After more than 70 years, Adolf Hiltler's birthplace is going to be destroyed. This is not to wreak vengeance on a lifeless building, but to prevent neo-Nazis from converting the home into a shrine.
The plan is quite a war of a different kind than the one that the Nazi dictator fought. A long battle with the building's owner has finally led to the Austrian government making a plan to demolish the birthplace.
"The Hitler house will be torn down. The foundations can remain but a new building will be erected. It will be used either by a charity or the local authorities," Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.
Even though the plan has not passed a vote in Parliament and Legislation, a committee of experts has decided to destroy the house in Braunau am Inn town, near the German border.
The reason for this is that it might fall into "wrong hands," said Sobotka. The government worries that it might be used a shrine by neo-Nazis. By destroying it, the ministry is trying to eliminate all links of association with Hitler.
It is a bit puzzling to many that the building is visited by a number of Nazi sympathisers. Locals say that many continue to visit it.
However, is that completely out of curiosity, or is there something else that drives them here?
"I've even witnessed people from Italy or from France coming here... for adoration purposes," said Josef Kogler, a teacher. "One Frenchman, a history teacher I think it was, came and asked me for Hitler's birthplace... It's hard to understand."
The monstrous dictator had been born in a rented room on top of the building on April 20, 1889. When he turned three, he shifted with his family to Germany. After he became a Nazi supremo the building became a "shrine". However, in 1944, when his Nazi party declined, the building was shut down.
After 1972, the three-storey building has been rented by the government to eliminate misuse. It got converted into a care centre for the disabled, but got deserted in 2011. The government pays the house owner, Gerlinde Pommer, €4,800 (AU$6,900) every month.
However, Pommer does not want to sell the building to the government, nor is she willing to permit renovations reducing its symbolic influence.
Hence, the government started formal legal procedures early in 2016 to take over the building. It has also decided that it should not leave the "site empty" as that would indicate that Austrian history is being denied. A new building put in its place will be used for administrative or for charitable purposes.
