Work has started on turning the house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 into a police station
FILE - An exterior view of Adolf Hitler’s birth house, front, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on Sept. 27, 2012. Work started Monday Oct. 2, 2023 on turning the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 into a police station, a project meant to make it unattractive as a site of pilgrimage for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.
On Monday, workers put up fencing and started taking measurements for the construction work.The police are expected to occupy the premises in early 2026.A years-long back-and-forth over the ownership of the house preceded the overhaul project. The question was resolved in 2017 when Austria’s highest court ruled that the government was within its rights to expropriate the building after its owner refused to sell it. A suggestion it might be demolished was dropped.
A memorial stone with the inscription “for freedom, democracy and liberty. Never again facism. Millions of dead remind us” is to remain in place outside the house. Historian Florian Kotanko complained that “there is a total lack of historical contextualization.” He argued that the Interior Ministry’s intention of removing the building’s “recognition factor” by remodeling it “is impossible to accomplish.”