Police station opens at Hitler's birthplace in bid to rid site of Nazi link

Police station opens at Hitler's birthplace in bid to rid site of Nazi linkImage source, Bethany Bell/BBCImage caption, Police were stationed outside the refurbished building as it opened on WednesdayByBethany Bellin Braunau am Inn, AustriaPublished22 July 2026, 09:18 BSTUpdated 1 hour agoAustria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler was born, in the town of Braunau am Inn.It follows years of controversy about what to do with the 17th-Century former inn, where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born in April 1889.The building has now been substantially refurbished and its facade changed, but it has been a huge headache for Austrian authorities, who want to prevent it from becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.Hitler only lived in Salzburger Vorstadt 15 for a few weeks, before his family moved to another address in Braunau. They left the town for good when he was three years old.Hitler returned briefly to Braunau in 1938, on his way to Vienna, after he annexed Austria to Nazi Germany.For decades, the interior ministry rented the building from its former owner, a local woman called Gerlinde Pommer. It paid her a generous rent, in an attempt to prevent the house being used as a site for extreme right-wing tourism.Image source, Getty Images/ EPAImage caption, The old yellow-plastered house has since been substantially refurbished so the facade looks very differentThe building was used for many years by a local charity as a day centre and workshop for people with special needs. But it was forced to move out in 2011, when Pommer blocked renovations.She also repeatedly refused to sell the property to the government.The house remained empty for several years, while the authorities and Pommer argued over terms.In 2016, Austria's parliament passed a law allowing the government to seize the house from Mrs Pommer. It paid her compensation of €812,000 (£690,000). She later took the government to court, saying the sum was too low, but lost her case.Im...