Wolfgang Sobotka, Austrian Interior Minister, said that the house where Adolf Hitler was born would be demolished and a new building would be erected in its place.
The minister said that on Monday while announcing the final decision on the “problematic structure”
in Vienna.
He said that the decision followed the recommendation of an expert commission that included the head of Vienna’s Jewish community and leading Austrian historians.
He said “the Hitler House will be demolished.”
Sobotka said that the building’s foundation would, however, remain intact, and the new house would be used by a charity or by a public authority.
He explained that for years, the government had been mulling a solution for the empty house in the town of Braunau to stop neo-Nazis from visiting the early home of Germany’s former Nazi dictator.
The minister added that government took a first step in July when it decided to seize the house from its private owner.
The minister explained that it was because the private owner of the house was unwilling to cooperate with authorities to put it to new use that would have been in line with its historical significance.
Meanwhile, vocal critics were against demolishing the unassuming three-storey building.
The non-governmental International Council on Monuments and Sites, a critic, said that the house
should remain standing as an authentic memorial that could help to demystify Nazi ideology.
Also, Austria’s federal monuments authority had voiced doubts about destroying the building that is part of Braunau’s protected historical city centre.
The Hitler family had rented an apartment in the building for the first year after Adolf Hitler’s birth in 1889. (dpa/NAN)