German prosecutors probe Heil Hitler gnome in Nuremberg

London, July 17 (ANI): German prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Heil Hitler salute breaks the law.

According to The Times, the golden gnome has gone on display at an art gallery in Nuremberg, the Bavarian city that hosted huge Nazi party rallies before the Second World War and the major war crimes trials afterwards.alter Traeg, a spokesman for the Nuremberg public prosecutors office, said that investigators had to ascertain whether the gnome breached post-War laws banning Hitler salutes and other Nazi symbols.

But he said that they may decide it is in fact a piece of art ridiculing the Third Reich.

The gnome is the work of Ottmar Hoerl, the 59-year-old president of the city's Academy for Fine Arts.

Hoerl said that he first designed the Nazi gnome for an exhibition in Belgium.

Arno Hamburger, who represents the town's Jewish community, called it "utterly tasteless. The joke stops here," he told the Bild newspaper. (ANI)