"The nuttiest thing you'll ever read." -- New York Times

Recently, Lift Trucks Project, a new gallery space in Croton Falls asked me to participate in a program in which writers choose a piece of art from a tremendous international selection, and comment upon it. I was immediately drawn to a trio of sculptures by the German artist Ottmar Horl. Who could resist lime green garden gnomes flipping the bird? A bit of research revealed that Horl had gained international renown and had almost been arrested in Germany for a similar display featuring a small army of gnomes giving the Sieg Heil! salute in a park in a Munich suburb -- a definite illegal no-no in post Hitler Germany. This got me thinking about what Hitler would think of Horl's work. Today the Times reviewed the exhibit, and called my short essay, which was written to be read in public with a flawed German accent, "the nuttiest thing you'll ever read." I take this as a compliment, though I've read much nuttier.

The Ghosts of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels on Ottmar Horl’s Gnomes Flipping the Bird
(translated, via medium, by James P. Othmer)

ADOLF HITLER’S GHOST (AHG): Hey, Joe, check out these spunky little green dudes.
JOSEPH GOEBBEL’S GHOST (JBG): They are garden gnomes, Mein Fuhrer.
AHG: Really? It’s too bad that they are so little, and of an unnatural, impure color, and not, you know, white or in any way master race potential, because I must say, I like their feisty spirit.
JGG: They are inanimate, Mein Fuhrer.
AHG: Inanimate? Was…was that our doing? Were the gnomes, or for that matter, all little or green people part of…
JGG: No, Mein Fuhrer. Somehow the garden gnomes escaped our scrutiny.
AHG: Good. Because, animate or not, you have to admire the audacious hand salute. Did you know, Joey G., that when we made the whole stiff-armed Heil! the mandatory greeting back in ’23, this…this flipping of the bird was the runner up. Hess was a huge fan of the middle finger salute. Makes me wonder if things would have turned out differently if we’d have run with it.
JGG: The thing about these gnomes, Mein Fuhrer, they are works of modern art. Sculpture.
AHG: Art? Did you know, Jo-Go, that I was something of an artist back in the day?
JGG: Yes, you have mentioned this once or twice in the past 88 years, Mein Fuhrer. In fact, your acrylic on canvas “Rotweilers Playing Poker With Jew” hung over my room in the bunker right up until, until I murdered my family and committed suicide. Not to imply that there was any connection between the two, Mein Fuhrer.
AHG: I’ve always said that in addition to being a master propagandist, Joltin’ Joe Goebbels was a man of impeccable taste.
JGG: Thank you. If I may, the artist who created this is the same man who recently created quite the stir when he placed an army of 1,250 tiny gnomes raising their arms in our – make that your – salute, right in the center the Munich suburb of Straubing.
AHG: I knew that I saw something special in his work!
JGG: There was an outcry, because, as you know, anyone who is caught giving a Nazi salute in modern Germany can be subjected to a three-year jail term.
AHG: They threw 1,250 gnomes in jail?
JGG: No, Mein Fuhrer. The law applies specifically to humans. They wanted to prosecute the artist, Ottmar Horl, for displaying Nazi symbols in public.
AHG: So then, this Herr Horl, he is a hero! A born-again Nazi!
JGG: No, Mein Fuhrer. He is an artist. He claims that the gnomes were merely a provocation. A work of satire.
AHG: Satire? I don’t understand.
JGG: It’s kind of like irony. Do you remember our discussion about irony after we first got here and during orientation they told us that, among other things, we’d be eating gefilte fish three times a day for eternity?
AHG: Anyway, I wonder if Horl knows that this was the runner-up salute back in the old Reichstag days. I wonder if he’s making some kind of statement about that, because I feel as if this art, this sculpture, this small, green, smirking bird-flipping gnome, this how you say satire, is talking, you know, exclusively to me.