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“EVERY YEAR IT’S the same circus,” mutters a resident at the sight of dozens of anti-fascist protesters stomping toward a large weatherworn building in the small northern Austrian town Braunau am Inn.
“Nazis out!” chant the demonstrators, many clad in black hoodies and sporting sunglasses despite the rain, their shouts ricocheting off the three-storey residence.
This is no ordinary town and no ordinary house: behind the fading facade of number 15 Salzburger Vorstadt Street hides the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.
Exactly 70 years since the Nazi dictator’s suicide in the ruins of Berlin, it continues to stir up controversy.
The building has been empty since 2011 as its owner and the government remain embroiled in a bitter legal battle over its future.
Only a memorial stone gives a clue to the house’s significance, reading: “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism, Millions of Dead Warn.”
Hitler may have just spent the first few weeks of his life here, but the property has been a thorn in Braunau’s side for decades.
It belongs to local resident Gerlinde Pommer whose family has owned the building for more than a century, except for a brief period during World War II.
In 1972, the Austrian government signed a lease with Pommer to prevent the premises from becoming “a pilgrimage site” for neo-Nazis, according to interior ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck.
Under the deal, the 800-sq-m structure can only be used for socio-educational or bureaucratic purposes.
At first the agreement, which earns Pommer €4,800 per month in rent, appeared to settle the moral dilemma: the Hitler house, as it is generally known, became a centre for people with disabilities.
In many ways, this represented an “ideal” solution, according to local newspaper editor Monika Raschhofer, because it offered a home “specifically to those who were eradicated under the Hitler regime”.
But in 2011, the arrangement came to an abrupt end when Pommer unexpectedly refused to grant permission for much-needed renovation works.
Now, the state has decided to take more radical steps.
“We have made a purchase offer but at the same time we are also looking into the legal possibility of expropriation,” said Grundboeck.
‘Banality of evil’
The issue has generated strong discussion among the 17,000 residents of Braunau, near the German border, and beyond. Some want it to become a refugee centre, others a museum dedicated to Austria’s liberation.
There have even been calls for its demolition – but the house is part of the city’s historic centre and therefore under heritage protection.
For rally organiser Astrid Hainz, the memorial stone installed in 1989 is not enough.
Authorities ought to push harder to solve the issue even if it means “forcing the owner to sell”.
“The house is here and we have a duty to deal with it,” she says.
One person who remains noticeably absent from the public debate is the notoriously media-shy Pommer.
“She has inherited the house and pockets the money without fulfilling the terms of the agreement,” says local historian Florian Kotanko. “She could make history by giving the house to the republic.”
Like the anti-fascist protesters, he believes that Braunau has a historical responsibility to deal with its legacy.
“It’s short-sighted to say, let it fall apart or blow it up, because the fascination won’t go away,” Kotanko says.
In his eyes, this obsession is linked to what philosopher Hannah Arendt famously called the “banality of evil” — the idea that Hitler was born behind such ordinary walls into an ordinary, middle-class family.
“People want to see the birthplace of someone who was capable of exterminating large parts of the population in Germany, Austria and beyond,” he said.
Locals, meanwhile, resent the attention, deploring that their pastel-coloured town is known for being the cradle of one of the world’s most reviled political figures, rather than for its Gothic architecture or pretty river.
“The people here don’t deserve this stigma,” says district commissioner Georg Wojak. “Braunau’s only crime was that Hitler was born here.”
Try as it might, the town is unlikely to break the chains that tie it to Adolf Hitler.
He immortalised Braunau in the opening lines of “Mein Kampf”, describing as “providential” the fact that he was born in “this little town on the boundary between two German states”.
And residents are learning to confront the past more openly.
The days where they would point tourists looking for the building in the wrong direction are over, insists Raschhofer: “When I have guests, I always show them the Hitler house and the memorial stone. It’s part of Braunau.”
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Another suicide. If we’d only seen the signs.
Can they just not capitalise on the fact that they have a unique tourist attraction in their town – turn it into a unique heritage centre – Yes, some mad ones will want to hijack it for glorifying Hitler but the law can deal with that . What an attraction to have in ones town from a historical and tourist point of view.
I say milk it for what’s it’s worth
Only difference between ends and Hitler is hilter mass killed people . Enda and his government are drivng people to death with their austerity measures. A lot of people who have taken their own life is put down to the recession and austerity measures . What happened in Germany was horrific but this country now has dictatorship wether you want to believe it or not.
Shut up!
“This country now has a dictatorship”
*except that you get to vote the ‘dictator’ out at the next election…
Do you actually understand what a dictatorship is? If Ireland was a dictatorship there’d be no elections next year or no referendums.
Idiots like Dave really drag the Journal down.
Dave, actually suicide statistics are a downward trajectory since the early 2001 – 2012. Some link below, so Rates have suicide have dropped during the austerity years!
and the illusion continues that we live in a democracy.
And Dave just Godwinned
It’s not fair to compare Enda to Hitler. Hitler actually fixed his economy.
Didn’t he die in Berlin?
Argentina. He died there. People who have been saying that were called ‘nutjobs previously but according to newly released FBI documents that’s were he was. The FBI believed he fled to Argentina on a U Boat and agents searching for him there. For political reasons, not much more was made of it and the whole affair was let go silent.
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/fbi-opens-files-proving-hitler-went-to-argentina
As usual, due to very low standard of journalism these days nothing is mentioned about this above.
Tell you what Horgay, why don’t you become a journalist and improve the system from the inside since you’re always complaining about poor journalistic standards….
There is also speculation that he was actually helped over there by the U.S. Government in exchange for the nazis scientific innovations. But again this is all speculation and conspiracy theories.
Why the red thumbs for the chap stating facts that he escaped …cos he did
Did The Bush Family Help Hitler Into Power?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBKMN-pdp6M&feature=player_detailpage#t=0
He did flee to Argentina and lived out his life in some quiet mountain town. Was discussing it online with an Argentinian woman who said it was common knowledge since the 70s over there. Again the level of real journalism has gone down big time.
There will be many a tear shed in the SF/IRA offices today in memory of their great hero.
Brian, Girvin, Dan Breen wept all day,The Emergency, Macmillan, p1.
Off to work with yis all!
Anti-fascists stomping around demanding something gets “out”! The irony.
I visited the Eagles nest last year, all that is left of its residence is the defence tunnels. Everything I have seen condemns Hitler, I have seen nothing that praises him.
The “West” German monument in Mauthausen Concentration Cam starts with the line “o mother, poor Mother, look what your sons have done to you —-
We can trust the Austrians to handle it well
…you should talk to the older generation of austrians/Germans. …people who were alive during the 33-45 period
The Russians took his dead body. He did not R.I.P. after they finished with him. Some nazis ended up in South America but Hitler most certainly did not.
Should 70 years today Hitler escaped and lived in South America ..don’t forget Hitler was never convicted in absentia ….escaped with the help of the CIA and Alan Dulles ….All orchestrated by Martin Bormann and took vast amount of wealth with …All the evidence is in the book and film Grey Wolf by Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan 2 well respected journalists ….you will never see that movie on TV as they wanted us to think he died ….
Boorman died in Berlin during the breakout from the bunker. If Hitler made it to South America then there is very little evidence to support it. Unlike Mengele, for example who did make it and to which there is plenty of concrete evidence left behind. Good story though!
When did Enda die
Get a life Dave.
A better title would have been.
Inhumane monstrous coward takes own life and dies pathetically.
^you should also talk to the older generation of austrians / Germans. ..
Isn’t it a known fbi fact that hitler fled to Argentina then America . Dna from the skeleton s proved it wasn’t hitler at all ..
Yes, it’s a “known fbi fact”
Didn’t realise the FBI now published all their ‘facts’…
“FBI facts” are a special class, right up there with “recent wikipedia edits made from secondary school libraries”
de Valera was gutted, or should have been the imbecile, the only clown on the planet to sympathies when Adie finally got something right. Even if Inda’s “madly deeply European’ gibberish was just as cringe worthy.
There was a documentary on sky about it ..
Martin and Glenn know this all for a fact. After all, they saw it on the History Channel!
What ! OMG…
He did Nazi that coming
Read “doppleganger” by Hugh Thomas. .a Welsh forensic scientist who makes an incredible argument for Hitler being murdered in the bunker in the last hours before the soviets arrived.it is very well thought out and makes compelling and logical conclusions based on historical fact and the man’s widespread forensic experience..though he leaves the final question up to the reader to answer.mr Thomas has written a number of well recieved books on the period and I remember while spending a week in Berlin in the company of a gentleman who new Rudolf hess quite well,same gentleman becoming rather flustered when Hugh tomas’ writing on Hitler and hess was mentioned.food for thought.
Without a body and given the bunker was destroyed almost seventy years ago, not sure how much of that book would guess work rather than factual, Hitlers secretary is the only interview I heard about the bunker and shortly after he dictated their (his and Eva’s) will killed himself. The Russians got the body cremated the remains and sometime in the 1970′s disposed of them in a Russian river. Nice to think it wasn’t his own doing though..
@HRH The brummie.Actually there was a fair amount of access and photos taken in the summer of 45.The problem is most things re the bunker were like a case of Chinese whispers.for instance when those released from soviet captivity realised their version was at odds with western captives they promptly changed it and so on and so forth.The bible on the bunker for the first 40 yrs has always been Hugh Trevor roper’s the final days of Adolf Hitler.A book where Mr Thomas successfully points out many inaccuracies, a number of which were in the end admitted to by Trevor roper.Mr roper a very famous historian himself… who by the way signed off on the fake Hitler diaries published many editions of his book and more than once had to backtrack on information thought solid in previous editions..SPOILER ALERT….in the end Mr thomas’eveidence strongly points to Hitler being strangled by his valet waffen ss standartenfuher linge. I guess in the end the butler did it.
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