Austrian architects will transform Hitler’s birthplace into a police station

The three-story building in Braunau am Inn, near the German border, is set to undergo a substantial revamp that authorities hope will prevent it becoming a pilgrimage site for Nazi sympathizers.

Hitler was born in an apartment in the building on April 20, 1889, as his father worked as a customs official in the town. The family left Braunau am Inn, which was then part of Austria-Hungary, when Hitler was three years old.

Plans to turn the site into a police station were first announced last November, when Austria’s Interior Ministry launched an EU-wide design competition for its renovation. At the time, officials told CNN in a statement that the move could help deter “National Socialist activity.”

Digital mock-ups show an extended gabled roof, with the current yellow facade replaced with a white one, in keeping with the neighboring buildings.

According to a government press release, Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told Tuesday’s press conference that the town had become “the antithesis of everything (Hitler) stood for.”

Ongoing debate

The fate of the building has long been a contentious issue in the town, where many wish to demolish the painful reminder of Hitler’s brief time there.

In 2012, Braunau am Inn’s mayor, Johannes Waidbacher, told Austrian newspaper Der Standard that the town was already “stigmatized.” The three years that the Nazi dictator spent there were “certainly not the most formative” of his life, Waidbacher said, adding: “We as the city of Braunau are therefore not prepared to take responsibility for… the Second World War (break out).”

For decades, the controversial building belonged to Gerlinde Pommer, whose family owned the property before Hitler’s birth. Austria’s Interior Ministry began renting the site from her in 1972, subletting it to various charities. But the building has stood empty since the last occupant, a disability center, vacated in 2011.

Four years ago, the government announced that the structure would be demolished. It then set about forcibly acquiring it from Pommer, with the Interior Ministry invoking “special legal authorization” to expropriate the property.

Legal wrangling over the seizure and compensation followed, during which time plans to tear the building down were shelved.

After securing the site, the Austrian government remained concerned that it might attract neo-Nazis and others sympathetic to Hitler’s ideology. Announcing the decision to transform it into a police station last year, Austria’s then-Interior Minister, Wolfgang Peschorn, said that “the future use of the house by the police will be an unmistakable signal that this building will never serve to commemorate National Socialism.”

At present, the only physical reminder of the building’s past is a memorial stone commemorating the victims of fascism during World Wart II. Installed in 1989, shortly before the 100-year anniversary of Hitler’s birth, the stone reads: “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never again Fascism. In Memory of the Millions of Dead.”

Renovation work of the building is expected to be completed by early 2023, and to cost around €5 million ($5.6 million).

Other buildings associated with Hitler’s rule have been repurposed in the post-war era. The Nazi dictator’s Alpine retreat, Eagle’s Nest, is now a restaurant and tourist destination, while the site of his Polish bunker headquarters, Wolf’s Lair, now contains a hotel.