Germany's oldest Baltic resort transformed for G8 summit

HEILIGEDAMM, Germany -- Looking for a cunning business venture after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Neumann had the foresight to go into fencing -- predicting the demand the new free market would create for chic enclosures to cordon off everything from private gardens to sports arenas.

Now, 18 years on, Neumann and his team of workers are putting the finishing touches to their biggest commission yet -- a 7.5 mile long, 2.5-metre (8ft) high steel fence topped with barbed wire, video monitors and sensors to detect movement. The daunting construction snakes through fields of rapeseed and contains enough steel -- 500 tonnes - to make a ship.

This barrier is transforming the elegant 18th century beach resort of Heiligendamm on Germany's Baltic coast into the tightest high-security zone the country has known for the G8 summit on June 6-8...

Its trademark white classical villas, modelled on those of British resorts, once played host to the Russian tsar and his family, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Queen Luise of Prussia and even dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who came here on the advice of their doctors...

The Kempinski Grand Hotel [was] renovated for €200m to house the likes of George Bush, Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin [and] €100m [is] being spent on security, including 16,000 policemen...

Conservationists also joined the fray after an 1854 villa -- once the summer residence of the Russian Tsar Nicholas I -- was torn down to make way for a press centre.