Hitler Image by File

— Austrian lawmakers voted to dispossess the home where Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was born.

The vote Wednesday night followed years of the German border town of Braunau and later the national government trying to purchase the home from its owners.

In October, the Austrian government initiated legal procedures to dispossess the home from its owners in an attempt to prevent the site from becoming a shrine to the neo-Nazi community. The Interior Ministry announced at the time that the home would be torn down.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The building at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt St. is listed as a historical landmark, however, though Hitler’s name does not appear on it.

Some town residents want the building to become a refugee center, while others want to create a museum dedicated to Austria’s liberation from the Nazis, the French news agency AFP reported. Razing the building would negate the country’s Nazi past, an expert commission has said.

Gerlinde Pommer’s family has owned the house where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, for more than a century. The town has tried for decades to purchase the building.

The ministry had rented the home for decades and sublet it to charitable organizations. The house, which draws neo-Nazi visitors, especially on the anniversary of Hitler’s birth, has stood empty since 2011 after the owner refused to authorize needed renovations.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount