Turning the house where Adolf Hitler was born into a police station has raised mixed emotions in his Austrian hometown.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Sibylle Treiblmaier, outside the house in the town of Braunau am Inn on the border with Germany.
While it might discourage far-right extremists from gathering at the site, it could have “been used better or differently”, the 53-year-old office assistant told AFP.
The government wants to “neutralise” the site and passed a law in 2016 to take control of the dilapidated building from its private owner.
Workers are finishing works at the birth house of former German dictator Adolf Hitler that is turned into a police station, pictured in Braunau am Inn, Austria on February 17, 2026. — AFP
Austria — which was annexed by Hitler’s Germany in 1938 — has repeatedly been criticised in the past for not fully acknowledging its responsibility in the Holocaust.
The far-right Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis, is ahead in the polls after getting the most votes in a national election for the first time in 2024, though it failed to form a government.
Last year, two streets in Braunau am Inn commemorating Nazis were renamed after years of complaints by activists.
‘Problematic’
The house where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, and lived for a short period of his early life, is right in the centre of town on a narrow shop-lined street.
A memorial stone in front reads: “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Warn.”
Picture shows a memorial stone reading “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy — Never Again Fascism — Millions of Dead Warn” in front of the birth house of former German dictator Adolf Hitler that is turned into a police station, in Braunau am Inn, Austria on February 17, 2026. — AFP
When AFP visited this week, workers were putting the finishing touches to the renovated facade.
Officers are scheduled to move in during “the second quarter of 2026”, the interior ministry said.
But for author Ludwig Laher, a member of the Mauthausen Committee Austria that represents Holocaust victims, “a police station is problematic, as the police… are obliged, in every political system, to protect what the state wants”.
An earlier idea to turn the house into a place where people would come together to discuss peace-building had “received a lot of support”, he told AFP.
