Austria, the state buys Hitler's birthplace for 810 thousand euros

2019-08-05T16:57:39.515Z

The Austrian Supreme Court has finally closed the "saga" of buying Adolf Hitler's birthplace, ending a long dispute with the owner family. The Viennese Interior Ministry announced today. The Court has finally confirmed the sum of 810 thousand euros established in appeal for this 17th century yellow townhouse located in the center of Braunau-am-Inn, on the border with Germany, where the Fuehrer was born in 1889. The former owner of the building had obtained in the first instance that the State paid the sum of 1.5 million euros, an amount deemed disproportionate for the building. The government had initially estimated the value at 310 thousand euros. The Austrian state became the owner of the house in 2016 at the end of an expropriation procedure aimed at allowing it to control the use of the building that regularly attracts neo-Nazis. He had rented the building since 1972, setting up a center for the disabled, a category of the population that had been a victim of the Nazi regime. But the owner, Gerlinde Pommer, in 2011 vetoed any use of the building and subsequently disputed the expropriation by any means. The Ministry of the Interior has confirmed that it intends to launch a competition of architects to modify the building and give it a new destination unrelated to its dark past.