Austria to tear down Hitler’s birth house

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Europe

The Austrian government has announced it will tear down the house where Adolf Hitler was born to ward off far-right neo-Nazi pilgrims who have long been attracted to the three-storied building to pay tribute to the notorious historical figure.

The vanilla-colored building, where Hitler was born in 1889, is located in the town of Braunau am Inn in northern Austria, on the border with Germany, and has been vacant for the past five years.

A stone plaque outside Hitler's birthplace honours the victims of fascism.

Following years of legal wrangle about its ownership, the Austrian government decided to go ahead and demolish the house, Andreas Großschartner, spokesperson of the Interior Ministry, said on Monday.

The house, located in Salzburger Vorstadt 15, is owned by Gerlinde Pommer, but has been leased to the local government since 1975. The authority has been trying to buy the property from Pommer, but the owner kept refusing the offer as well as opposing any renovation of the building.

A legal amendment has been proposed earlier this year by the Austrian Interior Ministry seeking legal permission to seize the property. The spokesperson said the bill was still “under way,” implying that the demolishment is still pending parliamentary approval.

A debate in the parliament is expected this week, and the spokesperson said the bill could come into effect by the year’s end.

A commission studying the possible future use of the site advised against leaving the place vacant over concerns it could be interpreted as a denial of the country’s history.

"I agree with the commission that a profound architectural redesign makes sense to permanently prevent both the recognition and the symbolic value of the building," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said in a statement.

Local residents have reported that supporters of neo-Nazism, a post-World War II social and political ethos that sympathizes with Nazi tenets, have been flocking to the site and treating it like a shrine.

"I've even witnessed people from Italy or from France coming here… for adoration purposes," Josef Kogler, a teacher in Braunau am Inn, told the BBC as early as 2014.

The old building was an inn when Hitler was born in one of its top floor rooms, rented by his father Alois who was assigned to Braunau as a customs official. Weeks later after Hitler’s birth, the family moved out.

Hitler visited Braunau after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

Leaving the town at three, the later head of “the Third Reich” only paid his birthplace a short visit in 1938 on his way to Vienna after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

Under the Nazi reign, the house was transformed into a shrine to Hitler but was shut down in 1944 as tides turned against Nazism.