During the Third Reich, the former pub on a corner in Braunau-am-Inn, not far north of Salzburg, was a pilgrimage site for Nazis. People would gather there to chant slogans.
That’s because on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born there. Or at least it’s thought; though some people think he was born in a long-since-demolished building next door, it’s agreed that his family lived in town until he was 3 years old.
Ever since the catastrophe of leadership and democracy that enabled Hitler to seize power, Austria has been embarrassed by the building. At times it was a library, a storehouse, and in a twist that would have enraged the dictator, a workshop for people with disabilities. That tenancy fell apart when the owner refused to renovate it to make it more friendly to people with mobility concerns.
But in recent years, it was purposely kept vacant. With Neo-Nazism on the rise, Austria doesn’t want it to become a place of pilgrimage for society’s more self-destructive elements.
The owner of the building received over $5,000 a month in rent from the government to keep in compensation, and earlier this year, Austria bought the building outright.
According to Deutsche Welle, the country has announced that it won’t demolish the building, as was seriously considered this summer, nor will it turn it into a museum that warns the public about the dictator’s rise from venomous populism. Instead, it has decided to radically alter it and hope the extreme right wing loses interest in it.
"We must put something there that nobody would want to photograph themselves in front of -- a supermarket, a charity store or a fire station," suggested one anti-Nazi activist. The mayor favors using it for progressive social causes, such as an education or welfare center. https://www.dw.com/en/future-of-hitlers-birth-house-under-debate/a-19563214
A stone out front hints at the moral quandary with which Austria is grappling: It alludes to but makes no mention of Hitler. “For peace, freedom and democracy," it reads. "Never again Fascism. Millions of dead remind us.”