Adolf Hitler’s first home to be demolished to prevent neo-Nazis from turning it into a shrine

Adolf Hiltler’s childhood home will be demolished to prevent neo-Nazis from turning it a shrine. After a long battle with the building’s owner, the Austrian government has finally formulated a plan to eliminate the place where the Nazi leader was born.

The demolition plan has yet to be voted on in parliament and in legislation. However, Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said a committee of experts had already decided to demolish the house, which is located in the town of Braunau am Inn, near the German border. The ministry fears that the house would fall into the “wrong hands.”

“The Hitler house will be torn down. The foundations can remain but a new building will be erected. It will be used either by a charity or the local authorities,” Sobotka told German paper Die Presse (via BBC).

The Austrian government fears that the building would be used as a shrine by neo-Nazis. By demolishing the building, the ministry ensures that any association with Hitler would be eliminated. It decided against leaving the site empty as people could interpret it as denying of Austrian history.

The government, which has been renting the three-storey building since 1972 to prevent any misuse, currently pays the house owner, Gerlinde Pommer, for €4,800 (AU$6,900) per month. It was a care centre for the disabled before it has been left vacant in 2011.

Pommer reportedly has refused to sell the building to the government or allow renovations that would reduce its symbolic impact. The government has launched formal legal procedures to dispossess Pommer earlier this year.

Hitler was born in a rented room on top of the building on April 20, 1889. He and his family moved to Germany when he was three. The house was transformed into a shrine to the dictator during Hitler’s Nazi rule but was shut down in 1944 as the Nazi Party declined.

Successive governments have tried to stop Nazi sympathisers from coming to Braunau am Inn, but according to the locals, some people still come to Hitler’s birthplace.

“I’ve even witnessed people from Italy or from France coming here... for adoration purposes,” Josef Kogler, a teacher in the town, told the BBC. “One Frenchman, a history teacher i think it was, came and asked me for Hitler’s birthplace... It’s hard to understand.”

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