Austria to pull down Hitler’s birthplace home

Hitler’s family lived in the house in Braunau on the Inn for only three years around his birth on April 20, 1889; but the fate of the three-storey building coated in pale yellow paint has long been the subject of controversy. 

A spokesman for the interior ministry said the government had agreed a law to take ownership after the building’s landlord, a local woman, had refused to sell it to the state. The bill would now go before parliament. 

“The decision is necessary because the Republic would like to prevent this house from becoming a ‘cult site’ for neo-Nazis in any way, which it has been repeatedly in the past, when people gathered there to shout slogans,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told reporters before the cabinet meeting. 

“It is my vision to tear down the house,” he added. A commission consisting of 12 members from the fields of politics, administration, academia and civic society will ultimately decide the fate of the building.

A retired local woman owns the property, which Austria’s interior ministry has been renting since 1972 and has sublet to Braunau.