European studies blog

One of Germany’s great contributions to garden history, the Hortus Eystettensis, a magnificent 17th-century catalogue of the Bishop of Eichstätt’s garden, is on display in our current exhibition Unearthed: the Power of Gardening, in a splendid hand-coloured edition. Unfortunately, there was no room in the exhibition for another of Germany’s great contributions to garden history: the garden gnome (or garden dwarf, ‘Gartenzwerg’, as they are known in Germany). So I thought I would give the humble gnome a brief moment in the British Library sun.

For something often sneered at as ‘common’, the garden gnome has some surprisingly aristocratic forebears. In the 17th century noble families in German-speaking Europe began to decorate the gardens of their palaces with sculptures of caricatured dwarfs, based on the engravings of Jacques Callot; some of the most famous are in the Mirabell Palace Gardens in Salzburg. Both Callot’s engravings and the sculptures they inspired probably took inspiration from the ‘court dwarfs’ employed in European royal households as fools and curiosities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

One of the dwarf sculptures in the  Mirabell Palace Gardens, Salzburg (photo: Susan Reed)

It was probably this sort of sculpture that Goethe was thinking of when he mentioned garden gnomes in his epic poem Hermann und Dorothea. In one section of the poem, a local apothecary laments the fact that his garden with its rustic wooden fences, grottos, gilded furnishings, and ‘stone beggars and colourful dwarfs’ has gone out of fashion, replaced in popularity by ‘tasteful’ smooth lawns and white benches. This suggests that by the late 18th century dwarf sculptures had become as much a bourgeois as an aristocratic trend and that, like garden gnomes today, they were increasingly seen as a sign of old-fashioned (and indeed bad) taste.

It’s not quite certain whether there’s a direct link between these baroque dwarfs and the red-capped gnomes we’re more familiar with today, but it’s certainly believable that the idea of comical miniature garden figures was inspired by the earlier fashion. The garden gnomes that started to be mass produced in Germany in the mid-19th century also had roots in northern European folklore, recalling the legendary creatures – sometimes benevolent, sometimes malign – that worked in the mines or as household spirits. The Romantic movement’s ‘rediscovery’ of folk and fairy tales no doubt influenced the desire to decorate houses and gardens with such folkloric figures.

Gnomes from Scandiavian folklore working in a mine and a stable, from Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus ... (Rome, 1555)  432.k.18.

It was the aristocracy again that played a part in bringing the gnome to Britain. Dwarfs were among the wooden carvings made in Switzerland and the Black Forest region which were popular as souvenirs with British travellers in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and when stone and plaster figures began to be made, they too were brought home. In 1847 the Victorian Baronet Sir Charles Isham built a rock garden in the grounds of his home which he populated with gnomes acquired from Nuremberg, and other wealthy landowners created similar displays. However, as if to prove that there is always a backlash to the popularity of gnomes, Isham’s daughters allegedly destroyed his collection after his death by shooting at them with air rifles.

Pages from a catalogue of gnomes and other figures offered for sale in the 19th century by the firm of Ludwig Möller in Erfurt (image from Wikimedia Commons)

Gnomes achieved wide popularity both in Germany and abroad in the later 19th century and a whole gnome-making industry grew up, especially in the Thuringian town of Gräfenroda. German gnome manufacturers, some of which survive to this day, issued catalogues of gnomes in all sorts of poses and carrying various tools and other accoutrements. Initially many held mining tools, reflecting the folkloric association with mines, but as the association with gardens developed these were often replaced by wheelbarrows, rakes and the like. After the First World War there was a slight dip in the popularity of gnomes among Germany’s wartime enemies, but this did not last, and gnomes were given a further boost after 1937 by Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

However, gnomes did slide down the social scale again, coming to be seen as examples of kitschy bad taste. With a few exceptions, they have famously been banned from the Chelsea Flower Show for most of its existence, and they are an easy literary symbol for small-minded suburbia. Ingeborg Wendt’s novel Die Gartenzwerge (Hamburg, [1960]; F10/0768), for example, is a story of small-town politics in which the hapless and compromised protagonist is a garden gnome manufacturer. Similarly, the stories in Jacques-Étienne Bovard’s collection Nains de Jardin (Yvonand, 1996; YA.1997.a.14873) satirise the complacency of bourgeois Swiss life, and the book’s blurb suggests that ‘the garden gnome is in each of us who carry it as a permanent attraction to all forms of mediocrity.’

A garden gnome in Brazil, from Orlando Azevedo, Jardim de anões (Curituba, 1992) YD.2023.a.386 

Nonetheless, gnomes are still going strong, and since the late 20th century have increasingly been available in novel forms such as ‘rude’ gnomes (mooning, flashing etc.) and gnomes caricaturing politicians and other public figures. There’s even some cultural love for gnomes as evidenced by the museums, websites and festivals dedicated to them. Portuguese photographer Orlando Azevedo was so delighted to find them in gardens in southern Brazil, originally brought by Polish and German immigrants, that he made a project of photographing them. The gnomes get a chance to strike back in Norman Collins’s curious novel Little Nelson which depicts a Britain terrorised by a garden gnome revolt. And gnomes were awarded their own Google doodle in 2018.

Title page of Norman Collins, Little Nelson: a Tale for Adults and other Children (London, 1981; X.950/18826)

Finally, there’s the concept of the ‘travelling gnome’, where people take garden gnomes on their holidays and photograph them next to famous sights. This was popularised by the 2001 French film Amélie where the main character steals her father’s garden gnome and gets a flight attendant friend to take such pictures of it which she then sends to her father to encourage him to travel himself. Perhaps we’ll even see some travelling gnomes popping up at the British Library while Unearthed is still running!

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References/further reading:

Baslilus Belser, Hortus Eystettensis, sive diligens et accurata omnium plantarum, florum, stirpium, ex variis orbis terræ partibus, singulari studio collectarum, quæ in celeberrimis viridariis arcem episcopalem ibidem cingentibus, hoc tempore conspiciuntur, delineatio et ad vivum repræsentatio ([Altdorf], 1613) 10.Tab.29.

Dieter Pesch, Zwerge, Hofzwerge, Gartenzwerge. Eine Genealogie des Gartenzwerges. Ausstellung im Niederrheinischen Freilichtmuseum, Grefrath, 2. September-28. Oktober 1973 (Grefrath-Dorenburg, 1973) X.0419/31.(1.)

Günther Bauer, Barocke Zwergenkarikaturen von Callot bis Chodowiecki (Salzburg, 1991) YA.1995.b.10647

Günther Bauer, Salzburger Barockzwerge: das barocke Zwergentheater des Fischer von Erlach im Mirabellgarten zu Salzburg (Salzburg, 1989) YA.1993.a.24163

Twigs Way, Garden Gnomes: a History (Oxford, 2009) YK.2011.a.18247

Martin Cornwall, The Complete Book of the Gnome (Basingstoke, 1987) LB.31.b.14936

Dieter Hanitzsch/Rolf Cyriax, Der wunderbare Gartenzwerg: eine notwendige Kulturgeschichte mit Bildern (Munich, 1981) L.42/1758