Hitler birthplace memorial stone
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The house on Salzburger Vorstadt, Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria, where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 was returned to its owners in 1952, and was immediately rented by the Austrian Republic. Until 1965 it was the home of the public library and later a bank. From 1970 to 1976 several classes from the technical high school were held in the house, until the school was rebuilt. The house now accommodates a branch of the charity Lebenshilfe, and operates as a day centre and workshops for people with learning difficulties.
Suggestions regarding making Hitler's birthplace a place of remembrance (for the victims — not Hitler) had already been made in the early years after the war. For a long time, the council discussed putting up a memorial tablet on the house, and in 1983 the decision was made by the then mayor Hermann Fuchs, with emphatic interventions by Culture Advisor Wolfgang Simböck. However, the memorial tablet was not attached, because the owner (who was completely unconnected to Hitler) felt that this was an intrusion into her rights of ownership over what was — after all — just a building. She successfully fought against it in court because of her fear of unwelcome attention and attacks from anti- and Neonazis.
[edit] Setting up the stone
In 1989 the new mayor Gerhard Skiba, took the initiative. In April, 1989 (two weeks before the centenary of Hitler's birth) a memorial stone was placed directly in front of the house on public ground. The inscription on the stone (which was brought from the former Mauthausen Concentration Camp, near Linz, Austria) makes it unmistakably clear how the city of Braunau and its inhabitants actually feel about their unwelcome heritage. It is now very difficult for tourists to photograph "Hitler's Birthplace" without the picture also including the memorial stone and its bold inscription:
- FÜR FRIEDEN, FREIHEIT
- UND DEMOKRATIE
- NIE WIEDER FASCHISMUS
- MILLIONEN TOTE MAHNEN
- Literally, "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions Dead Remind".*
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- *Note: The last line does not translate easily into English. It approximates to "Keep in [your] mind [the] dead millions", as a self-warning of the potential consequences of fascism.
The Austrians refer to the stone officially as the "Memorial Stone Against War and Fascism", and it appears as the "Mahnstein" ("Remembrance Stone") on street maps of Braunau.
Top photograph by kind permission of "Gedenkdienst" - the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service. Each person is holding a placard bearing names of the "Austrian Righteous" - Austrians who are known to have helped Jews during the Holocaust.
