Adolf Hitler as a baby, circa 1890 (Getty Images)Getty Images
A spokesperson for the ministry said the official opening of the “new Braunau Police Centre” would take place on Wednesday, in the presence of Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.
“The building, which has been owned by the Republic of Austria since 2017, has undergone extensive refurbishment since 2023,” added the spokesperson.
“In future, it will house the police station and the Braunau District Police Headquarters. With its use by the police, the Braunau Police Centre will be integrated into regular administrative and security operations in the long term.”
Over the years, the property has become a hotspot for far-right tourism, but the recent statement stressed that the site will now be placed firmly in the hands of the Austrian state, saying: “The aim of the project is to ensure clear re-utilisation by state institutions and thus a functional and sustainable use of the site.”
Hitler only lived at the site for a short time after his birth in 1889, before his family moved to Passau, Germany in 1892, where the future dictator acquired his distinctive accent and Bavarian dialect.
Adolf Hitler is welcomed by supporters at Nuremberg in 1933 (Getty Images)Getty Images
After the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany, Austria was rapidly absorbed into the machinery of terror and persecution which began immediately and visibly on the streets.
In the capital Vienna, Jews were forced to scrub pavements with brushes under public humiliation, with members of the public encouraged to spit at them as they scrubbed, while Jewish businesses and homes were looted and seized in a violent wave of “Aryanisation”.
The authorities also actively enforced the Nazi racial laws, while also crushing dissent and ensuring that Nazi authority penetrated life at every level of society.
In 2023, historian Ludwig Laher, linked to the Mauthausen Committee, which provides education regarding Austria’s largest concentration camp, criticised the plans for the Braunau house, saying: “A police station is highly problematic, since the Hitler regime was also a police state.”
There were frequent cases of neo-Nazi marches, Sieg Heil shouts, threats, graffiti and attacks on antifascist events at the property, which were played down by the police.
In 2012 one police spokesman claimed there was “no far-right scene”, in the area, only “right-leaning groups” – even though neo-Nazi marches had taken place there.
However, the town has tried to distance itself from its connection to Hitler.
In 1989, a memorial stone was placed outside his birthplace, made from stone from Mauthausen, carrying the warning: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. Millions of dead warn.”
The town also laid ‘Stolpersteine’ (small copper memorial plaques cemented into the pavement) for named local victims, including Anna Sax, a Jehovah’s Witness murdered in Bernburg in 1942, Adolf Wenger, murdered in Mauthausen in 1944, Franz Amberger, executed in Munich-Stadelheim in 1943, and Michael Nimmerfahl, who was denounced and jailed by the Gestapo.
