed and grown.

Be that as it may, the brothers divided the network. Theo kept the establishments in the north, which would go on to form Aldi Nord, while Karl took over those in the south, which became Aldi Süd. The border between the two territories crossed Germany from west to east and ended up giving rise to the peculiar Aldi-Äquator, which still commercially separates the two branches today.

The separation, however, did not stop the business. On the contrary: both companies continued to grow in parallel and, over the years, also began to look beyond Germany. And just as they had divided the country, they also ended up dividing a large part of the international map.

More than six decades later, that division remains in force and the two branches have become two international giants. Aldi Nord has more than 5,500 supermarkets in eight European countries, while Aldi Süd has about 6,500 spread across eleven markets in Europe, America, Asia, and Oceania. Together, they generated about 112 billion euros worldwide in 2023, the last fiscal year for which comparable data is available. In Spain, where the North branch landed in 2002, Aldi generated 2.078 billion euros in 2024 and had already reached 496 supermarkets by the end of 2025.

Today Nord and Süd continue to be separate companies, but they cooperate increasingly in areas such as private labels, purchasing, and marketing. The empire that Theo and Karl Albrecht split in two in 1961, therefore, has never been reunited: it has grown separately.