• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
A German giant in the world of gnomes

GRAEFENRODA, Germany (AFP) - With his jolly face and little paunch, Reinhard the potter resembles the garden gnomes he produces by the dozen in this little village in Germany where, they say, the phenomenon began.

Reinhard Griebel grew up surrounded by gnomes in Graefenroda, tucked in the forests of the eastern German state of Thuringia. This village of 3,500 people claims to be the birthplace of "nanus hortorum vulgaris", or the common garden gnome, which local folklore says was dreamed up by a local potter in 1880.

The craftsmen of the village, including Reinhard's great-grandfather, wasted no time in capitalising on the idea and, in the land where the Brothers Grimm created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the popularity of gnomes spread fast. "With his red hat, his lantern, his wheelbarrow and his basket on his back, he is the very image of the miners who used to work in this region," Reinhard said.

"He's small enough to worm through the mineshafts and always full of the joys of life." Germany was in the throes of the industrial revolution and workers on their Sunday off found they liked having a decorative touch to add to the garden where they would sit and relax before returning to the daily grind.

Before long, garden gnomes had conquered all four corners of the world. For Reinhard, the reign of the gnomes reached a low point in the days when the communist regime in East Germany banned them because they were considered a capitalist symbol, although they were happy to export them to the West in return for hard cash.

Since the mines shut down in this region, gnome manufacture has become the lifeblood of the village. And there is no shortage of work -- Reinhard estimates there are more than 18 million garden gnomes in Germany alone.

As soon as the winter snows melt, Reinhard himself fetches 30 gnomes up from his cellar to sit in the garden of his house. German writer, Michael Kurzer, who has written an entire book about garden gnomes maintains that anyone with gnomes in their garden benefits from "their magical powers".

"The pleasure of a little garden tended with love can help improve everyone's mood," he adds. Reinhard has no time for the plastic imitations -- for him, it should be a proper, handmade gnome, or nothing. He is a proud member of an international association which tries to keep alive the old gnome-making traditions.

With the help of his wife Iris and his assistant, he fashions the jolly little figures by hand. The clay is poured into a mould and dried before being baked and then carefully painted by hand and varnished. Each series has a name, be it Fritz, Heinz, or Willy. Reinhard can identify each batch by their face, height or what they are doing -- fishing, dozing or even playing cards.

Some are a lot naughtier than that -- one of Reinhard's top sellers is a mischievous 'voyeur gnome' with binoculars raised to his eyes and his trousers round his ankles, available to the more adventurous gardener for 34 euros (45 dollars).

Source
 
Cry freedom

There's an underground resistance organisation dedicated to their liberation, and now a new book of photographs captures their surreal, irreverent quality. Stuart Jeffries examines our peculiar relationship with garden gnomes.

Saturday March 26, 2005
The Guardian

Six years ago, 11 garden gnomes were found hanging from a bridge in the French town of Briey. Nearby was a "suicide" note that read: "When you read these few words, we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as decoration."

The note had been put there by Le Front de Libération des Nains de Jardin (or the Garden Gnome Liberation Front), a group dedicated to freeing an oppressed minority. Two years later, it liberated 20 gnomes from an exhibition in the Bois de Boulogne. A statement at the time from the group said: "We demand ... that garden gnomes be no longer ridiculed and that they be released into their natural habitat."

The FLN (not to be confused with the Algerian nationalist group) goes around France stealing gnomes from gardens. A sceptic might say liber-ating domestic gnomes into the wild is a barmy thing to do. How would they survive in a predatory environment?

But let's ignore that sort of objection for the moment. A brief glance at how gnomes have been abused in popular culture shows that the FLN has a point. At the end of one episode of Fawlty Towers, for instance, Basil is seen leaving the hotel carrying a garden gnome that he intends to insert into an inept builder called O'Reilly, which might well have caused the gnome emotional and physical distress, no matter what Mr O'Reilly had coming to him. In the French film Amélie, the eponymous heroine conspires with a flight attendant to send her father's gnome on a world tour - posting him photographs of the gnome at foreign landmarks - to inspire him to travel. Did Amélie consider the gnome's resultant jet lag and deep vein thrombosis? We think not. In Coronation Street once, Norris stole his neighbour Derek's gnome called Arthur and taunted him (Derek, not Arthur) with ransom letters and photographs. No record is kept of where the gnome was held, but the safe money says it was in a dank cellar in a manner that infringed its civil rights.

These matters are topical because of the publication of Vivian Russell's book Gnomes. Her previous books include Monet's Garden and Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens - a horticultural track record that might lead one to believe her attitude to gnomes would be best expressed in the same manner as the Guardian headline on a piece about the potter Grayson Perry. Namely: "If I had a hammer ..."

But no. Russell's sumptuous volume is a defence of the seemingly indefensible - the garden gnome in its natural habitat, which is, as we know, the garden. It was an Englishman, she points out, who first thought of putting gnomes in gardens. In 1847, Sir Charles Isham, of Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, sent off to Germany for some porcelain dwarf-like figures with which to animate his enormous rockery. They can still be seen there, a reminder of the happier, distant days when gnomes were not purloined from front gardens by ne'er-do-wells, vandals and misguided liberators.

Other places where one might see gnomes living en toute discrétion are in the garden of St Joseph's Hospice, in Hackney, London, where head gardener Jocelyn Armitage claims that gnomes leave and then return. Or the Gnome Reserve at West Putford, Devon (0870 845 9012), where gnome collectors might well find their spiritual home in a world in which they are otherwise doomed to be misunderstood.

For the gnome is part of our collective unconscious, according to Jean Yves Jouannais, whose book Des Nains, des Jardins (Gnomes, Gardens) is a leading text in the field. Russell suggests that this explains why gnomes have figured so prominently in ancient cultures and also why, when British suburbs developed, they provided a spiritual nourishment in an otherwise sterile environment. "I wonder how many members of the various gnome liberation groups weren't themselves brought up in suburbia, and identify with what they call 'gnomes in captivity'?" asks Russell trenchantly.

What the book doesn't attempt is a taxonomy of the little fellows. How do you tell gnomes from leprechauns, hobbits, elves, trolls, goblins, gremlins and so on? Is Noddy a gnome? Is Big-Ears? What about Robin Cook? Nor does she tackle gender issues: can gnomes be female and if not, why the hell not?

It would have been interesting to read something, too, on the gnomic symbolism surely at the heart of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, involving the character Alberich who is a non-garden gnome, a folkloric figure of contemptible morals with a huge inferiority complex. His relation to the plaster thing dangling its line in the pond at the back of number 33 is not considered in Russell's book. But it should have been.

Nor were such issues tackled in the anthropological conference held at the University of Rennes, which none the less considered that the garden gnome was a totem of our times, fraught with all kinds of symbolism: economic (hence, no doubt, why Zurich's bankers are labelled gnomes), cultural and emotional.

These matters are far too abstruse for French gendarmes who last year rounded up thousands of the gnomes that had been "freed" by the FLN. In St-Die-Des-Vosges, gendarmes even had a "Gnome Return Day" in which they attempted to return 84 gnomes to their owners' homes. Only 41 were returned - the rest languished in the dusty basement of the police station. "They are now going to spend the rest of their lives locked up, if they're not resold into slavery at an auction," said an FLN spokesman.

But there is another option - that this latter-day Bastille will be stormed and its prisoners freed again. Is the FLN up to this dangerous and illegal task? We remain sceptical.

Source

Gnomes
Vivian Russell (2005)

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0711223 ... enantmc-20
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/07112 ... ntmagaz-21

The other book mentioned is:

Des nains, des jardins: Essai sur le kitsch pavillonnaire
Jean-Yves Jouannais (1993)

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/2850253 ... enantmc-20
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/2850256 ... enantmc-20
 
Grandma Stops Intruder With Garden Gnome


Apr 15, 5:20 PM (ET)

LONDON (AP) - A grandmother stopped an intruder from entering her home by lobbing a heavy garden gnome at him, police said Friday. Jean Collop was woken early on Tuesday morning by the sound of an intruder on the roof of her home in Wadebridge, southwest England.

"I grabbed the first thing that came to hand - one of my garden gnomes - and hurled it at him, and hit him," she recalled.

"He lay there and I began to scream. I went back into the kitchen and found a rolling pin in case he came down. I didn't want to break another gnome."

A neighbor alerted police who arrived shortly afterward and arrested the intruder.

He added: "Our usual advice would be not to get involved, but to contact the police straight away," said a spokesman for the Devon and Cornwall Police.

"We do appreciate that in the heat of the moment people react to that situation, and if it results in a happy outcome that's great."

Source
 
Re: Grandma Stops Intruder With Garden Gnome.

The sad thing with the whole thing, is that after all the hastle it was reported that:- "A 20-year-old man was arrested and cautioned for attempted burglary".

"CAUTIONED"!!!!!!!!

Did no one break the tossers legs?

The result, seems hardly worth the damage to a garden gnome!!!!

Although, given the current bunch off nebbishers in power Ms Collop, is lucky that she was not done for assaulting a poor exploiter of private enterprise!!!!

See the latest scumbag:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... nart18.xml
 
I used to have a nieghbor who had a bambi-like deer,some statues of black people fishing at a decorative pond,and some gnomes placed all around his back yard like some kind of little fantasy world. He was a real nut,often talking to himself and carrying both sides of the conversation as he puttered about his lawn.
You may find it hard to believe, and no one in my family has ever done this ,but
in the southern US, there has long been a similar tradition of placing small cast-concrete statues of black people in yards. And it would seem that the figures are a direct rip off of gnomes,in that they are usually doing the same things such as fishing, playing cards and most of the other activities the gnomes are depicted as doing,with the exception of the driveway figures who stand on either side of the driveway holding a lantern so that one can see the entrance in the dark. They were usually "dressed" in a red jacket or vest , white pants , black cap or denim overalls with a straw hat. The fishing figures are often placed on the edge of large birdbaths or on decorative bridges crossing small ponds. The ones with lanterns are also found on front porches occasionally.
It is considered quite racist these days but in the not so distant past(my childhood for instance) it was just overlooked and not mentioned in conversation. I asked someone about the figures when I was a child and the reply was "oh, some people still do that" . WTH ?
On the main highway leading to the Great Smokey Mountains National park there are several roadside shops where these are still sold,but in an unpainted version so as not to be considered offensive.
It is up to the buyer to decide how the figures will be painted/colored when they get them home.
I could not believe they were still sold until I went up that stretch of highway last summer and saw them for myself.
 
Our next-door neighbours (in North Bay) had a statue of a little black boy fishing in a fountain. :shock: (I don't think there was any [conscious] racist meaning to it, just their cheesy taste)
 
Gnomes abandoned at Alton Towers

Staff at Alton Towers are trying to find homes for 200 gnomes left behind by visitors.

Bosses at the Staffordshire attraction offered free entry to anyone who arrived accompanied by a gnome throughout May.

The offer was in response to a book which criticised Alton Towers while praising attractions such as Gnome Magic and the British Lawnmower Museum.

A spokesman said they had "unwittingly created a gnome mountain".

The adrenaline from the rides must have gone to their heads as a great many of them have forgotten to take their gnomes home
Mike Lorimer, Alton Towers

The book focuses on the underdogs of British tourism and offers an alternative to "going round a rollercoaster at a hundred miles an hour with ice cream in your hair".

Mike Lorimer, from Alton Towers, said: "Undoubtedly, the crazy, thrill-inducing world of a theme park is not for everyone, but with 2.3 million visitors per year, they clearly appeal to a large number."

In response to the book, bosses offered more than 1,000 visitors a free entry ticket if they arrived at the park with a gnome.

"But the adrenaline from the rides must have gone to their heads as a great many of them have forgotten to take their gnomes home at the end of the day," added Mr Lorimer.

"We now have a mini colony of gnomes alone."

He said a gnome crèche had been set up for anyone in need of a bearded ornament for their garden.

-------------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 613307.stm

Published: 2005/06/06 11:04:13 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
In Rotterdam (The Netherlands) the city council has bought a statue by Paul Mc'Carthy (NOT Cartney!) in the shape of a huge garden gnome with a buttplug in his hand. He has his own website: http://www.kabouterbuttplug.nl/

They are bickering several years now whether this statue will ever be placed at all, and if, where they should place it :D
 
uair01 said:
They are bickering several years now whether this statue will ever be placed at all, and if, where they should place it :D

Yes but the question is where they should put it ;)
 
Gnomes return to haunt villagers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/4634145.stm
Residents in a Lincolnshire village have discovered a mysterious collection of garden gnomes - for the second time.
The four figurines appeared in a flowerbed of pansies underneath the village sign of Brattleby.

The discovery comes two years after gnomes were left in the front gardens of 14 homes in the village.

A year later some residents received an unsigned letter asking them to find a good home for the gnomes, but no-one has claimed responsibility.

Some of the statues have languished in people's garage and sheds for two years, while others are on display in people's gardens.

Parish council chairman councillor Mike Spencer, 61, said: "It is a bit of a mystery. It is such an odd thing to happen.

"I have even had some people accuse me but I can honestly say it is nothing to do with me at all.

"I don't like gnomes, and this is not a gnome sort of village - we are in a conservation area.

"Who it is remains a mystery, but I suppose it does create a bit of fun each year."
 
the gnome garden in a lake

sorry if i couldn't find this with the search "facility", but i'm sure there was a thread about the lake where there's a gnome garden on the bottom and several people have died while trying to see it
can someone help?
thanks in advance.
 
Re: the gnome garden in a lake

ginoide said:
sorry if i couldn't find this with the search "facility", but i'm sure there was a thread about the lake where there's a gnome garden on the bottom and several people have died while trying to see it
can someone help?
thanks in advance.


About halfway down this page Garden Gnomes
 
Re: the gnome garden in a lake

ginoide said:
sorry if i couldn't find this with the search "facility", but i'm sure there was a thread about the lake where there's a gnome garden on the bottom and several people have died while trying to see it
can someone help?
thanks in advance.

I've merged your post in.

If people have problems finding a thread they should feel free to use the Threadfinder General thread:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21261
 
oops. faux-pas.
thanks emperor.
and thanks timble, that's the surreal piece of information i was looking for.
 
LOL - no worries - its what we are here for ;)

-------------------
Gallery takes in 40 stolen gnomes

Canadian Press
Jul. 7, 2005 10:42 AM

PENTICTON, B.C. - It was a crime of miniature proportions.

A collection of 40 stolen garden gnomes appeared Tuesday in a traffic circle outside the South Okanagan Art Gallery.

The gallery has come to their rescue.

"We're setting up a gnome reclamation centre," curator Kurtis Collins said Wednesday.

The stolen gnomes occupied the same place where a nude male statue was erected and then removed after it was vandalized.

Penticton is about 300 kilometres east of Vancouver.

www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0707gnomes07-ON.html
 
Tax rebel sends threatened gnomes into hiding

Mon Mar 20, 10:39 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A disabled council tax rebel has sent her collection of garden gnomes into hiding to avoid them being seized by local officials.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here

The officials had threatened to take the gnomes from widow Gwynneth Lester in Fareham, about 70 miles southwest of London, after she refused to pay up.

Lester, 57, refuses to pay the tax which finances local services because, she says, she gets nothing for it.

Her rebellion has landed her in court with a demand to pay up some 670 pounds -- in cash or in kind -- or face prison.

"Well, they won't be taking the garden gnomes now because I have given them away," she told Reuters Monday. "In fact they won't be getting anything that I have collected over the years because I have given it all away to keep it from them."

http://tinyurl.com/rgdnl
 
Telegraph solves the mystery of the travelling Gnome
The Daily Telegraph solved the mystery by discovering the identity of the man who decided to make the gnome his travelling companion, and took him to meet the owners.
By Stephen Adams and Richard Savill
Last Updated: 2:07AM BST 12 Aug 2008

Simon Randles, 22, a law graduate from Reading University, who is taking a year out before joining the Royal Marines in February, shook hands and spoke at length with Derrick Stuart-Kelso and his wife, Eve, who were intrigued by his story.

“Thanks for coming round,” Mrs Stuart-Kelso told him. “It is a lovely story and you have cheered me up on a miserable day.” :D

Mr Randles, who lives in Gloucester, and travelled alone with the gnome, said the idea of taking a gnome had come up in discussion with friends at university. “It is incredibly hard to find a gnome,” he said. “I was on a bus and saw this gnome in the garden. I think it was fate. I mentally tagged it and went back the night before I left and liberated it sometime before midnight.

”I felt a degree of guilt as it could have been a treasured heirloom. It is not something I am proud of. I produced the album because I felt I owed it my best. I wanted them to have the best photographs.

”The gnome was a great icebreaker on the trip. It made friends with a lot of people. It was difficult getting it through customs. Every time it appeared on the scanner they demanded to see it.”

Mrs Stuart-Kelso said did not want any police involvement “but I have warned Simon not to do it again.” Mr Randles replied: “I have taken it on board.”

The gnome had been mysteriously returned after seven months - together with a photo album showing he has been on a world-wide tour.

In an episode that re-creates a scene from the French film Amelie, Murphy was returned to Eve Stuart-Kelso with a letter saying he had taken off because he had "itchy feet".

In the 2001 film, starring Audrey Tautou, Amelie steals her father's gnome and gives it to a friend who takes it around the world and posts back pictures of it in famous places to show him what he is missing in life.

Besides Murphy was a Tesco carrier bag containing the album of 48 photos and stamped immigration permits to South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Laos.

The album showed Murphy - who weighs a hefty 8lb (3.6kg) - abseiling down a mountain, standing in a shark's mouth, swimming in the sea, and riding a motorbike.

etc....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... Gnome.html

Pics on link.
 
This thread made me think of a line of alternative garden gnomes i saw for sale some time ago. They where depicted comitting suicide in various ways. I couldn't find them, but I did find this.

Gnome bandit caught
Metro Friday, June 13, 2008

53-year-old Gnome russler has been arrested in Brittany after going on a gnome stealing spree.
The French man, suspected of stealing 170 gnomes, was arrested on Tuesday.
Gnome disappearances are becoming increasingly common on the French German border where a shady organisation, the Garden Gnome Liberation Front, is taking hold.
On this occasion, however, the suspect appears to have acted alone according to police.
Garden gnomes have been omnipresent in German gardens for more than a century and some 25 million of them are estimated to exist in garden plots around the country.
Created in 1872 in the eastern town of Graefenroda, they're a symbol of order and comedy.
Although they're adored by many, others find them to be in poor taste, a kind of provincial kitsch invading the German environment.
Reports of gnome theft have also occurred in Berlin, where some believe they were taken onto France where they were then “released”.
There is even an International Society for the Protection of Garden Gnomes that seeks to protect this German creation.
French authorities found some 170 gnomes in the Brittany man's small garden.
He faces the prospect of jail. [/img][/quote]
 
Hold the front page!

Gnomes infiltrate RHS Chelsea Flower Show via Jekka McVicar's garden
Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

The moment that whispers of rebellion began to rustle through the swaying grasses, plants and trees at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, officials knew that they must act.

Organisers embarked immediately on a discreet inspection of the gardens and, to their dismay, discovered that the murmurings of revolt were all too true. Exhibitors were seeking to display garden gnomes. :shock:

While they may be a popular feature in some suburban and cottage gardens, garden gnomes are considered taboo by the country’s gardening elite — and they are banned from the Chelsea show.

What has surprised the officials, however, is that a member of the RHS’s own ruling council has been implicated in the affair.

Jekka McVicar, a leading organic grower, member of the RHS ruling council and 13 times a gold medal winner at the show, has created a stunning display of medicinal and culinary herbs in the Grand Pavilion but hidden away behind the greenery next to a stream is a tiny gnome with a fishing rod.

A show spokeswoman insisted that the offending gnome be ejected. “It has got to go before judging begins at 8am on Monday. Gnomes are against the rules,” she said.

Mrs McVicar was embarrassed by the stir that she had caused but defended her gnome and suggested she would try to conceal him amid the foliage rather than remove him altogether. “I am a council member of the RHS because it is inspirational for gardeners — but there has to be an element of fun. Gardening can be too serious,” she said. 8)

Her gnome, Borage, has been a lucky mascot for more than 15 years, although he had never before appeared at Chelsea. However, as this was her last appearance at the show, she wanted her gnome there. “I just think Borage is wonderfully good-taste. He’s not brightly coloured. He’s a subtle gnome, though definitely not an upper-class gnome.

“Borage will not be taken away, but he will not be spotted. He will be buried in the depth of the garden.”

David Domoney, a modern garden designer and one of the team on ITV’s This Morning programme, has two displays at Chelsea that are intended to shock. One is a garden designed for motorcyclists that features pixie bikers; the other is an aquarium display of marine plants that also features 15 red-bellied piranhas.

He has special permission from the RHS to include a Harley-Davidson in the bikers’ garden — a first in the show’s 87 years — but his pixie bikers are too much for the organisers.

One RHS insider said: “We’ve already been on a snoop and seen one in his garden. That will have to be removed. It doesn’t matter [that] it’s not exactly a gnome, it’s like one. People are being very naughty this year but we will find them out and get rid of them by morning.”

Mr Domoney was unrepentant. “I have seen the officials snooping around but this is a bikers’ garden and these are miniature bikers made from nails and spark plugs. They look like aliens or predators, not wimpish gnomes. They’ve spotted one but there is another. I’ve deliberately tried to conceal them. If they are confiscated, who is to say if there are others on standby? But I can’t talk about that.” :twisted:

etc..

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l ... 307751.ece
 
I quite like seeing a few garden gnomes about. Not too many, not too plastic and not dropping their trousers, though.

:)
 
Me, my gnome and a ban from Chelsea Flower Show
Jekka McVicar The Guardian, Tuesday 19 May 2009 Article history

"Gnomes are against the rules," a spokeswoman for the Royal Horticultural Society, which runs the Chelsea Flower Show, has declared after spotting my gnome Borage on my organic herb stand. Admittedly, we had been more open about Borage's appearance this year. He has been to Chelsea before, but was always well hidden among the foliage. ;) I was told to cover him up before judging began, so back into the foliage he went, ensuring that the sensibilities of judges and visitors were not offended.

Borage appeared in my office about 10 years ago, and soon became a fixture at our herb farm in south Gloucestershire. I have no idea where he came from, but he kept appearing in funny places on the farm, and I became very attached to him. We called him Borage after Borago officinalis the medicinal herb that is really beneficial, and he became our lucky mascot.

This is my final time at Chelsea as an exhibitor: I have done 18 years here and that is enough. I have won 61 RHS gold medals, including 13 at Chelsea, but it is a bit like the Olympics - you cannot go on performing at this level forever, and it's best to quit at the top. To mark my final Chelsea, I wanted Borage to put in an appearance. This year, we have a water feature for the first time, and as a joke we put Borage on to it. One of my staff made him a fishing rod and put a little sign on his back - "Gone fishing." But it all seems to have spun out of control.

I can understand the RHS president's point of view. Allow Borage to be on show and it could get out of hand; there might be gnomes popping up everywhere. After all, it is supposed to be about the plants rather than the ornaments. So Borage will go back among the foliage where no one can see him. You would be surprised how many other gnomes and lucky mascots exhibitors secrete in their gardens at Chelsea. :twisted:

I have never understood the prejudice against gnomes. To me they just represent our search for a bit of magic. 8)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2 ... ge-gardens
 
This bit interests me -

You would be surprised how many other gnomes and lucky mascots exhibitors secrete in their gardens at Chelsea.

What an intriguing mixture of defiance and superstition. :D
 
Germany opens 'Nazi' gnome case
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8155542.stm

The artist says his gnomes ridicule, rather than glorify, the Nazis
A garden gnome giving the Nazi salute has landed a German artist in trouble with the authorities in Nuremberg.

Prosecutors are investigating whether the gnome, which went on show in one of the city's galleries, breaks the strict law banning Nazi symbols and gestures.

The Bavarian city is particularly sensitive about the Nazi era because Adolf Hitler used it for big rallies and leading Nazis went on trial there.

The artist, Ottmar Hoerl, says his gnomes poke fun at the Nazis.

"I'm astonished that a single garden gnome, in what is for me an obscure gallery in Nuremberg, has unleashed such a public discussion because of an anonymous denunciation by someone," Mr Hoerl said.

The 59-year-old artist has been president of Nuremberg's Academy of Fine Arts since 2005.

"I didn't put it in the art gallery. Someone must have bought it and put it there. But I don't know what all the fuss is about.

"With my gnomes I'm highlighting the danger of political opportunism and right-wing ideology. I get the feeling that this gnome has reopened an old wound," he said.

It's a comical figure - all kinds of people have made that gesture

Erwin Weigl
Gallery owner
The results of the investigation are expected in a few days, the BBC's Berlin correspondent Steve Rosenberg reports, adding that the 40cm (15.7-inch) figure still reminds Germans of a terrifying past.

Last year hundreds of Mr Hoerl's "Nazi" gnomes went on show in the Belgian city of Gent, in an exhibition called "Dance with the Devil".

He said that Belgians had well understood the political meaning "when one portrays the master race as a garden gnome".

"In 1942 I would have been murdered by the Nazis for this work," he said.

A spokesman for the Nuremberg public prosecutor's office, Wolfgang Traeg, said "we're checking to see if garden gnomes fall into the same clear category as posters that show the swastika crossed out".

He said the aim was to establish whether the artist and the gallery owner had intended the gnome as an endorsement of the Third Reich or as a rejection of Nazi ideology.

Mr Traeg referred to a previous case: a swastika which had been graffitied onto a wall. No prosecution was brought because the picture featured a fist smashing the Nazi symbol.

The gallery owner who put the gnome in the window maintains he has done nothing wrong.

"I think it's quite harmless," Erwin Weigl told the BBC.

"It was sitting in the window for two weeks and no one complained. It's a comical figure. All kinds of people have made that gesture. Julius Caesar did it. Even Barack Obama does it now. To me, it looks a bit like when you gesture to a dachshund to jump up to your hand."
 
Here at The Yankee Gardener we have known for a long time about the magical powers of the fantastic little guardians of the forest and gardens called Gnome's, sometimes known as evil garden gnomes. The word gnome stems from the Greek word gnosis, or knowledge, and gnomes are known as guardians of secrets and esoteric wisdom. They also wear felt boots and like to tell melancholy stories. Yet gnome's are peaceful and watchful beings, and you won't find a better keeper of your home than a garden gnome.

The first clay garden gnome was made in Germany in the 1800s. Garden gnomes migrated to Britain in 1847 when Sir Charles Isham brought 21 terracotta garden gnome's from Germany and placed them in his garden in Northamptonshire. Only one of these original garden gnome immigrants still survives. He's named Lampy and is insured for just under 1.5 million dollars USD or 1 million pounds sterling.

Gnome's are considered to be a part of the collective memory of Eastern and Western European folk tale. The Brothers Grimm featured gnome's in The Gnome, a series of short stories detailing the lives of gnome's. These stories depict gnome's in benevolent and malevolent lights, but the first story is perhaps one of the most important: in it clothing is given to two helpful gnome's and they decide to serve a cobbler and his wife for the rest of their days. Other stories exist of gnome's helpfulness in the oral tradition and relate the willingness of gnome's to assist in gardens. Phillip Griebel began manufacturing terra cotta gnome's specifically for gardens in the town of Graefenroda , Germany in the early nineteen century. They quickly became staples of gardens across the continent and were brought to England by Sir Charles Isham in 1847. One of the surviving gnome's from Isham’s garden is on display at the Isham estate and is insured for 1.5 million dollars USD or 1 million pounds sterling.

Magic-jack
 
Pavel is spam. It's cut and pasted from a Garden Centre site, just to get the advert at the bottom in.
 
Back
Top