Braunau in the spotlight: Hitler's birthplace embraces inclusion

“I was travelling with Germans recently, and when they heard where I’m from, they said: ‘Nothing good ever came from Braunau!’” recounts Monika Raschhofer at local paper Braunauer Warte am Inn to illustrate the pall Adolf Hitler casts over this small town on the border with Germany.

Coming from Braunau means being asked, and asked, about Hitler and the house at 15 Salzburger Vorstadt, where he was born on 20 April 1889. It is 80 years this month since Hitler made the most historically important of his rare visits to Braunau, passing through as he annexed Austria in 1938. He didn’t stop: his family had moved away when he was three and, with the Anschluss to take care of, he headed straight to nearby Linz, the city he considered home.

He wasn’t, however, blind to the lasting publicity potential of his birthplace: German soldiers were ordered to secure the brewery-cum-guesthouse at No 15, which was turned into a devotional attraction for the party faithful. In 1945, American troops reached Braunau just in time to stop a German detachment blowing it up.

Today, after decades of use as a centre for disabled people, the house stands unoccupied. A memorial stone on the pavement outside warns against the perils of fascism in the name of “millions of dead”. Future plans for it have provoked a continuing controversy which, like a black hole, sucks in all attention focused on the town from outside, an issue journalist Holger Fröhlich explores in depth in this piece for Brand Eins business magazine.

“Braunau residents are genuinely friendly,” says Fröhlich, “but you can tell they’ve had enough of being asked about the house.” Things visitors don’t ask about so much – and what locals would love to talk more about instead – are the beautiful natural surroundings on the banks of the Inn river, the fine late-gothic buildings, the impressive local Inn-Salzach-Bauweise architectural style, and the rich – if somewhat eccentric – assortment of non-Hitler-related historical facts.

Haunted by a house, beset by a border

“I consider it a sign of my destiny that fate assigned me Braunau am Inn as my place of birth, for this small town lies on the border between two German states whose reunification is felt, at least by the younger among us, to be a life’s work, the completion of which is worth striving for with any means necessary.” Yet before Braunau was made notorious by this prophetic mention in the first line of Mein Kampf, its most famous literary appearance was in War and Peace: in the second part of the first volume, Tolstoy’s narrative follows Marshal Kutusov to his headquarters in Braunau during the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon himself also came, spending a night on 30 October 1805.

A year earlier, Arthur Schopenhauer, aged 15, and his parents were detained for an entire week in the town, waiting for the correct visas to enter Austria-Hungary. Ah yes, the border: Braunau’s other burden.

Braunau in numbers

1 – number of mentions of Hitler on town’s official tourism website
240,000 – approximate number of Google results including both the town and Hitler
97% – percentage of Braunau residents surveyed who said they’d been asked about Hitler
17,120 – Braunau’s population
43,000 – number of overnight stays in 2017

History in 100 words

First mentioned in 788, Braunau received its charter in 1260. Its position (securing a crossing of the river Inn) made the town an attractive prize for both Bavaria and Austria, between whom it changed hands frequently, and for invaders. Oddly, given its inland location, it housed Austria-Hungary’s naval academy from 1915 until the empire’s demise in 1918, when it became Austrian. From 1938 to 1945, Austria was part of Nazi Germany. Since 1945, it has enjoyed peace and economic prosperity; the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Schengen border regime have been of considerable benefit to Braunau.

Braunau in sound and vision

One of the town’s most enduring images is that of medieval mayor Hans Staininger (or Steininger), whose beard was 3 ½ ells long – around two yards. He tended to keep this impressive piece of male grooming wrapped in a pouch, until one day he neglected to do so, tripped over it and broke his neck, thus supplying the town with an unlikely but enduring mascot: his likeness adorns several buildings and is a tourist brochure staple.

Because Hitler so seldom visited, images of him in Braunau are few in number. Instead, countless photos of the building in which he was born illustrate Braunau’s curse: postcards of the house (yes, they are available) tend to show it behind the stout and insistent form of the memorial stone – most likely to counter accusations of catering to thoughtless day-tourists or neo-Nazi pilgrims.

A visit by a far less controversial leader in 1903 was the occasion for Braunau’s first appearance in film; the footage of Emperor Franz-Josef is also the oldest surviving reel shot in Austria.

On the move

The bridge to Germany has always been important, both as a threat and as an escape. In the Beer war of 1908, following an unreasonable price hike, disgruntled Braunauers demonstratively went over the river to drink; 30 years later, when German soldiers came the other way, extinguishing Austrian democracy, they were feared by some as conquerors and hailed by others as heroes. Germans and Austrians had been brothers-in-arms in the first world war; Hitler was given special dispensation to fight in the Bavarian army. Uniting the two nations as part of his “Greater Germany” was a popular policy at the time.

Today, only rightwing extremists still dream of a “united German people”. Yet Braunau has never liked being a frontier outpost, and the benefits of the relaxed border regime are almost unquestioned here. Rather than being at the periphery of the Austrian economy, Braunau is now centrally placed between a booming region to the east, the Innviertel, and Bavaria, Germany’s economic powerhouse, to the west. The free movement of labour is particularly crucial. “It used to be Austrians commuting over the border, but now, with the economy here growing fast – and in view of the better benefits and earlier pensionable age in Austria – Germans are coming the other way,” says Raschhofer.

In late 2015, the surge in refugees crossing from Austria to Germany led to a sudden reinstatement of border checks at Simbach – with unwelcome consequences as refugees waited in tents to cross (or not). However, due to the strength of existing bonds between local government, police and emergency services, disruption to residents was minimised, refugees were given shelter and the blame game was left to national politicians. Nevertheless, the brief reappearance of an all-but-forgotten line has sharpened awareness of its presence – and of the need to cement ties across it. In devastating flash floods on the German side of the river in summer 2016, Braunau emergency services rushed to help, ignoring the lack of bureaucratic protocols for doing so.

What’s next for the city?

“We don’t see cross-border cooperation as a challenge, but rather as normality,” explains Elke Pflug of STS Braunau-Simbach, a new joint venture to promote the two towns as a European region. The first of its kind in Europe, the bi-national company will be launching a new twin-town brand in April. “Regardless of borders, Braunau-Simbach will now be acting as a single unit, presenting itself with a shared identity and history,” says Pflug, adding that the region’s high quality of life and booming economy give it a strong position.

With major suppliers to the German car industry such as Dräxlmeier, headquartered 30 miles away in Vilsbiburg (Germany), and smaller start-ups such as cereal-makers Müslibär looking to hire, Braunau is bucking the trend for towns its size: its population is growing. With this dynamism has come new cultural events, such as a short film festival in September and a hip-hop weekend, premiering this summer.

Closer zoom

The local paper, Braunauer Warte am Inn, is at OÖNachrichten, while STS Braunau-Simbach lists local events. Florian Kontako’s website Braunau History offers in-depth historical information on Hitler, Braunau and the Nazi years, as well as updates on the current status of the house, in German, English and Hebrew.

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