The Austrian Constitutional Court (VfGH) is, as the name suggests, Austria's highest authority for answering constitutional questions. They ruled against Gerlinde Pommer-Angloher, who challenged Vienna's seizure of her house in the town of Braunau am Inn.
"The expropriation by law of the house of Adolf Hitler's birth in Braunau was carried out in the public interest, proportionately and not without [financial] compensation, so it was not unconstitutional," the court wrote.
The house, Salzburger Vorstadt 15, was Pommer-Angloher's property but had been uninhabited since 2011. Instead, Pommer-Angloher received €4,700 ($5,200) per month in rent from the Austrian government so that they could use it as a museum. In 2016, the Austrian Parliament passed a law to expropriate the house from Pommer-Angloher so that they could remodel it to the point that it "will not be recognizable."
Pommer-Angloher refused to sell after multiple government offers, so eventually Parliament expropriated the property and compensated her. Pommer-Angloher and her lawyer, Gerhard Lebitsch, called the expropriation unconstitutional.
It is not clear what Vienna intends to do with the house. While the original plan was to renovate it, others in Parliament have called for the centuries-old house to be demolished entirely.
The reasoning behind this is that Salzburger Vorstadt 15 has become a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimages to the home of their idol, Adolf Hitler. This includes a Hitler look-alike, who was arrested in front of the building in early 2017.
"The house is vulnerable to becoming a pilgrim site … for neo-Nazi ideology. It was therefore necessary to ensure that no criminal abuses take place," the court wrote.
From his 1889 birth until 1892, Hitler and his parents lived in the top floor of the building. When he was three, the Hitlers moved to Passau in Germany. In 1938, the town's council renamed the street Adolf-Hitler-Strasse (Adolf Hitler Road), and the Nazis used the house as an art gallery and library.
Lebitsch protested the seizure, as Pommer-Angloher had nothing to do with the neo-Nazi pilgrims. "Mrs. Pommer-Angloher has always had an interest in a neutral use of the house," he told Deutsche Welle. "She thinks that nothing is achieved with the expropriation."
He added that Pommer-Angloher thought the government's offers were too low. "The offers regarding the purchasing price were half-hearted," he said. "At best it was the sale value of a regular house. There were never any serious talks. Always everything got blocked."
A memorial stone outside of Salzburger Vorstadt 15 reads: "For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism, millions of dead warn."
