Hitler's birth house will be redesigned to erase all Nazi links

The Austrian house where Adolf Hitler was born will be stripped of its Nazi-era look to neutralize it as a magnet for extremists, the Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday in Vienna.

The building in the city of Braunau will be used as a police station in the future, Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told a press conference.

"The police are the guardians of fundamental rights and freedoms," he argued.

The unassuming three-storey building in the centre of Braunau has been attracting neo-Nazi visitors since the 1950s.

The Interior Ministry therefore tasked a commission of historians and political scientists to solve this problem.

"The key outcome was that the entire location must be neutralized," senior ministry official Hermann Feiner said.

To achieve this, Austrian architects Marte.Marte decided to subtly remove the changes that were made under Nazi rule, when the ground-floor facade received a fortress-like shape, while the windows and roofs were also altered.

As part of the planned redesign, a memorial stone in front of the house that denounces fascism will be taken down and probably moved to a museum, said Feiner.

Bought by Hitler's party

The late German dictator (1889-1945) spent the first months of his life in the building that was later bought by the National Socialist party.

After World War II, the house was returned to its private owner and used as a school and a workshop for disabled people.

Austrian Government decided in 2017 to confiscate the building because the woman who owned it refused to enter into an agreement about its future use.

The renovation is set to be completed by early 2023.