A memorial stone with the inscription “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy – Never again fascism – Warning of millions of dead” in front of Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Braunau.
image: AFP
In Braunau am Inn, the conversion work on Adolf Hitler’s birthplace into a police station is nearing completion. Not all residents enjoy the new use.
The renovation work on the police station at Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Austria is coming to an end. But the new use, which is intended, among other things, to prevent pilgrimages by neo-Nazis, continues to meet with criticism.
translation
This text was written by our colleagues from French-speaking Switzerland and we translated it for you.
“It’s a double-edged sword.”
Sibylle Treiblmaier
Sibylle Treiblmaier, a 53-year-old administrative assistant, was interviewed by AFP in Braunau am Inn this week about the conversion of the building, which sits on a shopping street in the heart of the small town near the German border.
While she understands the government’s stated goal of “neutralizing” the site, she believes that “it would have been possible to find another use for the 17th century building” where one of the worst criminals in human history was born on April 20, 1889.
The Austrian Ministry of the Interior recently announced that the work, which began in 2023, would soon be completed. In Braunau, several workers are currently installing the outside window frames, while the old yellow plaster has already given way to a new, modern, now white and smooth corner facade.
With a delay of three years compared to the original schedule, everything should be completed “by the end of the first quarter,” the ministry told AFP, adding that “commencement of operations is then scheduled for the second quarter of 2026.”
Authorities hope it will bring to an end a long and delicate matter in a country that has often faced criticism for not fully recognizing its responsibility in the Holocaust and where the far-right Freedom Party, founded by former Nazi Party members, is once again leading the polls. The party won the elections in 2024, but did not put together a government.
A magnet for neo-Nazis
The house, which had been owned by the same family since 1912, had been rented since 1972 by the Austrian state, which had set up a center for the disabled there – a population group that fell victim to the Third Reich. But the address regularly attracts neo-Nazis.
The last owner, Gerlinde Pommer, vetoed any redesign of the building and then fought against its expropriation using all possible legal means. It took the passage of a special law for the general interest to take precedence in 2016.
Three years later, the Supreme Court confirmed the purchase price of 810,000 euros for the 800 m² area, although Pommer had demanded 1.5 million euros and the state had offered 310,000 euros. Several options are now being considered for the future of the two-story building.
A commission of experts decided not to make the site a memorial to prevent it from becoming a magnet for neo-Nazis. Demolition was also out of the question because, according to historians, Austria must “face up to its past.”
The decision was made without unanimity: It will be a police station in order, according to the government, to “make it clear” that no remembrance of National Socialism is possible there.
A competition was subsequently announced. The selected project by the Austrian architectural firm Marte envisages elevating the house with a new roof and making it larger.
One person who is also critical of the conversion of the building into a police station is Ludwig Laher, writer and member of the Mauthausen Austria Committee, an association of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. He says:
“A police station remains problematic because in any political system the police are obliged to do what they are told.”
Ludwig Laher
During the Holocaust, around 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered and 130,000 were forced into exile. In Laher’s opinion, it would have been better to take up an idea that, according to him, “had a lot of support,” namely that of a place to promote pacifism.
Jasmin Stadler, a 34-year-old businesswoman from Braunau, criticizes the high cost of the project – 20 million euros – and says it would have been interesting to explain the history of the building.
However, Wolfgang Leithner, a 57-year-old electrical engineer, believes that the conversion into a police station will “hopefully bring some peace” to Braunau, where the city administration only last year renamed two streets named after Nazis. (dal/jza-bg/oaa/mr/afp/con)
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