Austria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler was born, in an attempt to end the building’s use as a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.
Austrian interior minister Gerhard Karner inaugurated the station in Braunau am Inn, a town in Upper Austria on the German border, on July 22.
Karner said the property would now be “a place of democracy, rule of law, security”. He told the ceremony that the Republic of Austria was facing up to the legacy of the period and that memory of it would not disappear.
The house contains a police inspection staffed by about 45 officers along with the district police command, which has four personnel, according to the interior ministry. Investigators based there concentrate on drug trafficking because the town lies on a smuggling route across the border.
Upper Austria’s governor Thomas Stelzer said the conversion was a deliberate signal in favour of the rule of law. He described the redesigned building as a visible mark of the strength of Austrian democracy.
Hitler was born in a rented flat in the property on April 20, 1889 and his family moved out within weeks. The interior ministry rented the house from its private owner from 1972 and sublet it to charitable bodies, in part to keep it away from sympathisers.
It stood empty after a care centre for adults with disabilities moved out in 2011. Parliament backed a compulsory purchase and the ownership dispute was settled in 2017, when Austria’s highest court upheld the State’s right to expropriate.
The ministry announced the police plan in 2019 and construction began in 2023, at a cost of about €20 million. The facade has been altered and the only sign on it reads “Police”, though a memorial stone outside dedicated to peace, freedom and democracy has been left in place.
The scheme has drawn criticism from the Mauthausen Committee, which represents survivors of Austria’s largest concentration camp and argues that a police station is an inappropriate use of the site.
“The world won’t forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born,” said Robert Eiter of the committee. He said the work would not deter a single neo-Nazi from travelling to Braunau.
Braunau’s mayor Johannes Waidbacher said townspeople had largely accepted the outcome, adding that he had sat on the commission that recommended an official or charitable use for the site.
Police plan additional security measures around the anniversary of Hitler’s birth each year. The ground around the memorial stone is under video surveillance so that any attempt to revive National Socialist symbols can be prosecuted.
