The Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, sitting just at the border with Germany, has a 15th-century church tower, cobblestone streets and cluttered rows of charming, colorful houses, some in green, pink and blue.
It also has a fraught historical burden. On the upper floors of the house at Salzburger Vorstadt 15 on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born.
One recent afternoon, Annette Pommer, 32, a history teacher, stared through the window of the Sailer cafe at the three-story 17th-century building across the street where Hitler spent the first few months of his life. She could hear the pounding of jackhammers; an excavator was crawling over a pile of bricks at the rear of the house while workers in hard hats swept the soil.
For many years, Braunau residents say, few gave the house a second thought, except when tourists asked for a photograph, or the occasional neo-Nazi showed up on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday with a candle or wreath.
But in 2017, the Austrian government, acutely sensitive to the house’s poisonous symbolism and potential for abuse, expropriated the property, and after a period of debate, announced the building would be renovated to become a police station. The goal was to stop it from attracting any modern supporters of Hitler and to sever associations with its painful history. Construction began in October.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” Ms. Pommer said.
Like many in Braunau, she had wanted the building to become a museum or exhibition space to explore Austria’s part in the Nazi regime, a usage that could provide an especially valuable lesson at a time when war again rages in Europe, antisemitism is rising and far-right parties are stirring.
“It should be about how people become Hitler,” she said. “It’s not a house of evil. It’s just a house where a child was born. But it’s right to explain what became of that child.” » | Graham Bowley, Reporting from Braunau am Inn, Austria | Sunday, November 19, 2023
