The Hitler Diary Forgeries: The Bonanza Scoop and a Need to Believe?

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Creative Writing, International Relations, Literary & Linguistics, Regional History, Society & Culture

Hitler-Tagebücher, the discovery of diaries, hitherto unknown, claimed to be written by Adolf Hitler, the most talked about man of the 20th century, who wouldn’t want to find out more about a scoop with such history revising ramifications?

The news, when it surfaced in the early 1980s, certainly caused quite a sensation internationally. After eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) declared the diaries legit on a first sighting (though later he walked that back a bit), newspaper editors in Germany and the UK unhesitatingly bought the ruse. Rupert Murdoch, after forking out £250,000 to buy the serialisation rights from Der Stern magazine for the diaries, ordered their immediate serialisation in the Sunday Times.

Trevor-Roper: his damaged academic reputation never really recovered from the humiliating affair

With everyone so enthusiastically “gung-ho” about them, the spoiler was that the diaries were fakes, the work of one Konrad Kujau, an East German petty crim and recidivist forger. Kujau’s “Hitler Diaries” were acquired by a ‘Naziphile’ journalist with a bent for Third Reich memorabilia, Gerd Heidemann❶, who was the go-between in selling the diary rights to Stern for somewhere in the region of $2–$3 M. In the transaction Heidemann purloined something considerably north of a tidy sum for himself.

Gerd Heidemann, subsequently jailed for fraud for his part in the forgeries ▼

An incredible lack of credibility
On the face of it the Hitler forgeries had the hole-ridden texture of Swiss cheese. The German Federal Archives eventually pronounces them “clumsy fakes” after two weeks of commotion, described as a “14-day historical mystery-thriller, in which experts changed their minds, Jewish leaders were horrified at an apparent attempt to whitewash Hitler”❷ (Schwarz and van der Vat). There was a “thoroughly incomplete vetting of the diaries” (McGrane). In the flurry of activity as interested parties competed for the diaries, no one thought to test the ink, paper and string of the supposed ‘personal’ seals of the Führer (when three volumes in the form of small notebooks were eventually examined it was shown that they dated from after WWII – Kujau used modern paper which he stained with tea to give it an aged appearance!). Nor did they think to scrutinise the text of the diaries more closely – if they did they would have detected the plagiarism, Kujau copied (word for word) large chunks of a book on Hitler’s proclamations and speeches by Max Domarcus (McGrane).

▲ Some of Kujau’s handiwork (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Then there’s the handwriting which didn’t match, an oversight not immediately picked up on. Initially Kujau produced some 27 volumes of the ‘lost’ diaries…the sort of money these fetched was irresistibly tempting, suddenly Kujau ‘discovered’ a whole new vein of Hitler writings, a further 35 diaries and a third volume of Mein Kampf, alarm bells still didn’t ring❸.

Likewise, the simple fact that there had been absolutely no previous record of the diaries’ existence, in an area of historical research which has been so inexhaustibly and copiously trawled for decades, somehow escaped all of those with their eyes on the prize. Another clue missed was Kujau’s careless labelling of each volume ‘FH’ in Gothic letters rather than ‘AH’. The editors of Stern fatally failed to press Heidemann to divulge his source for the diaries, the employee only giving up the name of the known fraudster when the jig was virtually up. The catch-up forensics, when they came, quickly verified the bogus nature of the ‘documents’.

Konrad Kujau (got four-and-a-half years jail for his crime) ▼

Clarity comes with hindsight
Self-recrimination for such egregiously bad judgement followed. With hindsight Lord Dacre reproached himself for being seduced by the find of such a historical treasure…”I should have refused to give an opinion so soon” (Schwarz and van den Vat). 30 years on, Felix Schmidt, one of the three editors-in-chief at Stern ❹, reflected that the very thought that Hitler kept diaries triggered “a kind of collective insanity in the upper echelons Stern’s editorial offices”, adding that “delusional secrecy” and “illegitimate mystification” about the affair prevailed.

(Source: Business Insider)

There was in such an intoxicating atmosphere “simply too much money at stake for anyone to come to their senses”.(McGrane). Clearly the newspapers were blindsided by the dollar (and Deutschmark) signs dangling before their eyes, hence their inordinate haste to rush in where cooler and wiser heads would have proceeded with great caution❺.

Postwar German generation
A persuasive argument for why the participants were so easily duped comes from Die Zeit editor Giovanni di Lorenzo, who attributes their ready acceptance of the flimsy evidence for the diaries‘ authenticity to generational fixation with Hitler of those who lived through the Nazi era. This fascination, Lorenzo concludes, would have been unimaginable to later German generations (McGrane).

PostScript: Hitler Diaries on the celluloid screen
The celebrated hoax has been translated twice to the screen, the first a 1991 British mini-series based on Robert Harris’ book Selling Hitler with the same title (Alexei Sayle is a comfortable fit as the cheerful and uncomplicated ‘Conny’ Kujau). The second, a satirical German-made film, Schtonk!, released in 1992.

▲ Dictator diarists, courtesy of their ghostwriters

⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯ ⌯⌯⌯

❶ Heidemann’s devotion to Nazi memorabilia extended to purchasing the late Field Marshal Göring’s yacht

❷ in the diaries Hitler is incredulously depicted as being almost blissfully unaware of the atrocities committed against Jews

❸ Kujau sold his first faux Hitler diary to a collector in 1978

❹ all three summarily sacked for their failings

❺ the Sunday Times especially should have been treading warily given it had been scammed before in 1968 when it spent $250,000 trying to get its hands on the equally fraudulent “Mussolini Diaries”

୭ ˚ ୭ ˚ ୭ ˚

Bibliography:

‘Diary of the Hitler Diary Hoax’, Sally McGrane, The New Yorker, 25-Apr-2013, www.thenewyorker.com

‘Hitler Diaries proved to be forged — archive’, Walter Schwarz and Dan van den Vat, The Guardian, 07-May-1983, www.theguadian.com

‘The Hitler Diaries: How hoax documents became the most infamous fake news ever’, Adam Lusher, Independent, 05-May-2018, www.independent.co.uk

Labelled ‘Degenerate’: Nazi Germany’s War on Modern Art

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Popular Culture, Regional History, Society & Culture

In 1937 the Nazi regime organised two art exhibitions in Munich concurrently, separated only by a park and a few hundred metres. One was intended to hammer home to the German volk the inequity of the type of art that the führer Adolf Hitler found abhorrent, ie, anything in art that even hinted of modernity. The other representing all that Hitler found good in art was the complete antithesis of this – a paean to traditional, realistic painting and sculpture and art that conformed to classical themes and forms.

⇧ A Hitler, landscape (Source: Widewalls)

Hitler’s early experiences and his perceived emotional pattern suggest a motive of personal revenge contributing to the Nazis’ fanatical war on the modern and the avant-garde in art. As a young man Hitler dreamed of a career as an artist but a double rejection by the Vienna art academy saw those aspirations dashed. His paintings were summarily dismissed as passe by the art establishment in favour of abstract and modern styles (Burns), leaving the future Reich leader with a bitter aftertaste and a grudge①.

In Mein Kampf Hitler avers that “Cubism and Dadaism are symptoms of biological degradation threatening the German people”, Werckmeister, O. K. “Hitler the Artist.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 270–297. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/1343984. Accessed 2 March 2021.

The purging of so-called “degenerate art”
The Degenerate Art Exhibition (Entartete Kunst) in 1937 was the culmination of a concerted campaign waged by the Nazis to root out all manifestations of avant-garde art in Germany. The first efforts by Hitler’s henchmen were a reaction to the preceding liberal and permissive Weimar era which had embraced the modern style in art and especially Expressionism. In 1933 the Nazis held their first art exhibit of the supposed “degenerate art” in Dresden. Allied to this, the systematic confiscation of modern artworks from museum across Germany took place. Hundreds of thousands of the plundered art pieces including works by modern masters were sold by the Third Reich (some of the proceeds were siphoned off into armament production)②. Much of the minor, less marketable art works were ultimately burnt.

⇧ Beckmann: ‘The Night’

The “wrong type” of art
Hitler rejected the avant-garde and modernity in part for aesthetic reasons. Hitler like many of his Nazi followers had an innate conservative aesthetic taste in art. Politics and ideology also played a part, the führer associated modernism with Jews and communism, and by extension, with democracy and pacifism. Jewish influences, Hitler held, had contaminated the classical art styles so beloved by him. At the same time he denounced what he called “cultural Bolshevism” for weakening German society. Modern art, the Nazis believed was an evil plot against the German people, a “dangerous lie” which would poison German minds. In chilling words given the Nazis’ later unbridled lethal use of eugenics Hitler stated that “anyone who paints a green sky and fields blue ought to be sterilised”.

⇧ Kokoschka: ’Portrait of a Degenerate Artist’

“Sick art” and culture as a propaganda tool
Hitler and the Nazis believed that art played a critical role in defining society’s values. Expressionism③ and the group Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) and artists like Oscar Kokoschka and Ernst Kirchner got singled out for extra repressive measures. The Nazis depicted avant-garde art as the lowest of the low—”impure and subversive”, it’s artists ‘diseased’ specimens corrupted by mental, physical and moral decay—conversely they elevated classical Greek and Roman art to a sublime place, the highest of cultural planes.

⇧ Hitler viewing the ‘Degenerates’

The Degenerate Art Exhibition
The Nazis’ 1937 exhibition was carefully stage-managed as a propaganda vehicle to mock and deride the modern art Hitler so detested. The exhibition comprised Expressionist, Dada, Cubism, Abstract (allocated its own room designated the “Insanity Room”) and New Objectivity artworks. Paintings were hung in a careless, haphazard fashion, with graffiti scrawled on the walls which defamed the artists. Actors were hired to prowl through the gallery loudly denouncing the “Modernist madness”. Adolf Ziegler, the Reich”s top arts bureaucrat and Hitler’s favourite artist, declared the displayed works “monstrosities of insanity, insolence, incompetence and degeneration”. And to ram home the degeneracy point, the vilified artworks were juxtaposed alongside paintings by the enfeebled and the disabled, by psychotic patients and the like. According to the Nazis, degenerate art was the product of Jews and Bolsheviks, but interestingly only six of the 112 artists whose work was displayed in the exhibition were Jewish. The 650 paintings, prints and sculptures included works by Grosz, Dix, Klee, Beckmann, Nolde, Chagall, Picasso, Wandinsky, Marc and Mondrian.

⇧ Führer taking in the “good art”

Exhalting in the “pure Aryan art”
To provide Germans with a favourable point of comparison, the Nazis simultaneously held the Great German Art Exhibition in the same Munich neighbourhood. This displayed ‘Ayran’ art➃, the type of art Hitler approved of. Often gargantuan in scale⑤ – statuesque blond nudes, idealised heroic and duty-bound soldiers and imagined pastorals and idyllic landscapes (reflecting Hitler’s predilection for realistic paintings of outdoor rustic settings). Characteristically the favoured Nazis’ male figures in art represented the concept of the Übermensch (an idealised ‘superman’). Hitler’s intention was that the Groß deutsche Kunstausstellung propaganda would help mobile the German people behind the Nazis’ values.

Footnote: The outcome of the dual 1937 exhibitions was not anticipated by Hitler and the Nazis: Entartete Kunst proved wildly popular, attracting more than two million visitors, whereas Groß Kunstausstellung only managed less than a third of this number. The “Degenerate Art” show was such a hit that it was toured on display throughout the German Reich after the Munich premiere closed.

☬ ☬ ☬

Postscript: German artists deemed ‘degenerate’ understandably were more at risk of persecution from the Nazis from those outside the country. Special attention was given to artists like George Grosz and Oscar Dix who were openly critical of the totalitarian regime. Grosz mocked Hitler on canvas while Dix earned the enmity of the Nazis for his excruciating depictions of the horrors of war. As one writer put it, “the Nazis labeled Dix a ‘degenerate,’ but the term is better applied to the society he depicted—cannibalizing itself and hurtling toward destruction” (Alina Cohen).

Dix’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ (1933)

•━ ━ ━ •━ ━ ━ •━ ━ •━ ━ ━ ━•

① Hitler’s own preference for subject matter as an artist was for painting buildings and largely unpopulated pastoral landscapes (the future “world leader” had no talent for capturing the human form)
② Hitler and the National-Socialists’ notion of modern art as being the product of entartung (degeneracy) can be traced to a Jewish Austro-Hungarian social critic Max Nordau who decried the new art and literature in 1890s Europe as being the work of diseased minds
③ the focus on Expressionism as a target for the Nazi “culture police” proved a particular problem for Joseph Goebbels. The propaganda minister had early on championed the Expressionist movement and had to backtrack swiftly on this to avoid the führer’s opprobrium
➃ Ayran art uniformly infuses a celebration of youth, optimism, power and eternal triumph
⑤ the Nazi taste for mega-scale art reached its apogee in architecture, massive structures like ‘Germania’. “Monumentality and solidity (exuding power), simplicity and timeless eternity” were the bywords of Nazi architecture

𓇬 𓇬 𓇬

Bibliography
‘Degenerate art: Why Hitler hated modernism’, (Lucy Burns), BBC News, 06-Nov-2013, www.bbc.com
‘Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937’, (Jason Farago), The Guardian, 13-Mar-2014, www.theguardian.com
‘Degenerate art’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Nazi architecture’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Why “Degenerate” Artist Otto Dix Was Accused of Plotting to Kill Hitler’, (Alina Cohen), Art Sy, 11-Feb-2019, www.artsy.net
‘Art as Propaganda: The Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibit’, Facing History and Ourselves, (Video, 2017)
‘Adolf Hitler’s war against modern art’, The Canvas, (Video, 2019)

Liverpool’s Most (In)famous Phantom Resident

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Regional History

There’s nothing like unearthing a hitherto unsuspected and improbable sounding historical connexion to give a boost to a city’s tourist industry. In the case of Liverpool, UK—the city that the Beatles, the Mop-Top “Fab Four”, launched onto centre-stage on the world’s pop culture map—that nexus may not be an altogether welcome one if it connects it to the most reviled political figure of the 20th century.

(Image: www.lonelyplanet.com)

One story that has been quietly doing the rounds of England since the early 1970s is that Adolf Hitler—long before his elevation to German führer and his failed shot at world domination in the 1930s and 40s—visited Liverpool and spent several months in the city during his formative years. The myth of Hitler’s visit has sustained itself over the years and even found favour with some Liverpudlians despite the complete paucity of proof to support any such claim.

Alois Hitler ⇧

What we do know with some certainty
Adolf’s elder half-brother Alois Hitler visits Dublin in the early 1900s where he meets a young Irish woman, Bridget Dowling. They elope to London, marry and move to the Merseyside city in search of work. Alois lives in Liverpool between 1911 and 1914. A son is born in Liverpool (William Patrick Hitler, 1911). The evidence for this primarily comes from the city census of 2011, Alois Hitler is listed on the residential register – although the register records his first name as ‘Anton’. The Hitlers live at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, Toxteth, L8 1UN (a suburb of Liverpool). One degree of separation to AH, definitely, but so far nothing that places the Nazi mass-murderer in person in the city of Liverpool.

(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)

Adolf gets Merseyside?
It is Hitler’s sister-in-law that draws the dots between Adolf in Upper Austria and the family in Liverpool. In the late Thirties, Bridget Hitler, long-parted from Alois and no longer domiciled in Liverpool, writes her (unpublished) memoirs which recounts a stay by young Aldolf with her family in the Upper Stanhope Street home⌖ (supposedly between November 1912 and April 1913). Bridget’s revelation was the first time anyone had an inkling that Hitler had ever been to Liverpool or England. There was nothing on the public record and no one else has ever corroborated Bridget’s claim [‘Adolf Hitler Liverpool links discussed again in new TV documentary’, Liverpool Echo, 08-May-2003. www.liverpoolecho.co.uk].

Hitler’s alleged Liverpool holiday only comes to light and reaches a wider audience after historian Robert Payne discovers Bridget’s unfinished manuscript in the New York Public Library while researching his own book on Hitler in the early 1970s. The claim gets taken up by Liverpool’s daily papers…in particular editor Mike Unger runs the story hard, in 1979 he edits Bridget’s book and publishes it as The Memoirs of Bridget Hitler [‘Hitler, 23, fled to Liverpool to avoid service in Austrian army’, (JohnThomas Didymus), Digital Journal, 26-Nov-2011, www.digitaljournal.com]

Draft-dodger führer?
In her memoirs Bridget explains Adolf’s reason for coming to Liverpool as an attempt to avoid being conscripted into the Austrian army (unsurprisingly Bridget’s portrayal of her brother-in-law is not a flattering one)◘. Another theory for the unexpected visit is that Hitler, a “wanna-be” artist, is on the rebound—having been rejected from art schools in Austria—and travels to Liverpool as its a city known for its artists and art schools [‘Hitler Living in Liverpool’, The History of Liverpool, www.historyofliverpool.com].

Hitler, Liverpool man-about-town
Lots of wild and occasional wacky tales have been told about Hitler’s time in Liverpool. People come out of the woodwork with anecdotes about supposed Merseyside encounters their great-grandparents had with the future German reichkánzler. The myths abound, Hitler is ‘remembered’ drinking at Peter Kavanagh’s Egerton Street pub and barracking for “his team” Everton at Goodisall Park, or alternately some have depicted him as a ‘Kopite’ (a fan of rival Liverpool FC); he gets banned from the Walker Art Gallery; the Liverpool ice rink at Wavertree keeps a pair of his skating boots on display, etc [‘Did Hitler ever visit Liverpool, and if so, why?’ (Notes and Queries), The Guardian, www.theguardian.com]. As Prof Frank McDonough observes, for many Liverpudlians it seems “the fiction is much more interesting” (‘Hitler Liverpool links’).

(Source: www.irishcentral.com)

Fanciful rather than factual
Though the Liverpool Echo is sympathetic to Frau Hitler’s account, most serious scholars reject the claims about her brother-in-law’s Liverpool sojourn as pure fabrication, flimsily-written and without foundation. Others attribute Bridget’s motives to an opportunist scheme by her and her son to cash in on the Hitler phenomenon (see also Endnote) [‘Brigid and Willy Hitler: The Nazi dictator’s Irish family who tried to make money off his rise to power, (Rachael O’Connor), The Irish Post, 05-Sep-2019, www.irishpost.com]. Refuting Bridget’s tenuous claims that Adolf spend 1912-13 (Hitler’s so-called “lost year”) in Liverpool, Third Reich historian Ian Kershaw places Hitler instead in a Viennese men’s hostel during the same time period [‘Your Story: Adolf Hitler – did he visit Liverpool during 1912-13?’, Legacies – Liverpool, (M W Royden), www.bbc.com].

⇩ Bridget and William

Endnote: Hitler’s scouser nephew
Whether or not Hitler ever made it to Liverpool, we do know that he had significant interactions with his nephew (more precisely half-nephew) in Nazi Germany. William travelled there after Hitler’s acquisition of power hoping (as his mother did before him) to exploit the family name and his connexions to his advantage in the Third Reich. The relationship between führer and scouser nephew however is a tempestuous one. William is unhappy with the cushy job Hitler arranges for him and the latter in turn becomes disaffected with his “loathsome nephew”. In the late 1930s William returns to England where he does an about-face, denouncing uncle Adolf. Next William moves to the US where, accompanied by his mother, he tours the country giving ‘insider’ lectures about his “madman uncle”. When America enters the world war William enlists in the navy and serves in the fight against Nazism. After the war mother and son change tack once again… changing their name to “Stuart-Houston” they turn their back on a life of publicity-seeking and disappear without trace into Long Island (NY) suburbia [‘Hitler’s Irish Nephew’, Dublin City Council, 19-Jun-2020, www.dublincity.ie].⇧ Hitler and his ‘renegade’ enemy nephew

PostScript: The fake Hitler jottings
The “Hitler in Liverpool” saga is a little reminiscent of a later, much more famous deception also purporting to shed new light on Hitler, the Hitler Diaries controversy of the early 1980s. The ‘discovery’ of hitherto unknown diaries of the führer was ultimately exposed as a hoax (perpetrated by a small-time, recidivist “con man” from East Germany)⊠, but only after West Germany’s Stern magazine and Murdoch’s The Sunday Times both got badly burned in their avaricious haste to try to capitalise big-time on the story scoop. The diary forgeries claimed a further victim in Hitler expert Prof Hugh Trevor-Roper whose reputation gets irreparably impaired by him prematurely authenticating the diaries as being the genuine Hitler article before a proper analysis of the documents is carried out.

_____________________________________________
⌖ ironically the Hitler house gets flattened in a German bombing raid during WWII

◘  Bridget takes the credit in her memoirs for suggesting to Hitler that he trim his moustache to the iconic style he is famous for, and for fostering his interest in astrology

◍ the circulation of fake photos showing Adolf Hitler standing in front of well-known Liverpool landmarks are part of the myth-making

⊠ described by handwriting expert Kenneth W Rendell as “bad forgeries but a great hoax”

Salzburger Vorstadt 15, 5280, Braunau am Inn: The Dilemma of what to do about Hitler’s Birthplace

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, International Relations, Memorabilia, National politics, Regional History

Adolf Hitler was born in the small Upper Austrian town Braunau am Inn on the border with the German state of Bavaria. The future German führer’s association with Braunau am Inn was only a fleeting one…after Adolf’s birth in the three-story yellow corner house—a gasthaus (guesthouse) which later was a gasthof (ale house)—the Hitler family only stayed in Braunau am Inn until 1892, when Hitler’s father’s work as a customs official took them to Passau, further down the Inn River border but on the German side. 

(Archival image: Stadtverein Braunau)

When the Nazis annexed the Austria state in 1938 the street of Hitler’s birth Salzburger Vorstadt was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße, in time for the führer’s one and only return to the town of his birth since he left at aged three –  passing swiftly through Braunau am Inn on the way to Vienna to celebrate the Anschluß. From this time Hitler’s birthplace became a cult centre attracting hordes of fawning devotes to Hitler, creating a pilgrimage site for the Nazi “true-believers”. At the end of WWII the town surrendered to the US Army and No 15 as part of the historic city centre was eventually granted heritage status➀. Rented since the Fifties by the Austrian republic, the building had provided makeshift premises for a public library, a bank, technical high school classes, a day centre for people with learning difficulties.

(Photo: The Guardian)

During the last decade the Austrian government, still renting Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its original family owner (Gerlinde Pommer), has kept it unoccupied, fearful that it was in danger of becoming a shrine for Neo-Nazi sympathisers (and their regular visits were also bringing anti-fascist protestors to the site as well) [‘Austria wants to appropriate Hitler’s birth house to stop it from becoming neo-Nazi shrine’, Daily Sabah, 09-Apr-2016, www.dailysabah.com]. The building has no identifiable signage on it but a concentration camp stone memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism stands in front (Hitler is not mentioned in the inscription).

Braunauers, saddled with the legacy of their quiet, backwater town being forever associated with the Nazi führer, have long held divided opinions over what to do with the property locals refer to as the “Hitler-haus”. Some wanted to demolish all trace of it, to replace it with a new purpose-built building (a refugee centre, a museum dedicated to the Austrian liberation from Nazi rule, etc), or to leave it as an empty, amorphous space (an option extensively criticised because it could infer that Austria was trying to bury a part of its dark past). With such heat generated over the controversial site, its not surprising that the government in Vienna too has vacillated over what to do with it➁ [Adolf Hitler’s first home set to be demolished for new buildings, The Guardian, 17-Oct-2016, www.theguardian.com].

(Artist’s impression of the renovation)

In 2016, the Austrian government, frustrated at the owner’s refusal to renovate the property to make it suitable to desirable tenants, or to negotiate the building’s future, indicated its intent to demolish it and rebuild anew. In 2017 after a court ruling in the government’s favour the building was expropriated…this year Vienna has flipped the 2016 decision, now deciding that the existing structure will stay in place but will undergo significant change to its outward appearance and be given a new life. The change of plan will see the renovated building becoming a police station for Braunau and the district (slated for completion at end 2022 at a cost of €2 million) [‘Adolf Hitler’s birthhouse to be remodeled by architects’, DW, 05-Jul-2020, www.dw.com]. Repurposing Salzburger Vorstadt 15 as a police station with a (1750 townhouse style) design that predates the period of Hitler’s residence, according to the authorities, has the intention to deter Neo-Nazis from congregating at the site in the future [‘Adolf Hitler’s Birthplace Will be Transformed Into a Police Station to ‘Neutralize’ Its Appeal as a Pilgrimage Site for Neo-Fascists’, (Kate Brown), Artnet News, 03-Jun-2020, www.artnet.com].

 

Postscript: The decision to radically makeover the four centuries-old building that was Hitler’s birthplace won’t please the cultural and heritage groups in Upper Austria, but that the building has not been obliterated leaving only a blank, anonymous space has been welcomed by others. As one architecture professor notes, the creation of ”a void into which any kind of meaning can be projected” does not necessarily solve the dilemma, witness the aftermath of the 1952 dynamiting of Berghof (Hitler’s Bavarian mountain hideaway). Despite there being nothing to see any more, tourists kept coming in droves, as did Neo-Nazis who left their calling cards [‘The house where Hitler was born could be demolished soon. Here’s why it should stay standing’, (Despina Stratigakos), Quartz, 31-Oct-2016, www.quartz.com].

(Photo: The Guardian)

_____________________________________________

➀ in the decades following the war, along with curious tourists, Austrian and German veterans, especially on Hitler’s birthday, made the trek to the house [‘Hitler’s Birth Home in Austria to Become a Police Station’, (Melissa Eddy), New York Times, 20-Nov-2019, www.nytimes.com]

➁ the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna was also under flack from the media and the public for the extravagance of paying Frau Pommer nearly €5,000 every month to rent a space it was putting to no practical use [‘Why the Austrian government won’t tear down Adolf Hitler’s birth home’, (Bianca Bharti), National Post, 05-Sep-2019, www.nationalpost.com]