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Hitler's birthplace in Braunau: Human rights training for the police is to be held here in the future

Photo: Barbara Gindl / dpa

After years of dispute over the use of the Hitler House in Braunau, Austria, a solution now seems to have been found. The house in which the future dictator was born in 1889 is to be converted into a police station, as has been discussed for some time. What is new is that a centre for human rights training among police officers is to be set up at the site in the future.

Through the establishment of a police station, an adequate use has been found "to do justice to moral, political and legal responsibility," said Oliver Rathkolb of the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, according to a statement from the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Vienna. We have to face up to our past and give this historically burdened place a life-affirming perspective," Rathkolb is quoted as saying. This is mainly due to the fact that police officers are to be trained on human rights in the newly designed police inspectorate in the future.

The later dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) had spent the first months of his life in the building. The Hitler House has been owned by the Republic of Austria since the beginning of 2017 after an expropriation. The expropriation and redesign are intended to prevent the area from becoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

Police as »Austria's largest human rights organization«

In the population, however, the now planned use as a police station had recently met with sharp criticism, as reported by the newspaper "Standard" and the broadcaster ORF, among others. They refer to a survey by the market Institute, according to which a majority would like to see an institution that deals thematically with National Socialism, commemoration, anti-fascism or peace. Only a small minority had spoken out in favour of the use by the executive power, which had been planned for years.

The »Commission for the Historically Correct Handling of Adolf Hitler's Birthplace« has now confirmed the planned use by the police. Commissioner Hermann Feiner, who until 2021 was responsible for projects in the construction and real estate sector of the Ministry of the Interior, announced: "It will be a department for Austria's largest human rights organization – the police – and it will also be a center for training on this fundamentally important topic." The intended use corresponds both to the internal understanding of the executive branch and "to the security authority's external mandate," said Clemens Jabloner of the Institute for Philosophy of Law at the University of Vienna, who chaired the commission of historians.

Demolition of the building, which has been vacant since 2011, is out of the question, according to the Commission. On the one hand, because this would be seen worldwide as ignorance of Austria's historical responsibility. On the other hand, demolition was not legally possible due to the obligations of the expropriation law created for the Hitler House.

For decades, the main user of the building was Lebenshilfe with a workshop for the disabled. In a dispute over necessary renovations, the organization finally moved out. The expropriation had led to a lengthy legal dispute between the former owner and the state over the amount of compensation. A lot of money went to the former owner – and the planned redesign will cost significantly more. In the announcement of the Ministry of the Interior, there is now talk of total costs of 20 million euros.

This is significantly more than the initially estimated costs of five million euros. Peter Skorsch from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior argued that at that time no concrete construction project had been determined and net costs had been mentioned. Russia's attack on Ukraine has also driven up construction costs.

The conversion is scheduled to be completed in 2025, and the police station and district police command will move in in 2026.

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