How to recycle Hitler's birth-home safely?

Braunau am Inn is on the lower river Inn where it borders the German state of Bavaria, 160 ks from Linz and 60 km from Salzburg. Adolf Hitler was born there in 1889 and although his fam­ily moved after 3 years, the family link to the 3-storey building left a per­manent mark.

Hitler's empty birth home, 2000

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The Third Reich later turned the house into a cultural centre. Amer­ican soldiers prevented it from being ruined in 1945, and it briefly housed a con­centration camps exhibit.

For decades after WW2, the official position was that Austrians were the first VICTIMS of the Nazi regime . An inn when Hitler’s family rented space later housed a public lib­r­ary, bank and later a high school. And when the building was rented by the Austrian Republic, they won heritage protection as part of the historic city centre. At that stage the building housed a charity for years, operating as a day centre and workshops for disabled people.

It’s not uncommon that communities in many countries prefer collective amnesia to a critical approach to own their history. There are cases of delib­er­ate dest­ruction of uncomfortable material remains of an awful era.

A retired lo­cal woman bought the proper­ty which Austria’s Federal Interior Min­is­try has been renting. Some sugges­ted turning the building into a mus­eum or international peace-site. Others have called for it to be torn down entirely. Fortunately the building hadn’t gained major sig­nificance as a pilg­rimage site for neo-Nazis, and the town plac­ed a gr­anite boul­d­er from Mauthausen Camp front of house with anti-Fascist lines in 1989.

Yet the house’s future function divided those who wanted to highlight its past and those who wanted to delete Brau­nau’s inglorious his­t­ory. Mayor Joh­an­­nes Waidbacher upset people by proposing in a newspaper to change the house into a stan­d­ard residence. “You have to ask whether another Hol­o­caust symbol makes sense, given there are already many here. We are stig­m­atised any­way. Hitler spent 3 years in the city, not the most formative phase of his life. Braunau is thus not prepared to take re­s­­ponsibility for WW2’s outbreak”.

Maut­hau­sen memorial stone with peace message

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Waidbacher then backtracked a bit. “This house can never be all­ow­ed to become a shrine for die-hards, but in the end the decis­ion is up the Interior Ministry and the owner”. The private owner refused to sell or renovate, fearing it could become a neo-Nazi shrine; she received payment from the Austrian government to keep it vacant.

The Austrian government’s preference urged historian Andreas Mais­lin­g­er to lobb­y for years, prop­osing an int­er­national place of tolerance, recon­cil­iation, un­derstanding. Mais­linger wanted to turn the prop­erty into a state-owned House of Res­p­on­sib­ility that would become an inter­n­at­­ion­al meeting place for young people. The centre could refl­ect­ on Aus­t­rians’ hist­ory, co­or­dinate social pro­jects and host work­shops on specific projects. Thus small Braunau would be­come a place of inter­national understand­ing. Young people from abroad could study their countries’ his­t­ory, free of “victim” and “perp­etrator” concepts, without ignoring true hist­ory. Instead of neut­ral­ising the hist­or­ical site, he wanted to invest it with a new mean­ing.

Maislinger’s plan gai­ned broad supp­ort, in­cluding from the Int­erior Ministry. The mayor of the town said “It is a difficult sub­ject. But a House of Re­s­ponsib­ility is a reasonable idea. The altern­at­ive plan for the buil­d­ing included demol­it­ion and the const­ruction of luxury flats failed to gain much sup­port.

Yet the house still attracts neo-Nazis from around Europe, some­times on Hit­l­er’s Annual Birthday Trip. Maislinger reported the house will only lose its appeal for such people when it stands as a just symbol against Nazism.”

Neutralisation of the birth-house was a missed chance for Aust­ria to expel one terror of Austrian history. Recently a group of young architects reopened a critique on the building’s transf­or­m­ation and an al­tern­at­ive future commission. Will the project succeed in reversing the conscious choice of oblivion? Austrian authorities did consid­er turning the Adolf Hitler birth-house into a museum.

After a long process to expropriate the house from its owner, the Federal Government rec­ent­ly ended the specul­ation. From the building’s exterior, there was nothing outstanding about the vacant 3-storey yellow house. Its pastel-coloured paint were blotchy, and its windows empty. The Austrian Interior Min­is­try released the winning arch­it­­ec­tural de­sign for the site; offic­ials also sug­gested removing the memorial stone in front of the house to Vienna as a warning re dangers of Fasc­ism. Their ul­t­im­ate goal was to neut­ral­ise the hist­ory and symb­olism of the house, pre­­vent­ing it becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

The Braunau house was clearly tied to Hitler, but it had NO relationship to his crimes. While it made sense to turn death camps into tributes to millions of dead, the ideal fate for the Braunau house was less obv­ious to many locals. Thus the Au­s­­trian government’s push to neutralise Hitler’s birth-house rai­sed diff­ic­ult questions about the country’s engagement with its past. Brau­nau His­­torical Associat­ion said these debates have an impact on the town it­self, which has long been de­fined by its connection to the Nazi dictat­or. Most Aust­rians only know that Braunau is where Hitler was born.

Lovely central square of Braunau-Am-Inn

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The building was already protected by law as an architect­ural monum­ent bec­ause the original dated back centuries. In 2019, the Austrian govern­ment de­cid­ed to convert it into the head­quarters of the city’s Police Depart­ment, to prevent political exploitation by far-rightists. Following a comp­et­it­ion’s winning ar­ch­it­ectural plans, the building was re­s­t­or­ed to its original design and the Maut­hau­sen memorial stone was removed. The Chancellor supported this de­cision since the transformation of the building into a Police St­ation was a sign of democracy, human rights and anti-rac­ism. This neut­ral­isation decision also came from a des­ire to erase from mem­ory a place that was rem­inis­c­ent of Aust­ria’s Nazi past. Is there a sense of clos­ure in Braun­au? Probably not.

Next I will examine a city that IS managing to neutralise its house of horrors.