Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in Austria reopens as a police station to deter Nazi pilgrimages
The government says a permanent police presence will deter extremist visits and signal democracy, after a 20 million euro refurbishment.
- Austria officially opened a new police station on Wednesday in Adolf Hitler's former home in Braunau am Inn, hoping the conversion will deter neo-Nazis from visiting the dictator's birthplace.
- Following a lengthy legal battle with former owner Gerlinde Pommer, Austria seized the property in 2017 and spent 20 million euros renovating the structure to obscure its historical association with the Nazi dictator.
- Architects whitewashed the building's ochre-yellow facade and replaced arched windows with simple rectangular shapes, while a memorial stone from the Mauthausen concentration camp remains on the pavement bearing the inscription "Never again fascism."
- Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said Austria commits to "deal with" the site's "terrible heritage," yet critics like Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee argue the move attempts to "forget as soon as possible."
- Mayor Johannes Waidbacher expressed uncertainty about whether the strategy will deter extremists, saying "I think it isn't a bad approach but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we'll have to wait and see.
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270 Articles
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Harald Poelchau took a job with the Nazis in April of 1933. Just days before, the Reichtag had passed its Enabling Act, granting Hitler unchecked powers. Communists and trade unionists had been rounded up by the Gestapo and beaten in basements since Hitler assumed power as chancellor at the end of January, just two months […]
A munkálatok soran atalakították a haz külső megjelenését is, hogy kevésbé legyen felismerhető és csökkenjen szimbolikus jelentősége.
The decision seeks to redefine one of the most uncomfortable places in the Austrian past, after years of political debates, judicial disputes and conflicting proposals about the future of the building.
The State expropriated the property in 2016, in front of which the monument commemorating the victims of the dictatorship will remain.
Adolf Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn, Austria, has been converted into a police station for 20 million euros. The fact that so much taxpayers' money has been spent "simply because Hitler was supposedly born there" is met with incomprehension.
El Mundo
Proceso DigitalThe Austrian Government intends to integrate the building into the structures of a democratic State, thus neutralizing a space that for decades functioned as a magnet for neo-Nazism Read
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