Adolf Hitler birth house

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Birthplace of Adolf Hitler, Braunau am Inn , with a memorial stone in front of it (2015)

The house where Adolf Hitler was born is located in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn and has the address Salzburger Vorstadt 15 . As a community center , it is my decision because of its buildings from the 17th century and its importance as a " Biedermeier building in the context of Braunau old town" under monument protection .

The former brewery inn with outbuildings and rented apartments, under Adolf Hitler a cultural center of his party , is not used by the owner, the Republic of Austria - Federal Ministry of the Interior . In November 2019, Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn announced that the house would be redesigned and used by the police .

Whether Adolf Hitler was born in the existing front building or in the long demolished rear building is controversial among historians.

history

The house around 1934, with a swastika flag

The address of the house with a six-axis front was determined in 1826 as Vorstadt 219 and since 1890 as Salzburger Vorstadt 15 . According to Franz Martin's Braunau house chronicle (Salzburg, 1943) , the brewery inn originally consisted of two buildings. The use of the property as an inn can be proven from the 17th century , which later also included a stable , a barn , a brewhouse and rental apartments . From 1888 the brewery inn was operated by the Dafner couple.

At the end of the 19th century, the residents of the house also included the customs officer Alois Hitler and his third wife Klara (née Pölzl), who lived in one of the rented apartments with their children until 1892. The third of their six children (earlier sources, which apparently are based on the memories of Hitler's sister Paula , erroneously report on three older siblings), Adolf Hitler was born there on April 20, 1889. Whether the future German Chancellor and dictator was born in the existing front building or in the long-demolished rear building is controversial among historians.

In 1891 the house owner and innkeeper Franz Dafner died. His widow Helene Dafner, later married to Jakob Bachleitner, ran the inn until 1911 and then sold it. The new owner, Josef Pommer, ran the inn from 1912 to 1938.

Nazi era

In the course of the " annexation of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich , Martin Bormann acquired the house where the " Führer " Adolf Hitler was born for the NSDAP on May 25, 1938 for four times the market value. As early as July 20, 1938 (4 months after the annexation of Austria) it was protected by State Secretary Kajetan Mühlmann from the “Central Office for Monument Protection” of the “Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs” in Vienna as a monument to the then co-owners Josef and Maria Pommer because "Birthplace of the Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler" declared.

The building was renovated and used as a cultural center with a gallery and a public library. From 1943 to 1944, pictures and sculptures by artists from the region were exhibited in the Braunau gallery in the Führer birthplace , including Anton Filzmoser, Hermann Mayrhofer ( Passau ), Josef Karl Nerud ( Simbach am Inn ), Hugo von Preen , Martin Stachl and Franz Xaver Weidinger ( Ried im Innkreis ).

post war period

On May 2, 1945, immediately after Braunau had been occupied by US troops , a German raid attempted to blow up Hitler's birthplace. The US soldiers prevented this project. On November 1, 1945, a memorial and warning exhibition about the concentration camps was opened “at the site from which Hitler once entered the world” .

In 1952, as part of a provision settlement, the house was returned to the former owners by the Republic of Austria and at the same time rented by the Republic, whereby it was used as a city ​​library until 1965 . After that, the building was briefly used by a banking institute. This was followed by use as a school from 1970 to 1976 when the HTL Braunau was founded . Gerlinde Pommer was the owner until 2016.

From 1977 to September 2011 the house was used as a day care center and workshop for people with disabilities by Lebenshilfe Upper Austria .

Public discussion about usage

In September 2012, the year-long discussion about the use of the house became more public. The use as a residential building or the establishment of a “house of peace” for social projects and exhibitions are debated.

Since the year 2000 there have been efforts of the local association for contemporary history , which among other things organizes the Braunauer Zeitgeschichte-Tage , to have the building bought by the public purse and to commemorate the Holocaust . The Russian Duma deputy Franz Adamowitsch Klinzewitsch had other plans in 2012: He wanted to collect around two million euros to buy and tear down the house.

In April 2016, the Ministry of the Interior announced that the house, which had now been vacant for almost five years, would have the expropriation of the house examined, possibly creating a law with the intention of permanently excluding the use of the house in the sense of National Socialist re-use. In 2015, constitutional lawyer Heinz Mayer pointed out the need for a law. The owner would receive compensation. The owner has been renting the house to the Ministry of the Interior since 1972 for around 5,000 euros a month, but makes it more difficult to use because she refused the handicapped-accessible renovation, which is why the social association Lebenshilfe (which works with the handicapped) moved out as a subtenant in 2011.

In June 2016, the Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka ( ÖVP ) pleaded for the house to be demolished: “For me, sanding , like the Fritzl House in Amstetten, would be the cleanest solution.” On July 12, 2016, the Austrian government coalition decided that To expropriate and compensate the owner due to the public interest, as it was not possible to agree on a use of the building. A commission set up by the Ministry of the Interior should make suggestions for the future of the listed building. It would be possible to convert the vacant building or to demolish it.

On October 17, 2016, Wolfgang Sobotka confirmed that the house would be demolished, referring to a recommendation from the commission. In place of the house, a new building used by a social institution or the authorities should be built. The mayor of Braunau, Hannes Waidbacher, who was a member of the commission, contradicted the minister: “The recommendation says nothing about demolition.” Instead, the commission advises a profound architectural change that “should permanently prevent the building's recognition value and symbolism” .

expropriation

On December 14, 2016, the Austrian parliament passed a law expropriating the previous owner, so that the building became the property of the Republic of Austria. A working meeting between the Austrian Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Sobotka, the Upper Austrian Governor Josef Pühringer and the Mayor of Braunau, Johannes Waidbacher, revealed that the building should be refurbished and that Lebenshilfe Upper Austria should be offered to use it. A working group consisting of representatives of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the state of Upper Austria and the city of Braunau am Inn, to [date] clarify outstanding legal and organizational issues in the first half of the 2017th

The expropriated owner fought the expropriation with a lawsuit against the specially created law before the Constitutional Court , which recognized the expropriation as legal on June 30, 2017. The plaintiff then filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights and at the same time sued the regional court in Ried for higher compensation than the 310,000 euros awarded. In January 2018, two experts were appointed, one of whom put the value between 800,000 and 1.5 million euros in June. After the regional court had set the higher of the two values, the Linz Higher Regional Court overturned this decision in April 2019 and set the compensation at 812,000 euros. These were also paid by the republic, an appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court as the last instance in August 2019.

Use by the police and renovation

In November 2019, the Ministry of the Interior announced that the building would become the seat of the district police command and the Braunau police station after renovations.

On June 2, 2020 it was announced that the Vorarlberg architects Marte.Marte , as the winner of the EU-wide architecture competition, would redesign the house where Hitler was born in Braunau. However, there are also very critical voices about the architecture competition and the project by the architecture office. In an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 9, 2020, Gerhard Matzig criticized the wording of the competition: “The external redesign of the existing building is intended to remove the memory of the National Socialist era (...).” This concludes “the reflective Thinking about the place ”and“ Questions about dealing with Nazi history are being talked about ”. Matzig calls the design by Marte.Marte, who wants to attract as little attention as possible with the “power of the simple”, the “deficit of an architecture that is not only timeless , but also forgotten”. Because the house is still the place where Hitler was born and “any attempt to ignore this fact must produce an architecture that is ignorant.” Matzig, on the other hand, finds the joint design by Kabe Architects from Vienna and Springer “remarkably emblematic” Architects from Berlin , whose design was honored with a special prize. And this even though Kabe / Springer's draft is exactly the opposite of what the tender documents specified. The draft envisaged concreting the windows of the building, "filling in the historical walls with earth and transforming Hitler's birthplace into an inaccessible wood for all time". The police station would have been housed in a simple new wooden building at the rear of the property. For Florian Kotanko, the chairman of the local association for contemporary history, this would have been "exactly [...] the right approach". Both a memorial and a social facility such as Lebenshilfe, which was housed in the building until 2011, would have been easy to imagine for the people of the community. He added that anything is better than "the top priority of the political authorities [...] to erase the facts of history" because that will not work. Matzig also sees the location of the police in the building ambiguous. This decision was preceded by the advice of a commission to accommodate a "life-affirming organization" in Hitler's birth house. The police can affirm and defend a democracy, but Matzig also reminds us that "the police [...] can also work in a police state". Citizens from Braunau also criticize the project. They state that not only will a memorial site be taken from them, but that “the government wants to take the history away from the site”.

Processing and commemoration

Memorial stone from 1989 (front)

In 1989 the city of Braunau am Inn under Mayor Gerhard Skiba one occasion of the 100th birthday of Adolf Hitler on the sidewalk in front of the house Mahnstein against war and fascism as stonework from Mauthausnerstraße granite erected. The diamond-like face of the free-standing block is about 160 cm wide and 115 cm high. On the front and back are the inscriptions “For peace, freedom and democracy - never again fascism - admonish millions of dead” and “stone from the Mauthausen concentration camp ”. For the first time, the city clearly distanced itself from “Hitler tourism”, which had assumed excesses up to the customary sale of souvenirs with the inscription “Hitler”.

literature

  • Julia Bevanda: Adolf Hitler and his birthplace . Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2018 ( full text )

Audio

  • Andreas Zinggl: Difficult legacy. The Hitler house in Braunau. Journal Panorama, Ö1 , April 14, 2014.
  • Lothar Bodingbauer: Braunau. A small town in search of normalcy. Journal Panorama, Ö1 , May 9, 1995, link to the manuscript

See also

Web links

Commons : Adolf Hitler Birthplace  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Apa : Demolition of Hitler's birthplace in suspension . In: Unsertirol24 , July 12, 2016, accessed on September 21, 2016.
  2. ^ Upper Austria - immovable and archaeological monuments under monument protection. ( Memento of December 29, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), ( CSV ). Federal Monuments Office , as of June 8, 2017.
  3. ↑ Under monument protection: Braunau disputes Hitler's birthplace Tagesspiegel, accessed June 14, 2016
  4. ^ Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn: Interior Minister Peschorn has decided on the redesign and use. Retrieved November 21, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Hitler's birthplace - demolition or educational use? - REMEMBER: NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND HOLOCAUST. Retrieved November 21, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e Florian Kotanko: The house in which Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, has a long history. Ed .: Association for Contemporary History , Braunau am Inn. ( Online ; accessed February 3, 2011, April 9, 2016 Page no longer available. - House of Responsibility, hrb.at; Österreichischer Auslandsdienst / Austrian Service Abroad, Innsbruck, www.auslandsdienst.at ; accessed April 9, 2016.)
  7. ↑ The error in Adolf Hitler's biography in Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (nachrichten.at) on May 30, 2016 with original documents from the birth register and the death report from the "Neue Warte am Inn" dated July 2, 1892
  8. ↑ Olga Kronsteiner: Monument protectors want to keep Hitler's house standard.at, September 20, 2016, accessed September 24, 2016. - File number: Z.2178 / Dsch / 1938.
  9. ↑ See [1]
  10. ↑ No new use for Hitler's birthplace for the time being. In: Der Standard from May 12, 2010. ( Online ; accessed February 3, 2011.)
  11. ^ Georg Markus : New tenants in Hitler's birthplace Kurier, September 10, 2011
  12. ↑ Georg Markus : What will happen to the "Hitler House"? Courier, October 23, 2016
  13. ^ ORF: Hitler's birthplace as a residential building? from September 20, 2012
  14. ^ SPÖ against Hitler residential buildings , orf.at, September 21, 2012
  15. ↑ Russian wants to tear down Hitler's birthplace. sueddeutsche.de, November 8, 2012, accessed November 8, 2012
  16. ↑ Birthplace - Braunau History . braunau-history.at. May 28, 2016. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
  17. ↑ Hitler's birthplace: Ministry of the Interior for Expropriation, orf.at , April 9, 2016, accessed April 9, 2016.
  18. ↑ Controversy over usage: Austria plans expropriation of Hitler's birthplace , spiegel.de, April 9, 2016, accessed April 9, 2016.
  19. ^ Demolition of Hitler's birthplace possible , ORF, June 12, 2016
  20. ^ Braunau: Austria expropriates the owner of Hitler's birthplace . Mirror online. July 12, 2016. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  21. ↑ Expropriation in the fight against the past , Tagesschau.de, June 12, 2016
  22. ↑ Interior Minister: Hitler's birthplace is being demolished. Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka wants to put an end to the years of discussions about the controversial building. But this requires the resolution of a federal law. Salzburger Nachrichten, October 17, 2016
  23. ^ Hitler's birthplace is being demolished , Spiegel Online, October 17, 2016
  24. ↑ Hitler's birthplace: Commission does not recommend demolition , ORF, October 18, 2016
  25. ↑ Meret Baumann: Coming to terms with the past in Austria: Hitler's birthplace is to become a home for the disabled again. In: nzz.ch , December 16, 2016, accessed December 20, 2016.
  26. ↑ Hitler's birthplace is used for social purposes. Press release from December 15, 2016. Homepage of the Province of Upper Austria. Retrieved December 23, 2016.
  27. ^ Marianne Karner: Hitler's birthplace and the Upper Austria charity - resistance or surrender? In: bizeps.or.at. January 10, 2017, accessed March 13, 2017 .
  28. ↑ Hitler House: Expropriation could be more expensive , ORF online on June 21, 2018
  29. ↑ Ex-owner of Hitler's birthplace loses trial before the Supreme Court. Der Standard, August 5, 2019, accessed November 20, 2019.
  30. ↑ Police will move into Hitler's birthplace. Der Standard, November 19, 2019, accessed on the same day.
  31. ↑ Vorarlberg architects redesign Hitler's birthplace (June 2, 2020)
  32. ↑ Architecture competition. Redesign of the building in Salzburger Vorstadt 15. In: architekturwettbewerb.at. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  33. ↑ a b c d e f g Wojciech Czaja: Plans for Hitler's birthplace: Because Hitler was never born on derstandard.de, accessed on June 9, 2020
  34. ↑ a b c d e f g Gerhard Matzig: Timeless until it is forgotten - Reconstruction of Hitler's birthplace: Fear of the ice breeze on sueddeutsche.de, accessed on June 9, 2020
  35. ↑ Statement on dealing with the Hitler birth house in Braunau / Inn - KZ-Verband / VdA OÖ, Landesvorstand, August 2015 , hrb.at
  36. ↑ Ute Baumhackel: Braunaus Geisterhaus , Kleine Zeitung , print July 17, 2016, supplement Sunday , p. 16 f. Excerpt from: Huber Patterer et al .: Scars of War. From Braunau to Yalta. 19 trips to places marked by the Second World War. Edition small newspaper. Graz 2015. ISBN 978-3-902819-47-5 .
  37. ↑ Marion Kraske: Braunau past. Live with Hitler. On the contemporary history portal one day from Spiegel Online , October 4, 2008. ( Online ; accessed February 3, 2011.)

Coordinates: 48 ° 15 '22.6 "  N , 13 ° 2' 9.6"  E