The Austrians have decided: Hitler's birthplace will be torn down

Vienna - After years of disputes, the Austrian government has decided on the future of the birthplace of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn. The authorities will allow the building to be demolished, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told the APA agency today. However, the government has not yet expropriated the property from the current owner.

"Hitler's house will be demolished," the minister stated. "The basement can remain, but a completely new building will be constructed on top of it," he added. The newly constructed object is intended for charitable or administrative purposes. A demolition of the house was recommended by an expert commission a few days ago, and the ministry has agreed with its opinion, Sobotka also stated.

On Tuesday, the minister plans to initiate the legislative process in parliament, which should eventually lead to the demolition of the heritage-protected house where the Nazi leader was born on April 20, 1889. The property does not currently belong to the Austrian state. Although the government approved the expropriation of the house and compensation for the owner back in July, the relevant law still needs to be passed by parliament.

The Austrian government opted for expropriation after several unsuccessful attempts to persuade the owner, Gerlinde Pommer, to sell the property.

Sobotka rejects the objection that Austria would make it more difficult to come to terms with its past by demolishing the house. According to him, the crimes of Nazism can be commemorated, for example, at the former Mauthausen concentration camp or in museums in St. Pölten and Vienna. The Austrian government intends to continue supporting scholarly research on events from the Nazi period. By demolishing the house, Sobotka believes it will prevent the site from becoming a "pilgrimage place" for neo-Nazis.

Shortly after the so-called Anschluss of Austria, meaning the annexation of the country to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Nazis declared Hitler's birthplace a monument. It subsequently served as an exhibition hall. The Pommers acquired the property through restitution in 1952, and the Austrian government has been renting it since the early 1970s. Until 2011, the building housed sheltered workshops, but in subsequent years it has been empty.