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Munich Re (MüNchener RüCkversicherungs Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft In MüNchen) Business Information, Profile, and History

Königinstrasse 107
D-80791 Munich
Germany

Company Perspectives:

We are developing modern insurance solutions: In a world characterized by change, insurers are faced with ever-new challenges. We support our business partners by identifying future trends, generating future knowledge and developing joint products for the challenges of tomorrow. In this central task, our longstanding tradition of innovation repeatedly stands us in good stead: for example, in evaluating know-how from sophisticated insurance markets for application in less developed markets. Thus Munich Re is currently supporting private initiatives to establish new export credit insurers in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia--areas in which the globalization of trade is opening up new business opportunities for reinsurers as well.

History of Munich Re (Münchener Rückversicherungs Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft In München)

Munick Re (known as Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München in Europe) is the world's largest reinsurance company. Munich Re's reinsurance division, whose subsidiary American Re is third in the American non-life insurance market, reinsures more than 5,000 insurance companies in about 150 countries and has leading market positions in Italy, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Canada, and Japan. Focusing solely on reinsurance for most of its history, almost half of the company's premium income is now generated from direct insurance. In direct insurance, Munich Re focuses on insurance for individuals, such as life and health insurance, as well as on insurance for small and medium-sized businesses. The company's major direct insurance subsidiary is ERGO Insurance Group, Germany's second largest direct insurer. Munich Re's investment arm, MEAG Munich ERGO AssetManagement GmbH manages the group's own EUR 158 billion investment portfolio and offers its services to third parties. Munich Re also developed a strategic partnership with HypoVereinsbank, a private bank based in Munich that has a 13.3 percent stake in Munich Re. The company holds a 20 percent stake in Allianz, Germany's leading direct insurer, which in turn owns about the same amount of Munich Re shares. Another 7.5 percent of the company's shares is owned by Deutsche Bank.

Origins

Quiet strength has been one of Munich Re's hallmarks throughout the company's 120-year history. The German insurance industry of the nineteenth century had few of the inhibitions about reinsurance that characterized the then-leading country in the insurance industry, the United Kingdom. German Munich Re was not the first reinsurance company to be established; Cologne Re preceded it by 34 years. However, it was the first to be totally independent of a primary insurance operation and soon became a driving force of this new branch of insurance.

The company's founder, Carl Thieme, a native of Erfurt in Thuringia, had reached the sound but--in the 1870s--unfashionable conclusion that dependence on a primary insurer meant reinsurance operations had to take on a narrow range of often poor quality risks with frequently disastrous financial results. Instead, Thieme sought to set up an independent reinsurance company which could choose its risks according to their quality and spread the risks by operating in all extant classes of insurance.

Thieme, already an experienced and successful insurance agent in Munich, had developed good connections with the leading figures of the Bavarian financial world of the time. Chief among these was Theodor Cramer-Klett, who had been instrumental in developing in Bavaria a modern banking system capable of servicing the rapid industrialization that was going on in Germany under the protectionist policies of Otto von Bismarck.

Undeterred by the perilous state of the German insurance industry in the 1870s--Bismarck had even considered nationalizing it--Thieme and Cramer-Klett, along with four others, decided to set up a joint-stock operation with a capital of the then-large sum of DM 3 million. The share capital, partly paid, was subscribed by eight shareholders, most of whom were the cofounders of the new company. On April 19, 1880, Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München was formed. Thieme also favored the conclusion of mutually binding treaties between insurer and reinsurer instead of the hitherto traditional individual placement of risks. He regarded treaties as both more efficient and more secure from the point of view of both insurance and reinsurance companies. The new company's first treaty was with the Thuringia Insurance Company, whose Bavarian agent Thieme was and remained until 1886.

By the end of the first year's trading, gross premium income had passed one million marks. In 1888, Munich Re shares were offered for the first time on the Munich stock exchange by the bankers Merck, Finck & Company, themselves founded by the ubiquitous Cramer-Klett, and competition for shares was intense. The firm's capital base was expanded several times in the closing years of the century and by 1914 stood as some 20 million marks. In that year Munich Re was able to offer its shareholders a 40 percent dividend on profits from a turnover which had grown to nearly DM 177 million--a powerful statement of the company's financial soundness. At its founding in 1880, Thieme had employed just five employees. By 1914 the staff numbered 450.

Internationalization Delayed by World Wars

Thieme had been anxious from the start to see Munich Re establish itself not only in other parts of Germany but also in foreign countries. Thus the establishment of offices in Hamburg and Vienna in the year of founding was matched by Munich Re's first reinsurance treaty with a foreign insurance company, the Danish Almindelinge Brand-Assurance-Compagni of Copenhagen. During the 1880s the company used an office in St. Petersburg.

Thieme, however, realized that the greatest reinsurance opportunities lay in Britain and, increasingly, in North America. To exploit these markets a London branch office was set up in 1890. London was regarded as a notoriously difficult insurance market for foreign firms to penetrate, but Munich Re managed to do this under the able and energetic leadership of the London manager, Carl Schreiner. In 1892, Schreiner also founded Munich Re's first U.S. operation by putting up the required security of $500,000.

Thieme was astute enough to realize that if new classes of insurance could be created, then Munich Re would be well placed to secure the resulting reinsurance treaties. As Thieme wished Munich Re to retain its status as a reinsurer, he chose to help set up new insurance operations rather than risk the wrath of his clients by attempting to take Munich Re into the field of primary insurance.

In 1890, Thieme's efforts to introduce personal accident insurance into Germany led to the founding of Allianz, and his interest in export credit insurance resulted in the creation of Hermes in 1917, a large proportion of whose initial share capital was provided by Munich Re. At the turn of the century, Munich Re was one of several insurers introducing machinery and luggage insurance. Munich Re pioneered machinery insurance in association with Allianz and at about the same time introduced luggage insurance into central Europe.

The risks as well as the potential profits of an international spread of business became apparent in the first two decades of the next century. The Baltimore fire of 1904 and the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, the latter costing Munich Re DM 11 million, demonstrated the size of losses which the reinsurance industry could now face. The promptness of Munich Re's settlement of its primary insurers' claims contributed much to the establishment of reinsurance as an industry on an equal footing with primary insurance.

The outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914 again proved the double-edged nature of international coverage. Munich Re, with its comparatively large commitments in the United Kingdom and North America, found its business in the United Kingdom suspended, a blow compounded by the growing anti-German feeling in the United States and the eventual total loss of its U.S. business in 1917 when the United States entered the war on the Allied side.

Hard on the heels of Germany's military defeat in 1918 came occupation, reparation payments, and, most damaging of all, the ruinous hyper-inflation of 1923, when the German mark plummeted out of control. In 1924-25, after the stabilization of the mark, Munich Re's turnover amounted to only DM 127 million, less than two thirds of its 1914 turnover in real terms.

In 1917, Munich Re had helped found the Hermes Kreditversicherungsbank by providing share capital and accepting the reinsurance of risks. Hermes was an export-credit-insurance operation designed to offer wartime protection to German exporters, but in the postwar period it was used to help stimulate German export trade back to recovery. Gains made in this sector, however, were offset almost immediately by the onset of the Depression in 1929. Munich Re was forced to cut both salary and staffing levels in the early 1930s--in 1932 staff numbers sank to 342 against a 1920 total of more than 600. Munich Re also found it necessary to assist a number of ailing primary insurance companies--a far-sighted move at a time of great financial difficulty. During the difficult interwar years, control of Munich Re was largely in the hands of Wilhelm Kisskalt, who succeeded Thieme as chief executive in 1922. He in turn was succeeded by Kurt Schmitt in 1938, another former employee who had transferred to the Allianz in 1914 and had become general manager there in 1921.

In 1933, Schmitt became minister of economic affairs in the new National Socialist government of Adolf Hitler. According to Munich Re, Kisskalt and Schmitt hoped that Schmitt's acceptance of the post would enable him to exercise a moderating influence on the extremist policies of the new Nazi government. When this hope proved illusory, Schmitt resigned of his own accord in 1934. This episode did not appear to harm the fortunes of Munich Re--in the mid-1930s its turnover exceeded prewar levels for the first time.

During World War II, as in World War I, Munich Re lost its position in the huge insurance markets of the Allied nations. Although this had a considerable impact on its growth, Munich Re's turnover still reached DM 230 million by the end of the conflict in 1945. In spite of the briefness of Schmitt's official association with the former German leadership, Munich Re found it expedient to appoint a new chief executive that year, at the start of the Allied occupation. The new chief executive was an Austrian, Eberhard von Reininghaus. Although he may have been regarded with more favor than his predecessor, this did not prevent the Allies from occupying Munich Re's headquarters in Munich's Königinstrasse until 1951. More seriously, Munich Re found itself banned from operating abroad in common with all other German companies. This compounded the damage already caused by the massive economic dislocation in Germany in the immediate postwar period. Munich Re was once again forced to cut its staff--by 1950 only 302 were left--and turnover for the 1949-50 fiscal year amounted to only half that of 1945.

A Leading Reinsurer in Postwar Years

Munich Re adopted a policy of concentrating on whatever gaps remained in the home insurance market. The impact of the Marshall Plan and the reorganization of the German currency began that process of economic recovery now known as the German "economic miracle" of the 1950s and 1960s. Insurance and reinsurance benefited from the economic upturn, and by the middle of the 1950s Munich Re's turnover had surpassed all previous levels at nearly a third of a billion deutsche marks. Eberhard von Reininghaus died in 1950, and his place was taken by Alois Alzheimer, who had joined Munich Re in 1929. Alzheimer, general manager for the next 18 years, oversaw the restoration of the company's fortunes and its reestablishment as a leading player in the world's reinsurance industry. At the time of his retirement in 1969, Munich Re's annual turnover exceeded DM 2 billion.

General manager Horst K. Jannott became the second-longest serving chief executive of Munich Re after Thieme. A lawyer by training, he joined Munich Re in 1954, made his name in balance sheet mathematics, and progressed rapidly to the top of the corporate ladder. During his stewardship, Munich Re's gross premium income increased nearly sixfold to stand at DM 12.4 billion in 1989.

Profits Decline in the 1970s and 1980s

The mid-1970s marked a significant shift in the balance of the company's profits away from reinsurance toward what the company called its "general business," primarily investment income. Reinsurance profitability began to decline rapidly in the early years of the decade, and the company recorded a loss for the first time in 1977 of about DM 15 million. By 1981, this figure had increased to DM 116 million, and by 1989 had reached DM 381 million. Munich Re's increasingly large losses in this part of its business, however, were spectacularly offset by the growth of profits in its general business. In 1977, this brought in about DM 49 million, and in 1989, DM 900 million.

Munich Re was able to turn in consistently strong and rising net profits. The decline in reinsurance underwriting results were caused largely by overcapacity in the reinsurance industry and consequent severe rate competition, plus the growing tendency of primary insurers to organize their own reinsurance cover, ceding to the established reinsurance companies a growing proportion of the more volatile risks. Against this background, Munich Re's ability to offer regular dividends of 18 to 20 percent was quite an achievement.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Munich Re's proportion of foreign business increased continuously, despite the effects of a strong deutsche mark in the same period. At the end of the 1970s, about 40 percent of its business originated outside West Germany and foreign business was outperforming domestic business. Half of these foreign earnings came from other European countries, the remainder from the rest of the world. The early 1980s registered a slowdown in the growth of foreign premium income, partly due to an appreciating deutsche mark and partly due to setbacks in the transport and life insurance sectors. Disasters such as the 1985 Mexico earthquake and Hurricane Gilbert--the latter cost Munich Re between 100 million and 120 million deutsche marks--and the increasingly high cost of U.S. liability claims further cut into foreign profits. At the end of the decade, the foreign sector picked up as the deutsche mark began to depreciate against both dollar and sterling. By 1989, about half of Munich Re's earnings came from abroad.

This upturn was not solely the result of external factors such as the deutsche mark rate of exchange. Munich Re's wisdom in declining to provide coverage on war risks was proved during the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq, which cost other underwriters heavily.

Acquisitions, New Products, and Disasters in the 1990s

In the 1990s, three major trends had a strong impact on the world's reinsurance market. First, the decade started out with devastating winter storms, hurricanes, and typhoons, and a trend towards increasing risks of major natural catastrophes became evident. For reinsurers, that meant an increasingly volatile business with more significant losses. Second, primary insurance companies were consolidating on a global level, thereby reducing the number of reinsurance clients and boosting their own financial strength. Third--besides an intensifying competition among reinsurers--some large banks and primary insurers entered the market for reinsurance. Munich Re's management reacted in different ways. It strengthened the company's reinsurance business through several mergers and acquisitions and a strong foothold in the German direct insurance market; it established a new asset management subsidiary and invested in new product development; and it reorganized its shareholdings and took measures to attract new investors. As a result, Munich Re more than quadrupled its premium income within a decade, while profits multiplied by a factor of 38 and dividends were raised eight times.

In a $3 billion deal, Munich Re acquired North America's third largest property-casualty reinsurer, American Re based in Princeton, New Jersey, in November 1996. In October 2000, the company bought the life insurance division of Chicago-based CNA Financial Corporation and established a new holding company for its North American business, Delaware-based Munich-American Holding Corporation. Munich Re also strengthened its presence in Western Europe and expanded into Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The company acquired Italian Reale Ri in 1998 and a new office location in the inner city of Paris in spring 2001. New branch offices opened in China in 1997 and in Poland and Chile two years later. To counteract declining reinsurance profits, Munich Re invested heavily in the European direct insurance market. In 1997, Munich Re merged Hamburg-Mannheimer AG, a direct insurer in which the company held an 80 percent stake, with the VICTORIA group, another large direct insurer of which Munich Re owned 23 percent, to form ERGO Versicherungsgruppe, which instantly became Germany's second biggest direct insurance company. In 1999, the two companies established MUNICH ERGO AssetManagement GmbH (MEAG), a joint venture to manage their assets. Two years later, Munich Re took over more than 90 percent of ERGO's shares. The company also acquired a 60-percent stake in Bad Homburg-based Alte Leipziger Europa Beteiligungsgesellschaft AG (AL Europa), a holding company with majority stakes in 14 insurance companies in eight Central and Eastern European countries, including Poland's third biggest insurer, Hestia. In addition, the company supported private initiatives to establish independent export credit insurers in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

In the area of new product development, Munich Re, together with Swiss Re, Internet Capital Group, and Anderson Consulting launched London-based "inreon," an Internet-based reinsurance exchange where standardized reinsurance risks could be traded between insurance companies and reinsurance companies or brokers, in December 2000. In the first half of 2001, Munich Re promoted a new agricultural insurance scheme for European farmers, who in general were not covered against drought, floods, or storms by state-supported insurance, as they were in the United States. The company partnered with European insurer AXA Colonia in developing a new kind of cancellation coverage for major sporting events and provided earthquake coverage for FIFA's soccer World Cup in 2002 in Japan and Korea. Munich Re's Geoscience Research Group closely watched global trends for the occurrence of natural disasters and published reports and a World Map of Natural Hazards.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Munich Re started restructuring its shareholdings involving Allianz, Germany's number one direct insurance group. Allianz had been co-founded by Munich Re founder Carl Thieme in 1890, which resulted in a close connection between the two companies and in a number of joint and cross-shareholdings. The two companies exchanged their shares in American Re and Allianz of America. Munich Re became the sole owner of American Re and Allianz the sole owner of Allianz of America. Munich Re lowered its stake in life insurer Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG to 40 percent and sold its stakes in Dresdner Bank AG, Bayerische Versicherungsbank AG, and Frankfurter Versicherungs-AG to Allianz. In turn, the company acquired 6.5 percent of Allianz' shares in ERGO and health insurer DKV, and the shares that Allianz and Dresdner Bank held in Hypo-Vereinsbank (HBV), raising Munich Re's share to 25.7 percent. In addition, Munich Re planned to take over Allianz shares in Karlsruher Lebensversicherung AG, raising its stake in the life insurer to 90.1 percent by July 2002. Munich Re and Allianz also reduced their cross-holdings from 25 to roughly 20 percent. These measures were aimed at making Munich Re more attractive to investors. The company took another step in that direction when it converted the existing bearer shares, which represented about two percent of its share capital, into registered shares in January 1999.

While 1999 had been Munich Re's worst year in its history in terms of losses caused by natural disasters, a man-made disaster of, to date, unimaginable proportions dwarfed those losses when on September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes hit the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, causing them to collapse. While claims cost from aviation, building, business interruption, life and worker compensation insurance to American Re were estimated at EUR 1 billion at first, that amount was soon doubled to a "conservative estimate" of EUR 2.1 billion--approximately $1.89 billion or 11.5 percent of the group's reinsurance premiums in 2000. Only two months later, another plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in New York's borough Queens, causing another loss of around $50 million. While this would have been the end for many reinsurers, Munich Re expected to be able to cope with these, the biggest losses in its history.

In accordance with German regulations, Munich Re had consistently practiced extremely conservative accounting policy which undervalued the worth of its assets. It was estimated that the stock exchange transactions with Allianz would uncover hidden reserves of over EUR 4 billion and that, in addition, Munich Re could expect equalization payments in cash of about EUR 700 million from Allianz in 2002. In November 2001, Munich Re announced a capital boost for American Re of over $1 billion. For the future the company was expecting a revitalized re-insurance market in the attack's aftermath, an increase in direct insurance sales through its partnership with HBV, growing profits from asset management generated by MEAG, and a potentially huge new market for private pension plans supported by the German government.

Principal Subsidiaries: ERGO Versicherungsgruppe AG (91.7%); Karlsruher Lebensversicherung AG (54%); Europäische Reiseversicherung AG; MEAG Munich ERGO AssetManagement GmbH (85.1%); American Re Corporation (United States); American Re-Insurance Company (United States); Munich American Reassurance Company (United States); Munich Reinsurance Company of Africa (South Africa); Munich Reinsurance Company of Canada; Munich Reinsurance Company of Australasia (Australia); Münchener Rück Italia S.P.A.; New Insurance Company (Switzerland); Great Lakes Reinsurance (UK) PLC.

Principal Competitors: General Cologne Re; Swiss Reinsurance Company; "Winterthur" Swiss Insurance Company; Hannover Re.

Related information about Munich

48属08N 11属35E, pop (2000e) 1 270 000. Capital of Bavaria province, S Germany, on the R Isar; third largest city in Germany; founded, 1158; capital of Bavaria, from 1506; home of the Nazi movement, 1920s; badly bombed in World War 2; railway; university (1471); technical university (1868); chemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, rubber, precision engineering, machinery, vehicles, aircraft, defence systems, printing and publishing, clothing, foodstuffs, brewing, wine, agricultural produce; Church of St Peter (1181), town hall (1470), cathedral (15th-c), Nymphenburg Palace (17th-c), opera house, art gallery; Pinakothek der Moderne (opened 2002); Oktoberfest (beer festival); site of summer Olympic Games (1972).

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Munich(German: M端nchen, (pronounced: Freistaat Bayern).

Munich is Germany's third largest city and one of Europe's most prosperous and expensive. The city has a population of about 1.3 million (as of 2006) and the Munich metropolitan areais home to around 2.7 million people. The city is located on the River Isarnorth of the Bavarian Alps.

The city's mottowas "Die Weltstadt mit Herz" (The world city with a heart) for a long time and has been recently replaced by "M端nchen mag dich" (Munich likes you). Black and gold - the colours of the Holy Roman Empire- have been the city's official colours since the time of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

Munich

Geography

Setting

Munich lies on the elevated plains of Upper Bavaria, about 50 km north of the northern edge of the Alps, at an altitude of about 520 m.

Munich is situated in the Northern Alpine Foreland.

History

Origin

The city was founded in 1158 by the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, next to a settlement of Benedictine monks, called Munichen (Latin Monacum, Monachium). The monks' presence dated back to the 8th century, although settlement in the Munich area can be traced back to Roman times. To force traders to use his bridge (and charge them for doing so) he destroyed a nearby bridge owned by bishop Otto von Freising (Freising).
Subsequently the bishop and Henry quarreled about the city before Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa at an Imperial Diet held in Augsburg in 1158.

Middle Ages

Almost two decades later in 1175 Munich was officially granted city status and fortified. In 1180, with the trial of Henry the Lion, Otto I Wittelsbach became Duke of Bavaria and Munich was handed over to the bishop of Freising. Otto's heirs, the Wittelsbach dynasty would rule Bavaria until 1918. In 1240 Munich itself was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, when the dukedom of Bavaria was split in two, Munich became the ducal residence of Upper Bavaria.

Duke Louis IV was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. Philosophers like Michael of Cesena, Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham supported Louis IV in his fight with the papacy and were protected at the emperor's court. Since the citizenry several times revolted against the dukes a new castle was built close to the fortification from 1385 onwards.

Another devastating fire destroyed parts of the city in 1429. In the late 15th century Munich underwent a revival of gothic arts - the Old Town Hall was enlarged and a new cathedral - the Frauenkirche - constructed within only twenty years from 1468 onwards. During the 16th century Munich was a center of the German counter reformation, and also of renaissance arts. Duke Wilhelm V commissioned the Jesuit Michaelskirche, which became a center for the counter-reformation, and also built the Hofbrテ、uhaus for brewing brown beer in 1589.

In 1623 during the Thirty Years' War Munich became electoral residence when Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria was invested with the electoral dignity but in 1632 the city was occupied by Gustav II Adolph of Sweden. When the bubonic plague broke out in 1634 and 1635 about one third of the population died. Elector Ferdinand Maria?s consort Henriette Adelaide of Savoy invited numerous Italian architects and artists to the city, and built the Theatinerkirche and Nymphenburg palace on the occasion of the birth of their son and heir Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria in 1662.

Munich was under the control of the Habsburg family for some years after Maximilian II Emanuel made a pact with France in 1705 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The coronation of Max Emanuel's son elector Charles Albert as Emperor Karl VII in 1742 led to another Habsburg occupation. The city's first academic institution, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, was founded in 1759 by Maximilian III Joseph, who abandoned his forefather's imperial ambitions and made peace. From 1789 onwards, when the old medieval fortification was demolished, the English Garden was laid out - it is one of the world's largest urban public parks.

Capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria

In 1806, it became the capital of the new Kingdom of Bavaria, with the state's parliament (the Landtag) and the new archdiocese of Munich and Freising being located in the city. Twenty years later Landshut University was moved to Munich.
Many of the city's finest buildings belong to this period and were built under the reign of King Ludwig I. These neoclassical buildings include the Ruhmeshalle with the "Bavaria" statue by Ludwig Michael von Schwanthaler and those on the magnificent Ludwigstraテ歹 and the Kテカnigsplatz, built by the architects Leo von Klenze and Friedrich von Gテ、rtner. Under King Max II the Maximilianstraテ歹 was constructed in Perpendicular style.

The railways reached Munich in 1839, followed by trams in 1876 and electric lighting in 1882. The Technical University of Munich was founded in 1868. The city hosted Germany's first exhibition of electricity, and in 1930 the first ever television was showcased at the city's Deutsches Museum (founded in 1903) on the banks of the Isar. Numerous inventors and scientists worked in Munich, including Alois Senefelder, Joseph von Fraunhofer, Justus von Liebig, Georg Ohm, Carl von Linde, Rudolf Diesel, Wilhelm Conrad Rテカntgen, Emil Kraepelin and Alois Alzheimer, and the young Albert Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium. In 1901 the Hellabrunn Zoo opened in the city.

Munich also became a center of the arts and literature again, as Carl Rottmann, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Carl Spitzweg, Franz von Lenbach, Franz von Stuck, Wilhelm Leibl, Paul Heyse, Henrik Ibsen, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and many others lived and worked there.

The period immediately before World War I saw particular economic and cultural prominence for the city. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of expressionist artists, was established in Munich in 1911. The city was a home for painters like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Mテシnter, Franz Marc, August Macke and Alfred Kubin and for numerous writers like Rainer Maria Rilke and Frank Wedekind. In 1846 Munich's population was about 100,000, and by 1901 this had risen to about 500,000.

World War I and revolution

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, life in Munich became very difficult, as the Allied blockade of Germany led to food and fuel shortages. In November 1918 on the eve of revolution, Ludwig III and his family fled the city. After the murder of the first republican premier of Bavaria Kurt Eisner in February 1919 Communists took power establishing the Bavarian Soviet Republic (Mテシnchner Rテ、terepublik) and Vladimir Lenin, who had lived in Munich some years before, sent a congratulatory telegram, but the Soviet Republic was brutally put down on May 3, 1919 by the militarist Freikorps, many of whom were later drawn to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism.

Weimar Republic / Nazi Regime and World War II

In 1923 Hitler and his supporters, who at that time were concentrated in Munich, staged the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic and seize power.

Munich remained a center of cultural life during the Weimar period, as figures such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Bert Brecht and Oskar Maria Graf were active.

The city however would once again become a Nazi stronghold when they took power in Germany in 1933. The NSDAP headquarters were in Munich and many Fテシhrerbauten ("Fテシhrer-buildings") were built around the Kテカnigsplatz, some of which have survived to this day.

In 1938, the Munich Agreement, Neville Chamberlain's famous act of appeasement to Hitler, was signed in the city by representatives of Germany, Italy, France and Britain. One year later Georg Elser failed with his attempt to assassinate Hitler during his annual speech to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch in the Bテシrgerbrテ、ukeller in Munich.

Munich was the base of the White Rose (German: Die Weiテ歹 Rose), a group of students that formed a resistance movement from June 1942 to February 1943. The core members were arrested and executed following a distribution of leaflets in Munich University by Hans and Sophie Scholl.

The city was very heavily damaged by allied bombing during World War II - the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of five years.

Postwar Munich

After American occupation in 1945, Munich was completely rebuilt following a meticulous and - by comparison to other war-ravaged German cities - rather conservative plan which preserved its pre-war street grid.

In 1957 Munich's population passed the 1 million mark.

Munich was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, during which Israeli athletes were assassinated by Palestinian terrorists (see Munich massacre), when terrorist gunmen from the Palestinian "Black September" group took hostage members of the Israeli Olympic team.

Several games of the 1974 World Cup were also held in the city, including the German triumph against the Netherlands in a legendary final.

In 1992 Munich?s new airport was inaugurated and the inauguration of the Neue Messe, the new exhibition centre on the site of the former airport of Riem, took place in 1998.

The current Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on June 29, 1951. Ratzinger served as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. Munich has a nearly unbroken history of SPD governments since World War II, which is remarkable because the rest of Bavaria is a conservative stronghold, with the CSU (Christian Social Union) winning absolute majorities among the Bavarian electorate in nearly all elections at the communal, state, and federal levels.

As capital of Bavaria, Munich is an important political center in Germany and the seat of the Bavarian Landtag (the state parliament), the Staatskanzlei (the state chancellery) and of all state departments.

Several national and international authorities are located in Munich, including the Bundesfinanzhof (the highest German tax court) and the European Patent Office.

Subdivisions

Main article: Boroughs of Munich

Munich is subdivided into 25 boroughs (Bezirke in German, also sometimes called districts in English).

Allach-Untermenzing (23), Altstadt-Lehel (1), Aubing-Lochhausen-Langwied (22), Au-Haidhausen (5), Berg am Laim (14), Bogenhausen (13), Feldmoching-Hasenbergl (24), Hadern (20), Laim (25), Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt (2), Maxvorstadt (3), Milbertshofen-Am Hart (11), Moosach (10), Neuhausen-Nymphenburg (9), Obergiesing (17), Pasing-Obermenzing (21), Ramersdorf-Perlach (16), Schwabing-Freimann (12), Schwabing-West (4), Schwanthalerhテカhe (8), Sendling (6), Sendling-Westpark (7), Thalkirchen-Obersendling-Forstenried-Fテシrstenried-Solln (19), Trudering-Riem (15) and Untergiesing-Harlaching (18).

Marienplatz and Stachus

At the center of the city is the Marienplatz - a large open square named after the Mariensテ、ule, a Marian column in its centre - with the Old and the New Town Hall. It was first built during the romanesque period, and was the focus of the early monastic settlement in Munich before the city's official foundation in 1158. Nearby the gothic hall-church Heiliggeistkirche (The Church of the Holy Ghost) was converted to baroque style from 1724 onwards and looks down upon the Viktualienmarkt, the most popular market of Munich.

The Frauenkirche ("Dom zu unserer Lieben Frau" - Cathedral of Our Lady) is the most famous building in the city center and serves as cathedral for the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. but as you progress you see that there are windows and the light shines on you.
The nearby Michaelskirche is the largest renaissance church north of the Alps, while the Theatinerkirche is a basilica in Italianate high baroque which had a major influence on Southern German baroque architecture.

The palaces, royal avenues and theatres

The Alte Hof, a medieval castle and first residence of the Wittelsbach dukes in Munich still exists in the inner city close to Marienplatz. Many operas were staged here, including the premiere of Mozart's "Idomeneo" in 1781.

Munich is home to a neo-classical opera house of international renown, the Nationaltheater where several of Richard Wagner's operas had their premieres under the patronage of Ludwig II of Bavaria. Close to the Gasteig on the bank of the Isar is the Volksbad, a large public bath built in the art nouveau style.

Among the baroque and neoclassical mansions which still exist in Munich are the Palais Tテカrring-Jettenbach with its loggia, the Palais Preysing, the Palais Holnstein (the residence of the Archbishop of Munich and Freising), the Palais Leuchtenberg (the former residence of Eugティne de Beauharnais) and the Prinz-Carl-Palais, the official residence of Bavaria's state premier (or Ministerprテ、sident). All mansions are situated close to the Residenz.

Four grand royal avenues of the 19th century with magnificent official buildings are reminders of the kingdom of Bavaria:

Brienner Strasse, starting at Odeonsplatz on the northern fringe of the Old Town close to the Residenz, runs from east to west and opens into the impressive Kテカnigsplatz, designed with the "Doric" Propylテ、en, the "Ionic" Glyptothek and the "Corinthian" State Museum of Classical Art, on its back side St. Boniface's Abbey was erected. The area around Kテカnigsplatz is home to the Kunstareal, Munich's gallery and museum quarter (as described below). The avenue is framed by neogothic palaces which house, among others, the Schauspielhaus (one of the most important German language theatres in the world), the district government of Upper Bavaria and the Vテカlkerkundemuseum (Museum of Ethnology). Many museums can be found along the avenue, such as the internationally renowned Haus der Kunst (House of Art), the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Bavarian National Museum), the Schackgalerie and the Villa Stuck on the eastern side of the river. The avenue crosses the river and circles the Friedensengel (Angel of Peace), a monument commemorating the 25 years of peace following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Several still not centralised museums show the expanded state collections of palaeontology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, botany and anthropology.

The city has several important art galleries, most of which can be found in the Kunstareal, including the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, and the Pinakothek der Moderne. Major displays include Albrecht Dテシrer`s Christ-like Self-Portrait, his Four Apostles, Raffael's paintings The Canigiani Holy Family and Madonna Tempi as well as Peter Paul Rubens two-storey-high Judgment Day. Before World War I, the Blaue Reiter group of artists worked in Munich. Louis I managed to acquire such famous pieces as the Medusa Rondanini, the Barberini Faun and the figures from the Temple of Aphaea on Aegina for the Glyptothek. The Kunstareal will be further augmented by the completion of the Egyptian Museum.

The famous gothic Morris dancers of Erasmus Grasser are exhibited in the Munich City Museum in the old arsenal building.
The State Museum of Ethnology in Maximilianstrasse is the second largest collection in Germany of artifacts and objects from outside Europe, while the Bavarian National Museum and the adjoining State Archeological Collections in Prinzregentenstrasse rank among Europe's major art and cultural history museums. Most high-rise buildings are clustered at the northern edge of Munich, like the Hypohaus, the Arabella High-Rise Building, the Highlight Towers, Uptown Munich and the BMW Headquarters next to the Olympic Park. Several other high-rise buildings are located near the city center and on the Siemens campus in southern Munich.

In November 2004, a referendum was held to decide whether the construction of high-rise buildings in the inner city should be prohibited; Visitors can get a great panoramic view of Munich and the Alps from the top of the Olympic Tower (Olympiaturm), which is also used as a radio and TV broadcasting tower.

The 2006 World Cup did not take place in the traditional Olympic Stadium, but in Munich's new football stadium, the Allianz Arena, located in the northern suburb of Frテカttmanning. The Englischer Garten, close to the city centre and covering an area of 3.7 kmツイ, is one of the world's largest urban public parks, and contains a nudist area, jogging tracks and bridle-paths.
Other large green spaces are the modern Olympic Park, and the parks of Nymphenburg Palace (with the Botanical Garden to the north), and Schleissheim Palace.

Hofbrテ、uhaus and Oktoberfest

Main article: Oktoberfest
The Hofbrテ、uhaus am Platzl is arguably the most well-known beer hall, located in the city center. The Oktoberfest was first held on October 12, 1810 in honor of the marriage of crown prince Ludwig to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

Others

Dallmayr

Around Munich

The Munich agglomeration sprawls across the plain of the Voralpenland. Several smaller traditional Bavarian towns are today part of the Munich suburbs:

Dachau
Erding
Fテシrstenfeldbruck
Freising
Garching bei Mテシnchen
Germering
Grテ、felfing
Grテカbenzell
Grテシnwald
Gauting
Haar
Germering
Oberschleissheim
Planegg
Starnberg
etc.

Lifestyle

Residents of Munich typically enjoy a high quality of life. Environmental pollution is comparatively low, although as of 2006 the city council is concerned about levels of particulate matter (PM), especially along the city's major thoroughfares. Since the enactment of EU legislation concerning the concentration of particulate in the air, environmental groups such as Greenpeace have staged large protest rallys to urge the city council and the State government to take a harder stance on pollution.

Public transport is very efficient, although delays on the S-Bahn (commuter train) often cause frustration during extreme winter weather. The crime rate is very low compared to other large German cities, such as Hamburg or Berlin.

These specialities are often served in the beergardens:
Obatzda is a Bavarian Cheese Specialty, a savoury blend of smashed camembert with brie prepared with cream cheese, butter and onions or spicy paprika. in February 2005 for the economic prospects between 2002 and 2011 in sixty German cities.

Munich is one of the centers of the German new economy as a center for biotechnology, software and other service industries. Munich is the home of the headquarters of the car manufacturer BMW, the truck manufacturer MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, the aircraft engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines, the space and defence contractor EADS (headquartered in the suburban town of Ottobrunn), the injection molding machine manufacturer Krauss-Maffei, the camera and lighting manufacturer Arri, the technology firms Siemens and Infineon Technologies (headquartered in the suburban town of Neubiberg), as well as the German headquarters of Precision Plus, McDonald?s and Microsoft.

The significance of Munich as a financial center is proven by numerous banks such as the HypoVereinsbank and the Bayerische Landesbank and many insurances. The city is home to the global headquarters of German insurance companies Allianz and Munich Re.

Munich is home to many publishing houses (fewer only than New York City) and also to The Sテシddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's largest daily newspapers.

The Bavaria Film Studios are located in the suburb of Grテシnwald, they are one of Europe's biggest and most famous movie production studios.

Because of numerous special trade exhibitions Munich is regarded as an international centre in this field as well.

Lufthansa has opened a second hub at Munich's Franz Josef Strauss International Airport, the second-largest airport in Germany, after Frankfurt International Airport.

Transportation

Munich Airport

Franz Josef Strauss International Airport (IATA: MUC, ICAO: EDDM) is Munich's main airport, some 30 km to the north east of the city centre. A magnetic levitation train (called Transrapid) which will run at speeds of up to 400km/h from the central station to the airport is under consideration. The airport began operations in 1992, replacing the former main airport, the Munich-Riem airport (active 1939-1992).

Also, the Bavarian state government has announced plans to expand the Oberpaffenhofen Air Station, located west of Munich, for commercial use.

Public transportation

For its population, Munich has one of the most comprehensive systems in the world, incorporating subways, suburban trains, trams and buses. The system is supervised by the Munich Transport and Tariff Association (Mテシnchner Verkehrs- und Tarifverbund GmbH).

The main train station is Munich Hauptbahnhof (Central Station), in the city centre, and there are two smaller main line stations at Pasing, in the west of the city, and Munich Ostbahnhof (East Station) in the east. InterCity and EuroCity trains with destinations East of Munich also stop at Munich East.

From 28 May 2006 Munich will be connected to Nuremberg via Ingolstadt by a 300 km/h high speed railway line. Highways from Stuttgart, Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg terminate at Munich, making it easy to access the different parts of Germany.

Sports clubs

Bayern Munich
TSV 1860 Munich
SpVgg Unterhaching (not really a club from Munich as Unterhaching is a rural town of its own)
Munich Irish Rovers FC
EHC Munich - Local professional hockey club.

Colleges and universities

University of Munich (LMU), founded in 1472 in Ingolstadt, moved to Munich in 1826
Technical University of Munich (TUM), founded in 1868
Munich University of Applied Sciences (FHM), founded in 1971
Universität der Bundeswehr München, founded in 1973
Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, founded in 1830
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, founded in 1808
Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film , founded in 1966
Hochschule für Philosophie München, founded in 1925 in Pullach, moved to Munich in 1971
Hochschule für Politik München
Katholische Stiftungsfachhochschule München, founded in 1971
Munich Business School (MBS)
European School of Management and Technology (esmt)
Max Planck Institute for Physics (Werner Heisenberg Institute)
Fraunhofer Institute

Twin cities

Bordeaux, France, (since 1964)

Cincinnati, United States, (since 1989)

Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom (since 1954)

Harare, Zimbabwe, (since 1996)

Kiev, Ukraine, (since 1989)

Sapporo, Japan, (since 1972)

Verona, Italy, (since 1960)

Famous people born in Munich

Richard Strauss, 1864-1949, composer

Franz Marc, 1880-1916, painter

Carl Orff, 1895-1982, composer

Heinrich Himmler, 1900-1945, Nazi politician

Alfred Andersch, 1914-1980, writer

Franz Josef Strauß, 1915-1988, politician (CSU)

Werner Herzog, born in 1942, film director

Moritz Bleibtreu, born in 1971, actor

Franz Beckenbauer, born in 1945, footballer

Thomas Hitzlsperger, born in 1982, footballer

Philipp Lahm, born in 1983, footballer

References

Chronology

Key Dates:
1880: Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München is formed.
1888: Munich Re shares are offered for the first time on the Munich stock exchange.
1899: The company opens a branch office in the United States.
1906: The San Francisco earthquake and fire cost Munich Re DM 11 million.
1917: Total loss of U.S. business ensues when the United States enters World War I.
1930s:The company develops life insurance rating manuals.
1945: Munich Re is banned from operating abroad after World War II.
1970s:The company establishes a Geoscience Research Group for analyzing natural hazards.
1977: The company records a loss for the first time.
1985: The Mexico earthquake and Hurricane Gilbert cost Munich Re over DM 100 million.
1996: Munich Re acquires North America's third largest property-casualty reinsurer, American Re.
1997: The company becomes majority shareholder of Germany's second largest direct insurer ERGO.
2000: Munich Re acquires a majority stake in Alte Leipziger Europa.

Additional topics

Company HistoryOther Industries

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