Allianz was founded as a transport and accident insurance firm in 1890 by Carl von Thieme and Wilhelm von Finck, the founders of Munich Re. It took the company five years to expand the business into Europe and North America and subsequently list in Berlin. After World War I, individuals were confronted with the loss of wealth, life, and security and Allianz founded a life business in the 1920s. In the years after World War II, Allianz's foreign assets were seized and it lost its foreign business. By relocating its head office from Berlin to Munich in 1948, Allianz began the long road of rebuilding its domestic business. It took 20 years for Allianz to reacquire its prior foreign interests, starting in Austria. It became the largest European insurer in the postwar boom era.