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AUSTRIA-NAZI-HITLER-COURT-HISTORY
Austria highest court ends row over Hitler birth house
VIENNA, Aug 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Austria’s highest court has put an end to
a row over the house where Adolf Hitler was born, rejecting the amount the
former owner had demanded in compensation, the interior ministry said on
Monday.
Gerlinde Pommer’s family owned the yellow corner house in the northern
town of Braunau on the border with Germany for nearly a century.
The government took control of the dilapidated building in December 2016
after years of legal wrangling with Pommer.
Austrian authorities have been keen to prevent the premises, where Hitler
was born on April 20, 1889, from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.
Although he only spent a short time at the property, it continues to draw
Nazi sympathisers from around the world.
In January, a regional court ruled that the state should pay Pommer 1.5
million euros ($1.7 million) in compensation, much more than the 310,000
euros she had been originally offered.
But another tribunal overturned this verdict in April, finding that the
current market price — set by a court-appointed expert at 810,000 euros
excluding any rental income — would constitute an appropriate amount of
compensation.
Austria’s highest court has now upheld the April ruling, meaning Pommer
will receive less compensation than she sought but still more than she had
been originally offered.
“After the court’s decision on compensation, a use for Hitler’s birth
house can now be found within the framework of the law to prevent any sort of
Nazi-related activity,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn said in a
statement.
Authorities will invite submissions from architects about the future of
the site, the statement said without giving further details.
Pommer had been renting the 800-square-metre (8,600-square-feet) property
— which also has several garages and parking spaces located behind the main
building — to the interior ministry since the 1970s.
The government paid her around 4,800 euros a month and used it as a centre
for people with disabilities.
But this arrangement fell apart in 2011 when Pommer refused to carry out
essential renovation work and also declined to sell it.
Since then, the building has lain empty.
At one point, the interior ministry was pushing to have it torn down but
the plans ran into angry resistance from politicians and historians.
Every year on Hitler’s birthday, anti-fascist protesters organise a rally
outside the building.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1945HRS