Pint-sized, plastic and the height of kitsch they may be, but no one in Germany would usually think twice about seeing a garden gnome, given there are 25 million of them across the country.

But a battery of 1,250 of them that appeared on a square in a Bavarian town has caused an outcry, not least because their arms are in a Nazi salute.

The artist Ottmar Hörl placed the gnomes in the town of Straubing, close to Munich, in an installation called Dance With the Devil.

It follows controversy sparked by a single, golden Hitler-saluting gnome crafted by Hörl that prosecutors tried to remove from an art gallery in the summer on the grounds that Nazi symbols were prohibited in public.