The Man Who Built 40 Castles Around a Little German Town - Günther Beinert’s regal miniatures appear all over Gerbstedt (population: 3,000).
YOU NOTICE THE CASTLES THE minute you arrive in Gerbstedt, a quiet little town in Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state, an hour’s drive from Leipzig. Elaborately constructed miniature castles, replete with tiny windows, shrubs, and dwellers in historical attire, greet you at different spots around town—outside the supermarket, in front of the church, on people’s front lawns. It’s an open-air museum of sorts spanning the entire area.
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Born in Gerbstedt in 1933, Beinert is a professional bricklayer. He began constructing miniature castles in his spare time, he says, eventually amassing so many that he ran out of storage space in his workshop. A call to the municipality followed, to ask if there was room to install his creations outside. “And that’s how it all began,” he says. Today, 40 miniature castles adorn Gerbstedt. Along with them, Beinert has brought to life replicas of knights, and a series of trains that occupy the site of the now-defunct train station.
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Beinert’s fairly innocuous passion occasionally landed him in trouble with the authorities, as his miniatures predominantly depicted the castles of West Germany. “I was ratted out for placing black, red, and gold flags on these castles without the emblem,” he recalls, referring to the national emblem of East Germany, which distinguished it from the flag of West Germany (and Germany after reunification). “I was disciplined by the [Socialist Unity Party] and told I glorified feudalism, which was complete nonsense.”
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...tles-gerbstedt