Gnome probed over Nazi salute Posted Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:46am AEST Updated Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:57am AEST on the ABC website German prosecutors have launched an enquiry into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Hitler salute in a Nuremberg art gallery is against the law. "The investigation is ongoing and people are being interviewed," Wolfgang Traeg, a spokesman for the public prosecutors office in the southern city, told AFP.

Hitler salutes and Nazi symbols have been illegal in Germany since World War II, but Traeg said that investigators may establish that the garden gnome is in fact ridiculing the Third Reich.

"It is also a question of art a bit .. and a garden gnome," he said. "It will also depend on what the artist and the owners of the gallery have to say for themselves about the whole thing."

According to media reports, the artist in question is German-born Ottmar Hoerl, who has designed numerous exhibitions and projects in public spaces -- and since 2005 has been president of the Academy for Fine Arts in Nuremberg.

Hitler-saluting garden gnome in the clear

Posted Thu Jul 23, 2009 6:39am AEST
Updated Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:50pm AEST on the ABC website

German prosecutors say they have decided that displaying a golden garden gnome in a Nuremberg art gallery with its right hand raised in a Hitler salute was not illegal.

After a preliminary inquiry over the past week, prosecutors in the Bavarian city ruled that the 40-centimetre gnome is ridiculing the Nazis rather than promoting a return of the Third Reich.

"It is pretty clear that garden gnomes are silly and that they do silly things. In 1942 I would have been shot by the Nazis for this," prosecutors quoted the gnome's creator, artist Ottmar Hoerl, as saying.

Hitler salutes and Nazi symbols have been illegal in Germany since the end of World War II, but prosecutors said they were allowed if they were used clearly to counter national socialist ideology.

They said however that gnomes "have a certain abuse potential" and warned anybody tempted to copy Hoerl's work would also find themselves in their cross hairs.

Nuremberg city has particular resonance when it comes to World War II, as it was the scene of huge rallies by Hitler and also where the trials of Nazis took place after Germany's defeat in 1945.

Hoerl, who expressed surprise at the investigation when it was announced, has also exhibited his golden Nazi gnomes in Belgium, Italy and Aschaffenburg, Germany.