The stability of a Ge(111) surface and its vicinals were studied by LEED for clean and Ag covered conditions. Before deposition the surfaces were macroscopically smooth. After deposition of only a few tenths of a monolayer of Ag and heating to 400 °C, the surface consisted of narrow (544) facet planes and wide (111) terraces. At coverage above 0.7 the (544) facets disappeared and (211) facets started growing. The facets had dimensions in the range of 10 μ, so that they could be observed with an optical microscope. Furthermore, a rotation of ledges into directions with low indices was observed. The results show that the equilibrium shape of a surface is drastically changed by a coverage of a fraction of a monolayer due to the formation of new minima of the surface free energy at peculiar high index vicinal surfaces.