Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 28 2025

Before we write about others, here are a few words about us: We are delighted that Stephanie Oeing has now been appointed on July 1 as Head of Fine Art Expertise, empowering our colleagues and customers with the expertise that is essential for our highly specialised niche market. Also on 1 July, Petter Börgers was granted power of attorney for Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH and will represent the managing director when he is unavailable. We wish them both every success in their new roles. We raised a glass to them at our summer Christmas party.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper lists the 10 largest insurance groups in Germany every year, as reported by Asscompact, without distinguishing between reinsurance and primary insurance. Munich Re therefore plays the undisputed second fiddle, even though, with a few exceptions, it only collects the business of others if it wants it. The situation is similar with the Talanx Group, which manages gross premiums of EUR 48.15 billion, of which EUR 26.4 billion comes from Hannover Re. That still leaves just under EUR 22 billion for primary insurance business in all lines, which is more than the R&V Group in fourth place with almost EUR 21 billion. There, just one art historian is employed to look after the art interests of customers. BarmeniaGothaer Versicherung, which entered the top 10 through a merger, also employs only one colleague with specialist knowledge. At the large HDI, so many changes are currently taking place that we have lost track of whether there are still three or four people with art history expertise working in the art insurance sector. The figures for the AXA Group in Germany probably do not include the business outsourced to XL. The latter now includes the art expertise of the former AXA ART and is likely to employ around 20 people with art expertise in their traditional field. At Generali, number 6 in the ranking, around 4-5 people work in art insurance in Germany, and Allianz, the largest group, has around 40 people from the art world. Adding these figures together, we arrive at just under 70 people working in a profession that did not exist 42 years ago. It is striking that the giants are also involved in this business – but the momentum is coming from smaller companies. By way of comparison, we have six people who have studied art history, more than three billion-euro corporations combined.

Some of you may have been surprised that we sent out a traditional newsletter on Saturday. There will be a few more – to support a friend who wants to liven up some gallery spaces in the middle of the summer slump, and in September Jim Harris, who created the image on our homepage, will be there.

The city of Dortmund has put the insurance for its museums out to tender. One wonders why. The competitors who are active in this business had already blocked the capacities with their cronies before the announcement. The awarding authorities can only decide on price, as they lack the necessary expertise. As can be seen again from the example of the city of Cologne, this expertise lies in the specialist departments. The playground is now banned – after two years and numerous rounds of discussions with those allegedly affected and interest groups, the playground is now to be buried because it discriminates against children and those who are still children at heart. It is now to be called a play and activity area. 700 new billboards are needed, which, thank God, have not yet been produced because the gender of the mayor is still undecided after the election in September. The fact that the current mayor only put a temporary stop to the goings-on after a storm of indignation as head of the administration is testament to her incompetence and the cardinal error of municipal administrative reform – in a large city, assuming that a figurehead elected on populist principles also has administrative competence.

As a regular newspaper reader, I was already surprised by President Trump's honesty in wanting to present his people with a big, beautiful bill. Bill, I had learned in school, means invoice. And now it also means law. Interesting and actually honest – laws usually lead to costs that have to be financed, and the resulting invoices are called taxes. Even more interesting is that the double meaning of words disappears in context. No one sees the bills behind the laws. This brings me – you will find this boring – to the supposedly gender-neutral language. Context determines meaning – but most people are denied context because they have no idea themselves. Example: ‘Vorstand’ is the abbreviation for a member of a committee. This says nothing about gender. Now you read in all the newspapers about female board members (Vorständin) – a misnomer that also indicates that the person using it for themselves does not understand their function, unless they are the sole board member. There are many great, capable, successful women who are members of executive boards and supervisory boards, and there are more and more, which is a good thing! The committee of which one is a member is responsible; or should we now say ‘memberess’?

Thank you for reading this far – you are indeed still reading, and we wish all our readers much enjoyment and pleasure during the upcoming art week organised by Stefan Kobel.

With this in mind, please remain critical and look forward to a week that will bring the world a little closer to peace hopefully.

Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne