Austria opens police station in Hitler's birthplace to deter neo-Nazi pilgrimages

A long-contested site

The three-storey building in Braunau am Inn, on the Austrian-Bavarian border, is where Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889. His family moved out after only a few months, but the address remained a magnet for far-right sympathisers. Until 2011 the premises housed a workshop for disabled people, but the owner refused a necessary renovation, triggering a legal battle that ended with expropriation by the Republic of Austria in 2017.

Why a police station?

A government-appointed commission rejected both demolition and a museum. Instead it recommended a redesign that would strip the building of any recognition value, making it unattractive to neo-Nazis. The solution was to integrate the 3,000-square-metre site into the regular security apparatus: the district police command and the local police inspection now operate from the address. The building is under video surveillance, and officers can immediately check anyone behaving suspiciously.

Past incidents

Neo-Nazi pilgrimages were sporadic but persistent. On 20 April 2024, two German couples placed flowers in the window niches and posed for photographs; one woman allegedly showed the Hitler salute. In 2021 a 57-year-old man from Berlin laid a wreath in front of the house. Authorities were less concerned about the overt cases than about unrecognised extremists who visited the site quietly.

The renovation

Work began in 2023 and cost around €20 million. To prevent the collection of Nazi memorabilia, the construction site was guarded and all rubble was shredded on site and mixed with other material. The result is a building that looks nothing like the one Hitler knew.

Opening and outlook

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) attends the official opening on Wednesday at 10:00. The government frames the conversion as a long-term integration of the property into normal administrative and security operations. A similar approach has been used for decades with Hitler's former nine-room apartment on Prinzregentenplatz in Munich, which also belongs to a police station.