Munich Re became renowned after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 as the only insurer that remained solvent after paying out all the claims, a total of 15.5 million Marks .

Starting from 1940 the company was involved in Allianz' insurance business with the SS: Munich Re served as reinsurance company for contracts insuring the barracks and operations in the concentration and extermination camps Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen and Stutthof.

[12] Supervisory board member Kurt Schmitt joined the NSDAP and SS in 1933 and took the position as Reich Economy Minister for one year.

[13] In 1938 he became Director General of Munich Re and stayed in this position until the American military authorities relieved him of all offices at the end of the war.

Munich Re provides reinsurance cover for life, health, property, casualty, transport, aviation, space, fire and engineering business.

Members of the ERGO Group include the insurance subsidiaries D.A.S., DKV and Europäische Reiseversicherung AG, and the IT service provider ITERGO.

The main activities of the foundation concentrate on four fields: knowledge accumulation and implementation, clarification and sensitisation, networking of experts as well as direct help and support of local projects.

Since adaptation to climate and environmental change is much more difficult for poorer countries, the focus of the foundation is primarily on people in the developing world.

The Collection was geared to modern art, which from the outset has been successively expanded over the decades with works by important artists.

It includes works by Rudolf Belling,[23] Barbara Hepworth,[24] Rupprecht Geiger[25] ("Concave rounded", 1973), Norbert Kricke[26] and Joseph Beuys.

Artists like Angela Bulloch,[27] Keith Sonnier[28] and James Turrell[29] have designed light installations for the extensive network of underground passages that link the company's buildings in Schwabing, Munich.

The offices on Berliner Strasse, designed by the architectural practice of Sauerbruch Hutton, hold regularly changing exhibitions of contemporary art.