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From classic gnomes with white beards, red hats
and pipes to footballers in white shorts and female gnomes in
saucy underwear, Philipp Griebel is one of the most famous
producers of the painted clay models which adorn gardens
worldwide.
"Here, garden gnomes were, I won't say invented, but brought to
life, a symbol of hard work from the mine," said Reinhard
Griebel, owner of the firm in the village of Graefenroda, which
describes itself as the birthplace of the garden gnome.
Based in the former Communist East Germany, the firm employed
more than 60 people at its peak, shortly before the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989.
"Now there are three of us and that is 28 years after this
time," Griebel told Reuters Television, outlining three options
for the future.
"Either I carry on until I am over 100 years old, that would
certainly still be fun, or the garden gnomes reproduce," he
joked. "The third possibility is to find a successor and we are
searching."
Graefenroda is located in the hilly, wooded state of Thuringia
which, like much of the former East, has suffered an exodus of
young people since German reunification. Its population fell to
3,232 in 2015, down from 4,313 in 1989.
Porcelain maker Philipp Griebel founded the firm in 1874. Within
a decade he was making garden gnomes. Passing the firm down the
generations, production was halted for a few years during World
War One but kept going through World War Two.
The Communist government banned gnome production in 1948 but by
1960 the state had bought a stake in the firm and 12 years later
it was nationalized and merged with another local terracotta
company.
Estimates put the German gnome population at 25 million. Their
popularity grew in the late 19th century when towndwellers
bought them for their allotments, a welcome retreat in an era of
rapid industrialization.
"Earlier there were just the classic garden gnomes, typically
from the mines, then politicians came along and all sorts of
other people, also of course some scantily dressed ones," said
Griebel. "Now we are reverting to the classic garden gnome, that
is the trend."
(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Madeline Chambers;
Editing by Gareth Jones)
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