An area of southern Germany on the Swiss border was hit with a magnitude 4.5 earthquake early on Monday morning.

The epicenter of the minor quake was in Steinen, in the Black Forest, officials said. The tremors were felt for a radius of some 100 kilometers (60 miles).

"We got a lot of emergency calls," a spokesman for the area police told dpa news service. "People were woken from their sleep."

The state of Baden-Wurttemburg, where the quake took place, has tremors of that magnitude every two or three years, experts say.