1938: The Birth House of Adolf Hitler

Situated in the centre of the old town of Braunau am Inn – a town in Upper Austria close to the German border – lies an unspectacular, but fiercely debated house: the birth house of Adolf Hitler. Although the future “Führer and Reich Chancellor” of the Nazi regime only lived in the house for a short period of time, the house has been associated with him ever since. The Hitler family moved to another house shortly after the birth of Adolf Hitler and left Braunau altogether when he was just three years old. Nevertheless, the question of how to deal with this difficult site poses a major challenge to Austrian politics and commemorative practice.

The 17th century building was an inn with a tavern on the ground floor when Alois and Klara Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s parents, rented accommodation there in 1889. Despite the short time the family lived in the house, Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann, acquired it on behalf of the Nazi party shortly after the “Anschluss” (“annexation”) of Austria to Nazi Germany. The former inn was then transformed into a cultural and tourism centre, featuring an art gallery and a library, while parts of the house were demolished to create space for military parades. In 1943, the complex was officially opened as the “Führer Birth House”. In May 1945, American soldiers prevented the house from being destroyed by retreating German soldiers and used it as an exhibition space to showcase photographs capturing the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps. After the war, the house was administered by the city of Braunau for almost 10 years, before it was sold back to private ownership of the former innkeepers. The house was then rented by the city of Braunau, which put it to practical use: Over the years it functioned as a school, library and bank. From 1972 onwards, the Republic of Austria rented the house and placed it at the disposal of a charity organisation that used it as a day care centre for people with disabilities.

In 2011, the debate about the house was re-ignited when the charity organisation moved out because of insufficient accessibility. In an unprecedented sanction, the Austrian government expropriated the former owner, and granted the state appropriation of the property and full decision-making control over its future use. At the same time, an expert commission was charged with finding a solution for the future use of the house. The commission recommended that the original structure be maintained, but with considerable architectural modifications to make the house unrecognisable. This was followed by a public, at times very emotional discussion about the possible demolition, restructuring, and subsequent use of the house. However, all plans came to a standstill when the expropriated former owner sued the Republic of Austria at the European Court of Human Rights in 2017. In practice, a permanent structural change could also contradict the status attributed to the house as a protected monument – like many other buildings in the immediate vicinity, the house acquired this status due to its age, not its historical importance.

The issue of dealing with material relicts of the Nazi regime is controversial and moves between the extremes of destruction and preservation. Especially challenging are sites that are associated with the perpetrators rather than the victims of the regime and in this regard, the birth house of Adolf Hitler poses a particularly difficult challenge. Although the house was used as a propaganda tool by the Nazi regime, it did not have an active role in Nazi atrocities and can therefore hardly be interpreted as a place of perpetration. Nevertheless, the house still manifests a dangerous “cult of personality” (“Führerkult”) and is viewed as inseparable from a glorifying image of Adolf Hitler. Thus, for many the house represents an unwanted reminder of Austria’s Nazi past, while for others it is an ordinary house that – until recently – had an active role within the community. And for others still, the house poses a threat in that it might be misused to glorify a dangerous ideology. As a result of these divided interpretations of the house, the ideas and suggestions of how to deal with it and the space it occupies are diverse. Ultimately, in 2021, it was decided to reconstruct the building architecturally in the style of the original Biedermeier house and to open a police station there. The aim of this decision was to prevent any neo-Nazi activities. Nevertheless, this decision was controversial in the media, and several civil society initiatives emerged advocating for a more reflective approach to the building's history. In 2022, the House of Austrian History, in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of the Interior, documented the building's complex history through the extraction of facade and floor samples, as well as several objects. The range of represented contexts and time periods reflects the building's multifaceted history.

National and International stakeholders have demanded that the house be demolished, though that might be understood as a way of rendering a shameful past invisible. Concepts of museologic or pedagogic uses of the building are often rejected by people who think that this might facilitate Nazi pilgrimage to the site. Plans to turn the house into an art project have also been discussed, but have never been implemented. Another interesting approach has been offered by international scholars who suggest a conscious choice to forget about the house in order for it to ultimately lose its meaning, and to eventually initiate a change in Austria’s culture of commemoration. 

For many people the way the house is dealt with reflects how Austria deals with its Nazi past, which is why a final decision on the house might eventually have more symbolic value than the house itself has.

External Wiki-site about the history of Braunau am Inn