Hitler’s house to be remodelled, not torn down, says minister

The building where Adolf Hitler was born may be spared demolition but will emerge heavily disguised, Austria’s interior minister has now said.

On Monday, Wolfgang Sobotka told the daily Die Presse that “the Hitler house will be torn down”.

On Tuesday, he told reporters that the term “torn down” is debatable but the building, in the western town of Braunau, will be so thoroughly redesigned that it “will not be recognisable”.

The house, a large three-storey Renaissance-era structure, contains the apartment where Hitler was born.

Several members of a government-appointed commission on the future of the house said destroying it to end its attraction for admirers of the Nazi dictator would give an impression of trying to erase part of Austria’s history.