Reinsurance for a Country in Ruins
Berlin in ruins, 1946
Germany in 1945 – after the end of the Second World War, the country lay in ruins. This quite literally also applied to the public insurers. They had played a special role in the German market for centuries. These regionally active insurers were closely linked to the state and often cooperated with local savings banks. The companies, some of them very small, operated in a joint association and ensured risk equalisation through joint reinsurance. Both was particularly important for the public insurers. Both happened in Berlin. And both came to an end in Berlin.
Who are these “public insurers”?
Everyone in Germany is familiar with their local public insurer – in the south, for example, as Versicherungskammer Bayern, in the north and west as Provinzial Versicherungen, and in the east and parts of the south as Sparkassen Versicherung, to name just the largest.
German public insurers have been operating in the market for 350 years. The oldest, Hamburger Feuerkasse, has existed since 1676. The majority of public insurers were founded in the 18th century as municipal or state fire insurers. As with the savings banks, the underlying idea behind public insurers was to enable broad sections of the population to make provision.
Even today, the federal states and municipalities remain indirect owners of the public insurers. This is because the backing institutions and shareholders of almost all public insurers are the savings banks, the Landesbanken, the regional associations and the regional savings banks and giro associations, which are themselves majority-owned by the federal states and municipalities.
Find out more about the public insurers
Insurance prohibited!
After the end of the war, the Allied victorious powers – the USA, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France – divided the German capital, like the entire country, into four occupation zones. Berlin lay – isolated from the West – in the Soviet occupation zone, which later became the GDR. The large association building of the public insurers became the seat of the Allied Kommandatura, with soldiers of the victorious powers patrolling outside.
The public insurers in the former eastern provinces of the German Reich were also dissolved. This was because these territories now belonged to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
After 1945, the old building of the fire association in Berlin-Dahlem served as the seat of the Allied Kommandatura. Soviet, British, French and American soldiers in front of the association‘s portal.
The four occupation zones after the Second World War and the two centres of the public insurers in Hamburg and Düsseldorf
The Soviet Union prohibited all insurance in its occupation zone. The joint reinsurer of the public insurers, “Deutsche Rückversicherungs-Gemeinschaft Aktiengesellschaft”, had to cease operations and lost all its assets.
Bombed-out or displaced refugees at Wilhelmplatz in central Berlin
Of the 43 public insurers, only 24 had survived the Second World War.
From Berlin to Düsseldorf and Hamburg
The public insurers in the western occupation zones – the later Federal Republic of Germany – had to re-establish themselves with great difficulty. Life and accident insurers came together in a newly established joint association in Düsseldorf. Through it, they organised their reinsurance on a cooperative basis.
Statement for an interzonal pass for Dr Franz Knörlein (Chief Mathematician of the association) to travel from Berlin to Düsseldorf in the British occupation zone, 16 June 1949
Reinsurance – yes, but how?
For fire insurance – traditionally their core business – the public insurers, under the leadership of the oldest among them, Hamburger Feuerkasse, established an Association of Public Fire Insurance Institutions” and a provisional “Reinsurance Association” in Hamburg.
The next step was to decide: In what form should the reinsurance of public fire insurers be organised in future? As a cooperative solution via the association, or as before through a public limited company?
Aerial view of Hamburg-Hammerbrook with Heidenkampsweg and Süderstraße, as well as Billhafen, after the Second World War