Police station opens in Hitler’s birth house
Katharina Abel 12 hours ago12 hours ago
Controversy has surrounded the renovation of the building in Braunau, Austria to this day. The debate points to something larger: the continued need to remember history and confront the Nazi past.
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Starting Wednesday, July 22, the police in Braunau am Inn, Austria, have new headquarters.
The local police station and district police command have moved into Salzburger Vorstadt 15. The address would attract little attention — had Adolf Hitler not been born there in April 1889.
Hitler, the self-declared “Führer” of the German Reich who started World War II, which claimed tens of millions of lives across Europe and beyond. Hitler also bore primary responsibility for the Holocaust, the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews.
The house didn’t belong to Hitler’s parents; they were tenants there and moved out only a few months after his birth.
The building has had a turbulent history ever since.
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi Party purchased the house and turned it into an ideological cultural center dedicated to its leader.
After World War II, ownership returned to the original family. The Austrian government later leased the property, which has served at various times as a library, a school and, most recently, a workshop for people with disabilities.
Starting 2011, the building stood vacant for years.
In 2016, Austria expropriated the property from its private owner to prevent neo-Nazis from turning it into a pilgrimage site. Officials said they wanted to “neutralize” the location.
A €20 million renovation
Austria’s Interior Ministry appointed a commission on the historically appropriate use of Hitler’s birth house, charging it with developing a concept for the site’s future. The commission recommended either a social service organization or a government office.
Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community of Vienna and member of the commission, told DW in 2023: “The goal was always to ensure this house wouldn’t become a pilgrimage site for Nazis.” Deutsch said he could have supported other uses for the building. Still, he emphasized that “a police station of a democratic state governed by the rule of law will be located here, and one of its responsibilities is combating neo-Nazi activity.”
Historian Oliver Rathkolb, another commission member, recalled that the group’s first unanimous recommendation was to house a social welfare organization there — an institution that embraced life. That proposal was declined. “The police station will discourage Hitler admirers from taking selfies in front of the completely redesigned building,” Rathkolb wrote.
To that end, the government spent about €20 million ($23 million) completely renovating the building, which included replacing its facade with a deliberately understated design.
Residents of Braunau remain divided over the result.
“A unique historical opportunity was missed to use the birth house of history’s greatest mass murderer in a sustainable and historically responsible way,” Eveline Doll, a Braunau native and spokesperson for the local citizens’ initiative Diskurs Hitlerhaus, told DW. “The city is, of course, not responsible for Hitler’s crimes. But around the world, Braunau will always be associated with the fact that history’s greatest mass murderer was born here.”
A 2023 survey found that only 6% of respondents supported converting the building into a police station.
Police and the Nazi past
“For more than 25 years, people have proposed turning this house into a place dedicated to peace, freedom, democracy and tolerance,” Doll said. “Those are values that remain critically important today. But every one of those proposals was rejected, and instead the building became a police station, which raises concerns on several levels.”
One of those concerns involves the police’s role during the Nazi era. After Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler chief of the German police in 1936, the police and the SS became increasingly integrated. The Gestapo, the secret state police, emerged as one of the regime’s principal instruments of terror and played a central role in persecuting political opponents and carrying out Nazi crimes.
Florian Kotanko, chair of the Contemporary History Society of Braunau, rejects comparisons between the police today and in the Nazi era. “We live in a democratic state governed by the rule of law, and the police are one of its institutions,” he told DW. “As long as officers can be held accountable for misconduct and prosecuted in court, there is no reason for fundamental distrust of the police as an institution.” Kotanko also takes a pragmatic view of the building’s new purpose. “The owner, the Republic of Austria, made its decision,” he said.
Austria has wrestled with its Nazi past for decades.
In 1938, Hitler annexed his neighboring homeland into Nazi Germany, a move many Austrians welcomed. During Nazi rule, approximately 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered and another 130,000 were forced into exile. Critics have repeatedly argued that Austria has not fully acknowledged its share of responsibility for the Holocaust.
The far-right Freedom Party of Austria, founded in 1956 by former Nazis, won the largest share of the 2024 parliamentary electoral vote, but failed to form a government.
A representative 2025 online survey by polling institute Unique Research for Pragmaticus magazine found that 39% of Austrians agreed, or somewhat agreed, that it was time to “draw a line” under confronting the country’s Nazi past.
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Memorial stone stays
The renovated building will not feature an information plaque. The expert commission also recommended moving the memorial stone in front of the building to another location in Braunau. The stone, taken from Austria’s largest concentration camp at Mauthausen, bears the inscription: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. The millions of dead remind us.” Local officials rejected that recommendation and left the memorial in place.
Coincidentally, Hitler’s last registered address in Germany is also now home to a police facility. The building at Prinzregentenplatz 16 in Munich’s Bogenhausen district belonged to Hitler until his death. After World War II, the state of Bavaria used it for various government offices. A police station moved into the building in 1998. The station has recently begun opening its doors for selected public events to demonstrate that democratic values now define a place with such a dark history.
This article was originally written in German.
Katharina Abel Reporter and editor at DW’s culture desk
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