Seventy years after Hitler’s death, Austria is planning to seize his birthplace.
The country’s interior ministry announced that it intends to carry out a compulsory purchase of the house in Braunau am Inn, a small town of 17,000 near Linz and just across the Inn river from Bavaria.
“We have come to the conclusion in recent years that expropriation is the only way to prevent the house being used for the purposes of Nazi revivalism,” the interior ministry spokesman said.
Hitler was born in an upper floor flat in 15 Salzburger Vorstadt in 1889 but after three years his family moved to Germany.
Currently the property is in the possession of Gerlinde Pommer Angloher, now retired, who is a relative of the family who built the house.
The building has been empty since 2011 after a dispute erupted between the Austrian government and the owner.
In the early 1970s, the two parties signed a lease and turned the house into a day centre for disabled people. The deal ended five years ago when Pommer unexpectedly refused to grant permission for much-needed renovation works.
The government’s offer to buy the house was also rejected by Pommer.
The government has been locked in negotiations ever since although it appears to have continued paying the monthly rent to prevent neo-Nazis from moving in.
As Pommer refused to permit a plaque to be put o the house, the government erected a sign on nearby public property which omits Hitler’s name and reads: “For peace, freedom, and democracy. Never again fascism. In memory of millions of dead.”
After the US Army took Braunau in May 1945, American soldiers are said to have prevented German soldiers from destroying the house. The building was returned to the hands of the Pommer family in 1952 and since 1977 has been under Gerlinde Pommer’s control.
If it is seized, compensation will have to be paid to the Pommer family.
