German prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Heil Hitler salute breaks the law.

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.

Walter 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.

“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."

The gnome is the work of Ottmar Hoerl, the 59-year-old president of the city's Academy for Fine Arts. Mr Hoerl said that he first designed the Nazi gnome for an exhibition in Belgium.

"Portraying the German 'master race' as garden gnomes was an ironic gesture," said Professor Hoerl, who created a stir six years ago by placing 7,000 green hares in Nuremberg's main market square.

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

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