Garden gnome manufacturers in Germany are under threat from the eastwards expansion of the European Union - their industry is being overrun by an invasion of Eastern European gnomes.

Until recently, cheap imitation gnomes from Poland and the Czech republic were prevented from entering Germany by a law which allowed customs to confiscate those gnomes infringing companies' copyright. However, now it is a free for all on the German border.

Reinhard Griebel's great grandfather helped invent the garden gnome in the 1870's and founded the family gnome-making business in Graefenroda in Eastern Germany.

There were 16 gnome manufacturers in the town after Mr Griebel's great-grandfather invented the modern gnome in his distinctive red cap. Now there is only one workshop left. There is little more Mr Griebel can do:

"This market is easy to flood with cheap imports of the foreign made gnomes which cost a lot less and we are having to fight hard against that. We have to make sure we have a better range of products, but if people just want to look at the price and not the quality, that's a big problem for us."

The reason is that labour in Germany is far more expensive then Poland and so German gnomes cost twice as much. Every gnome sold at the Griebel workshop is lovingly wrapped with a certificate of authenticity, but even though customers are enthusiastically buying these hand crafted ceramic gnomes as special Christmas treats, Mr Griebel is losing business.

Mr Griebel's gnome museum helps keep the business alive. In this country of gnome-lovers, it is believed at least four million gnomes reside in suburban gardens. Yet in difficult economic times, many people are reaching for cheaper foreign alternatives.

Just across the border in Poland and the Czech Republic, most street side kiosks offer gnomes for sale to bargain-hungry Germans. They're not tasteful but they are cheap.

Until recently on the German border customs officers were allowed to search all lorries coming in from eastern Europe for contraband gnomes. Any that infringed German

Gnomes of Warsaw

Booming Poland and fearful Germany mirror each other's worries for life together in the European Union.

Plastic, gaudy and above all cheap, armies of garden gnomes huddle at Polish roadsides near the German border waiting to be snapped up by bargain-hunting tourists from the west.

The gnome armies are the apogee of central European kitsch, but they also signify something far more important. The little men are seen by many in Germany as pathfinders for other Poles who will offer an avalanche of cheap produce.

A trade war has been raging between gnome manufacturers on both sides of the border since the early 1990s when Polish entrepreneurs, bursting for opportunities after decades of communist-era restrictions, recognised that with cheap labour, low-cost materials and lack of environmental legislation they could vastly undercut the prices of German gnomes. At least five million have been sold.

The results have been turbulent to say the least. While the cunning of hundreds of Polish manufacturers shamelessly copying thousands of German designs has made them their fortunes, scores of small family-owned businesses over the border have been driven to bankruptcy.

"Their cheek knows no bounds," said Andreas Klein, managing director of Gnome-Power in Otterberg, western Germany, which owns the patent for 1,600 computer-generated models. "They copy our designs but their gnomes are very inferior. They crack when the first frost comes, the paint chips off and due to the materials they use they're carcinogenic."

Such criticism cuts little ice with Polish businessmen such as Krystztof Baczek, 32, bricklayer turned gnome magnate. The owner of Westimex now produces 5,000 gnomes a month. The firm, started with £800 of capital, is now worth £3.4 million.

Sitting in his luxurious red-brick house in Nowa Sol, Poland's "gnome capital", he agrees only that the goods are cheap. "It's true, our gnomes are of a lower quality, but the German consumer doesn't seem to care when the price is so much less," he said.

In his factory, which stinks of a headache-inducing resin, are 400 dungaree-clad moles pushing wheelbarrows, a job lot for a German discount supermarket which will retail at £5. "Frankly you'd have to be a bit stupid to spend much on a garden gnome anyway," said Mr Baczek. German equivalents cost up to £26.

Germans fear that the bloody battle fought and won by Poland in their back gardens is just the beginning.

By Kate Connolly
 

German gnome peepshow

BERLIN - Thieves have stolen scantily clad garden gnomes from a gnome peepshow in an eastern German amusement park, park manager Frank Ullrich said on Thursday.

"The gnomes display naked body parts -- the same ones you'd expect to see in a human peep show," Ullrich said of his missing stars.

The adults-only attraction at Dwarf-Park Trusetal, where visitors peep through keyholes to see the saucy German miniatures in compromising poses, was smashed open early on Thursday morning.

Ullrich said he feared the gnomes would not be traced.

"I doubt they're standing in someone's garden, they'll have to have been hidden inside."

REUTERS

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