Hitler’s house to be converted into police station

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Austria’s interior ministry has announced that the house of Adolf Hitler would be turned into a police station.

The decision comes after years of legal wrangling as the government is trying to prevent the building from turning into a neo-Nazi shrine.

Hitler was born in a yellow corner house in the northern town of Braunau on the border with Germany. The house was taken into government control in 2016.

The house was subject to a lengthy legal battle with the family of Gerlinde Pommer, which owned the house.

This year only the country’s highest court ruled on the compensation Pommer is supposed to receive.

“The house’s future usage by the police should set a clear signal that this building will never be a place to commemorate Nazism,” the interior minister, Wolfgang Peschorn, said in a press release.

The ministry is now going to organise an architecture competition this month with a jury of experts, including a representative of the town. They will take the decision on the best design in the first half of next year.

The interior ministry is now going to invite submissions from architects.

Earlier Pommer had been renting the 800-square-metre (8,600 sq ft) property to the interior ministry since the 1970s.

Around €4,800 a month was being paid by the government. The government used the house as a centre for people with disabilities.

But the arrangement didn’t go well as Pommer refused to conduct the essential renovation work and also refused to sell the property in 2011.

Since then, the building has been empty.

The interior ministry was earlier also planning to pull down the house at one point but the decision faced huge resistance from the public. Hitler spent a short amount of time at the property. Nazi sympathizers from around the world visit the property.

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