Braunau am Inn, Austria. The house where Adolf Hitler was born officially begins operating as a police station on Wednesday, following a conversion intended to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.
Austria acquired the privately owned building in 2017 after years of debate and announced plans in 2019 to remodel it for police use.
Conversion of the building
The large traditional terraced house, near Austria’s border with Germany, had previously housed a charity for handicapped people. A commission, which included Mayor Johannes Waidbacher, recommended that it be used for either a charitable or official administrative purpose.
Waidbacher said retaining a charity at the site would have made the building too accessible to the public. He said residents of Braunau had generally accepted the project.
Removing historical associations
The only sign on the building’s white facade now reads “Police”. A rock from the Mauthausen concentration camp remains on the pavement outside, bearing the inscription “Never again fascism” without mentioning Hitler.
Stephan Mlczoch, head of the Austrian interior ministry’s history department, said the objective was to remove any association with Hitler and strip the site of its mystique.
Under Nazi rule, the building was used as an art museum as part of the cult of personality surrounding Hitler. Mlczoch said Hitler lived there for only a few weeks after his birth in 1889 before his family moved away.
Public response
Passers-by frequently stop to photograph the building, although their views on Hitler are generally unknown. Local officials said incidents involving visitors are now isolated and less frequent than in the past.
The Hitler salute and other Nazi symbols are banned in Austria. Waidbacher said it remained to be seen whether the new use of the building would achieve the intended outcome.
