Police station opens at Hitler's birthplace in bid to rid site of Nazi link

What the report says

BBC World News reports that Austria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler was born, in Braunau am Inn, after years of dispute over how the site should be used. The refurbished 17th-century former inn, at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, opened on Wednesday, with its exterior substantially altered. Austrian authorities have long sought to stop the building from becoming a destination for neo-Nazis.

According to the BBC, Hitler was born there in April 1889 but lived in the building only briefly before his family moved elsewhere in Braunau, leaving the town when he was three. The property was rented for decades by Austria’s interior ministry from former owner Gerlinde Pommer and was used by a local charity for people with special needs until 2011, when renovation disagreements left it vacant.

Austria’s parliament passed a 2016 law enabling the state to take over the building, paying Pommer €812,000 in compensation; her legal challenge seeking more money failed. Earlier proposals included demolition, but critics argued that destroying the house could appear to erase Austria’s Nazi history. In 2019, the government chose the police-station plan and launched an EU-wide architectural competition.

The BBC notes that the decision remains contested. Some wanted a public centre focused on historical responsibility, while others hoped the former charity use might return. The building has no sign explaining its history, though security cameras are installed, and a memorial stone outside, placed in 1989 and sourced from the Mauthausen concentration camp area, warns against fascism without naming Hitler.