With the division of Germany after 1949 looking increasingly permanent, there were practical and legal disputes over which Germany should inherit those German brand names from before the war that still conferred value in the eyes of consumers. One particularly bitter dispute concerned the BMW brand. Another concerned the national airline, known till 1945 as Deutsche Luft Hansa. Directly after the end of the Second World War, one thing on which the Soviet Union and the United States were able to agree was that no new German state should be permitted to operate an airline. The military implications of a German state having access to a permanent pool of trained pilots and air industry expertise were uppermost in the minds of politicians. However, geo-political priorities moved on, and in 1953 Lufthansa was founded, a West German airline with its primary hub reassuringly located next door to a massive US airbase south of Frankfurt am Main. In 1955 the East German government responded, staking a claim to the "Lufthansa" brand by creating Deutsche Lufthansa. Since the Lufthansa name had already been registered by the West German airline, the East German entity faced a succession of lawsuits and was, in the meantime, not able to register as a member of the International Air Transport Association. Eventually it would be rebranded as Interflug. In the meantime, reflecting the intensely political nature of the airline business, when Deutsche Lufthansa was created in 1955 it made sense that its Director in Chief should be the son of the aging East German President. On 1 July 1955 Arthur Pieck, who had no experience of flying or of the airline business, was appointed "Hauptdirektor" of the national airline.