The town officials in Braunau, Austria have a bit of a problem. They have a pretty Renaissance home with “location, location, location” but also history, history, history. The picturesque corner home happens to be the birthplace of Adolph Hitler and the town is exploring ways to preventing it from continuing to draw neo-Nazis as a type of fascist heritage tour.
The town has reportedly been in a continuing dispute with the woman who owns the house over its use. Officials have complained about a steady stream of visitors who treat the place like a shrine to the dead mass murderer.
Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said his ministry is looking into expropriating the house if the owner refuses to sell it to the government. (The Interior Ministry has rented the house for years to sublet to various charity organizations but it has fallen into disrepair). The owner has refused to allow another charity to be moved into the home because of the proposed renovations planned for the house.
Notably, a Russian parliamentarian wanted to buy the house to raze it but the Renaissance-era building is under historical protection.
The use of eminent domain is interesting in this context. While obviously we cannot apply the same standards used under the Fifth Amendment in the United States, historical homes can be acquired for such a purpose and an owner forced to accept the government compensation. It is rare however to see such a use to prevent an owner from using property in a way that the government dislikes. In this case, the owner insists that she is trying to preserve the house rather than allow the government to destroy it through modern renovations. So the eminent domain is not being used to preserve a historical site as much as to guarantee that it not be used as an attraction due to its historical significance.
Of course, our own takings jurisprudence has experienced some relatively recent upheavals. Many of us expressed outrage at the actions of the city leaders of New London, Connecticut when they used eminent domain to seize the property of citizens against their will in order to give it to the Pfizer corporation. This anger grew with the inexplicable decision of the Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London to uphold the abusive action. Now, after all of the pain the city caused its own residents and $80 million it spent to buy and bulldoze the property, Pfizer later announced that it was closing the facility — leaving the city worse off than when it began. For prior testimony on the Kelo decision, click here.
The concept of eminent domain to deter the use of a home as a historical site is something new. The home appears protected due to its age rather than its most famous occupant. It appears that the government is likely to force the sale and the renovations as planned.
How is the headline of this post still not corrected?!
Germany is NOT the same as Austria.
And Americans wonder why the rest of the World thinks they’re stupid …
Inga I just looked that up and He is known as the Austrian Ministry of the Interior
Austrian Ministry of the Interior
Government Agency
The Federal Ministry of the Interior, abbreviated: BM.I, is the interior ministry of the Austrian Federal Government. Its headquarters are at the Palais Modena in Vienna. The current Minister for the Interior is Johanna Mikl-Leitner. Wikipedia
Founded: 1848
The right is not nearly as paranoid about Soros as the Left is constantly bleating about the Koch brothers who give money to the Republican party. There are lots of other people who own Oil Wells and are into Graft like the Clintons and Bernie Madoff.
That Mayor looks like a Hungarian version of Mussolini.
madams12,
You’re not kidding that is chilling. So Hungary wants a right wing fascist country and is reminiscent for pre WW2 Germany? Sick. It’s interesting to hear them so paranoid about George Soros, just the right wingers here in this country. Goes to show you that all the right wing blather about Hilter being a leftist is pure bullsh!t. Fascism was historically comprised of extreme rightists and now we see this playing out again in Hungary.
Dear Prof Turley; Perhaps you can help bring this chilling documentary by Bennie Brunner to your campus. I just viewed it this afternoon and despite daily reviewing of European news reports and more, these politicians have been well hidden…in Hungary….but here is a link to Brunner’s Nov 2014 latest film:
which reveals how history repeats…..rise of fascists in Hungary.
Here’s a revealing video for supporters of the status quo:
gw’s grandpa’s bank was closed by the feds for violating the “trading with the enemy” act. That enemy was Nazi Germany.
Many of the 1% believed the U.S. should have fought WITH Hitler, against the USSR. Those nice 1% altruists (sic) wanted the plot to overthrow the Federal government and replace FDR with a dictator — included Prescott bush…whose reward was his election to the U.S. senate. Fine family.
BarkinDog————————————-You’re a sick puppy!
William Berry and johanssonmel
I have no notion resting on any existence of absolute positions. Those against the death penalty are perhaps the most absolute. As someone for it, I feel that it is in a judicious need of attention. I would hang Hitler, Ted Bundy, and others. I see no reason to torture and display their pain.
If there is a god or if there is no god, regardless we are the stewards of ourselves. To govern, and dispense results to those that are simply too broken to participate in society is on us whether we wish the responsibility or not. We can cede that responsibility to some fantastical deity or take on the work ourselves. Setting ourselves above our imperfections may feel good when one stands against the death penalty. However, we sign the death warrants of countless thousands each day in the name of convenience, wealth, and other privileges.
It’s easy to look to religion or any other absolute ideal. It’s not so easy to accept the fact that we are by nature flawed as well as wonderful and have been on a winning streak so far in governing ourselves. For me that means a noose for Hitler and an increasing scrutiny of the justice system, building codes, education system, etc. Arguing against the death penalty is a convenient flag to fly.
I don’t think that Germany will be able to exercise imminent domain in Austria. There may not be borders anymore because of the EU and they may speak the same language but it would be like Mexico trying to use their Taking Clause to take to take the Alamo. I would point out too that some of those who live in Austria may remember Hitler with the same fondness that Texans have for the Alamo. Hitler’s birth was before Springtime For Hitler in Germany. And before Autumn for Poland and France. If I go to that town I might want to rent a double room for one night. I don’t care who slept there in years past. Ich Mochter ein dooble zimmer fur ein nach. And I don’t care if Hitler slept here.
@isaac: I don’t want to start a death-penalty flame war here, just to state my own position. If you asked me that question, my answer would be “Yes, I would.” That would also be my answer if you asked about Ted Bundy, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or any number of other monsters.
My opposition to the death penalty is not because those people didn’t richly deserve to die; they certainly did. I oppose it because I feel that imposition of it brutalizes US as a society.
To extend the argument a bit, I could make a case that any of those three men deserved to be drawn and quartered, tortured to death, etc. But to have done so would have been toxic to us, the deliverers of that treatment.
I also think it’s better to execute no one than to run the risk of executing one single innocent person–and the exculpatory results of current DNA testing of evidence against convicted criminals should give us serious pause.
Just my $.02. YMMV.
The Koch Brothers will buy this house and turn it into a maternity ward. Future Farmers of America and all that.
@Isaac:
Where your death penalty argument dissolves is in your mistaken notion that there can be an “absolute position” against anything.
A question I always ask someone who is against the death penalty is, “If Hitler was to have been captured, would you spare his life?” This is where the absolute position against the death penalty dissolves.
An individual has rights and the owner(s) of Hitler’s home might have had rights that kept the birthplace of one of the most evil people in the history of mankind standing, however, tearing it down, after paying appropriate compensation and replacing it with a fitting replacement trumps anyone’s individual rights.
There should be an exemption from time to time from rights and freedoms of this nature. The treatment of the footprints of the World Trade Center buildings that were destroyed is perhaps the model.
I’m surprised the house is still standing after all these years.
I would have thought it rightly bulldozed by 1946.
It’s more than age or architecture keeping it from destruction.
“Pfizer later announced that it was closing the facility — leaving the city worse off than when it began. ”
That decision was when I realized the Constitution was functionally dead.
It can now be twisted to mean anything you want it to say, even magically redefining a penalty into a tax.
I often wonder what the point is of teaching Constitutional law in law school any longer. It’s useless in practical terms, and anachronistic. The only useful precedent is Foucault and postmodern thought.
Honored only in the breach.
News flash, JT: Germany ≠ Austria, just as the USA ≠ Canada.
More interesting a problem in Europe: Town councils dominated by Muslims in Belgium and the Netherlands are now destroying centuries old downtown buildings in historic villages, tearing down the buildings, to build taxpayer-subsidized modern ugly flats to incoming Muslim immigrants.
Muslims are destroying Western history, culture and our civilization. But hey, that’s doesn’t fit the narrative of the liberal media, so it gets ignored.
There is an parallel here in the United States:
George Lincoln Rockwell, the Commander of the American Nazi Party, was assassinated in front of a shopping center on Wilson Blvd in Arlington, VA.
Occasionally in the years afterward, neo-Nazi types would hold a annual vigil at that location, which I have read was occasionally marked at the location where he died with a swastika in the asphalt.
Over time, as could be expected, the importance of this place waned as time diminished his significance and numbers of his followers. Perhaps eventually it will be forgotten with time.
It seems likely this birthplace of Hitler, though certainly more prominent and historical, could see its reduction in time. But by the local government whipping up controversies helps to forestall its fall into oblivion.
Germany, or Austria? Beware the Anschluss!