Austria opens police station at house where Hitler was born

Austria has opened a police station inside the house in Braunau am Inn where Adolf Hitler was born, closing out years of debate over how to handle the building’s dark history.

The 17th century structure once operated as an inn and served as the birthplace of the Nazi dictator in April 1889. Authorities have now completed a substantial renovation that changed the building’s facade, though managing the site has posed a persistent challenge for Austrian officials determined to prevent it from turning into a destination for neo Nazi pilgrimage.

Hitler lived in the building, located at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, for only a few weeks before his family relocated to another address in Braunau. The family left the town permanently when Hitler was three years old. He briefly returned to Braunau in 1938 while traveling to Vienna after annexing Austria into Nazi Germany.

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner attended the opening ceremony alongside other local officials, which featured police musicians performing on tuba and other brass instruments. Karner said Austria is taking responsibility for what he called the terrible legacy of the past, adding that although deciding the building’s fate proved difficult, he believes the new police station represents a fresh chapter for the site. He said the building will now stand as a place representing democracy, the rule of law, security, freedom and human dignity. A Catholic police chaplain then blessed two crosses that will hang inside the new station.

For decades, Austria’s interior ministry rented the building from its former owner, a local woman named Gerlinde Pommer, paying her generous rent in an effort to keep the property from becoming a site for far right tourism. A local charity used the building for years as a day center and workshop for people with special needs, but the organization had to vacate in 2011 after Pommer blocked planned renovations. She also repeatedly declined to sell the property to the government, leaving the building empty for several years while she and authorities disputed terms.

In 2016, Austria’s parliament passed legislation allowing the government to seize the property from Pommer, paying her compensation of 812,000 euros. She later challenged the amount in court, arguing it was too low, but ultimately lost the case.

Wolfgang Sobotka, who served as interior minister at the time, suggested the building should be demolished and replaced with a new structure altogether, echoing an earlier proposal from a Russian lawmaker who had offered to purchase the house and destroy it. Both ideas drew significant criticism, with opponents arguing that tearing down the building would amount to denying Austria’s Nazi era history.

In 2019, the government unveiled plans to convert the building into a police station and launched an EU wide competition inviting architects to submit design proposals. Officials subsequently spent millions of euros renovating the structure, transforming its appearance dramatically from its earlier state.

The building, now painted white both inside and out, features extensive oak woodwork throughout, while an original winding staircase and arched entrance hall have been preserved from the earlier structure. The transformation marks a stark contrast to the building’s condition decades ago, when the Lebenshilfe charity operated a small shop in one of its front rooms.

Police Chief Inspector Ludwig Heise said he feels fortunate to work in such a modern facility, noting the additional space compared to previous quarters, though he added that beyond its size, the station functions just like any other police facility in Austria.

The reopening marks the culmination of a long and often contentious effort by Austrian authorities to neutralize the symbolic weight of Hitler’s birthplace, transforming a site once feared as a potential magnet for extremist sympathizers into a functioning symbol of the democratic institutions Austria has built in the decades since the Second World War.