With that leather, he made himself a pair of boots with air-cushioned soles,” Maertens’s biography notes. Military surplus ...

The patented technology behind the boots, the air-cushioned sole, was invented in 1945 by Dr. Klaus Maertens, a German army doctor who injured his ankle in a skiing accident and was looking for a ...

Klaus - who had previously worked as a cobbler - redesigned the army boot with air-cushioned soles and soft leather, then started taking other discarded Bundeswehr boots and doing the same.