Location: Upper Austria Map
Braunau am Inn is a town in Upper Austria. The district town of the district of the same name is located opposite Simbach am Inn on the right bank of the Inn, which forms the German-Austrian border here. With the Peace of Teschen in 1779 she came from the Electorate of Baiern (Kurpfalzbaiern) together with the Innviertel to Austria, where she stayed with brief interruptions. It became known through the execution of the bookseller Johann Philipp Palm at the behest of Napoleon I in 1806. It is less well remembered as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler; a memorial from 1989 reminds of this.
Braunau am Inn or Braunau on Inn is a large Austrian town that stands on the banks of the Inn River and its confluence with the Salzach. It stands on a historic border of Austria and a state of Bavaria (today part of Germany). Early records indicate that it was probably found around the Abbey of Ranshofen that was first mentioned in 788. Braunau am Inn was first mentioned in 1120 deed, however in the 13th century it became an important fortified town with large salt mine technology that was thriving and giving its residents work.
Catholic parish church of St. Stephan with its 99 m
high tower and largely preserved Gothic and Baroque furnishings
Citizens Hospital Church of the Holy Spirit
Ranshofen Abbey in
the suburb of the same name
City gate tower
Hitler's Birth Place or Geburthaus as it is locally known is a home where Adolf Hitler, future Nazi leader of the Third Reich (1933- 45), was born on April 20, 1889. Hitler family spent only few first few years of his life here before moving to Linz. It is easily recognized by a large bouldee that stands outside. It was brought here from a quarry at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp and bear an inscription in German: "For peace, freedom/ and democracy/ never again fascism/ millions of dead admonish" (Fur Frieden, Freiheit und Demokratie, nie wieder Faschismus, Millionen Tote mahnen).
By plane
Munich Airport (IATA Code: MUC, travel time on the
motorway approx. 60 minutes) and Linz Airport (IATA Code: LNZ) are
easily accessible by car, bus and train. The somewhat closer
Salzburg Airport W. A. Mozart (IATA code: SZG, ICAO code: LOWS)
can also be considered.
By train
Braunau is located on the
Munich - Linz railway line, which has long been served by regional
trains (travel time 2 hours 14 minutes, change in Mühldorf am Inn
and Simbach).
By bus
Flixbus offers direct connections to
Vienna and Munich.
By street
From Germany it is best to
take the federal highway 3 to the Pocking exit, then continue on the
federal highway B12, which is currently being expanded to the
federal highway 94, to Simbach am Inn and there over the Inn to
Braunau. From the direction of Vienna and Linz via the Innkreis
Autobahn A8 to the Ried junction and further on country roads that
form the Europastraße 552 after the planning of the Innviertel
expressway S 9 was abandoned. The shortest route from Munich is via
the 94 federal motorway, which has not yet been fully completed, to
Simbach and there across the border. From Switzerland via Munich.
From Salzburg via Lamprechtshausener Straße B156.
By boat
The previously quite significant shipping on the Inn was
discontinued with the beginning of the railway age.
Between the 8th and the 20th century
Rantersdorf (Ranshofen) was
first mentioned in documents in 788 and Braunau was first mentioned in
documents in 1120 under the name Prounaw. For centuries, Braunau, like
the entire Innviertel, belonged to Bavaria. In 1260 Braunau received
city rights. During the great city fire in 1380, the wooden city from
the time it was founded, including the Inn Bridge, was completely
destroyed.
The parish church of St. Stephen was built in the
middle of the 15th century, and in 1492 the foundation stone was laid
for the 87-meter-high tower of the St. Stephen's Church. In 1504 the
city was bombarded by the Palatinate and occupied for a short time.
During the Bavarian peasant and popular uprising of 1705/1706
(Sendlinger Murder Christmas), Braunau was briefly besieged by Austrian
troops of the imperial army under the supreme command of the Habsburg
Emperor Joseph I. However, the troops had to surrender to the insurgents
on December 16, 1705. Braunau and Burghausen thus became the military
and political centers of the uprising. The first democratic entity met
in the city, the State Defense Congress (Braunau Parliament). In the
course of the War of the Austrian Succession, Braunau was again besieged
by the imperial army in 1743. In 1779, in the Peace Treaty of Teschen,
the Innviertel, which belonged to the Electorate of Bavaria, was finally
awarded to the Habsburgs.
The Nuremberg bookseller Johann Philipp
Palm was executed in Braunau in 1806 on Napoleon's orders for high
treason. Between 1810 and 1816, the Innviertel once again belonged to
the Kingdom of Bavaria. On March 28, 1874, a fire that broke out in a
brewery on the town square destroyed more than 70 houses.
In
Braunau garrisoned the Galician Feldjäger Battalion No. 4. A prison camp
was set up along the Mattig at the beginning of the war. Up to 15,000
prisoners of war were housed in 120 barracks. A year later, the Naval
Academy was moved from Pula to the Salzburgertor barracks (now
Bucheder). The Braunau refugee camp was set up in the district of Laab,
in which refugees from Trentino (then: Welschtirol) were accommodated.
After Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich in
March 1938, the previously independent municipality of Ranshofen was
incorporated into the municipality of Braunau am Inn on October 15,
1938. On May 2, 1945, troops from the 13th US Armored Division marched
over a pontoon bridge to Braunau and occupied the city area.
After the end of World War II, Braunau belonged to the US occupation
zone in occupied post-war Austria. The US military administration set up
a DP camp.
Braunau as Hitler's birthplace
The dictator Adolf
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau. The family moved to Passau
three years later. At the end of the war in 1945, American soldiers
occupied the birth house and prevented fanatical Nazi supporters from
blowing it up. Public attention to Braunau's Nazi past only began
hesitantly at the end of the 1980s, when in April 1989 - two weeks
before Hitler's 100th birthday - at the instigation of Mayor Gerhard
Skibas, a memorial stone against war and fascism was erected on public
land in front of the house where he was born became. The stone comes
from the quarry of the former Mauthausen concentration camp. Since this
initiative, several projects have been launched that deal with the Nazi
past and serve as a reminder and commemoration. In 1992, Andreas
Maislinger and Erich Marschall started the Braunau Contemporary History
Days, organized by the Association for Contemporary History from 1993,
an initiative that dealt with contemporary history and increasingly
regional history. The "Braunau sets a sign" initiative launched by the
editor-in-chief of the Braunauer Rundschau Reinhold Klika in February
2000 called for the purchase of Hitler's birthplace and the
establishment of an international meeting place. In 2006, the hospital
park was renamed in the name of Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious
objector who was executed by the National Socialists, and the German
artist Gunter Demnig laid several such memorial stones for Nazi victims
in Braunau am Inn as part of his Europe-wide memorial project Stumbling
Stones place (see list of stumbling blocks in the district of Braunau am
Inn).
In 2007, the municipality, together with the Association for
Contemporary History, awarded the Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer Prize for
the first time, which was named after Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer, a
diplomat, constitutional lawyer and emigrant from Ranshofen near Braunau
am Inn, as well as an adviser to the US government during the Second
World War became. Since then, the prize has been awarded to Austrians
abroad who are or have been particularly committed to their home country
of Austria.
On July 7, 2011, the Braunau municipal council
posthumously revoked Hitler's honorary citizenship and homeland rights,
which had been awarded by the then independent municipality of Ranshofen
in the 1930s.
In the early 1950s, the house where Adolf Hitler
was born was returned by the Republic of Austria to the former owners,
who had bought the house during the annexation of Austria, as part of a
restitution settlement. In 2012, a Russian Duma deputy wanted to buy the
house and have it demolished. After unsuccessful negotiations, the
Interior Ministry considered expropriating the owner in 2016 in order to
gain control over the use of the building. In an interview in October
2016, the Austrian Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Sobotka, stated
that the house would then be demolished and a new building erected.
Sobotka was referring to an alleged recommendation by a commission of
historians. The mayor of Braunau, Hannes Waidbacher, who is a member of
this commission, said that the recommendation of the commission
contained "nothing about demolition", but only a "profound architectural
redesign" which would permanently improve the "recognition value and
symbolic power of the building should stop”. The head of the Upper
Austrian State Archives, Cornelia Sulzbacher, was also surprised by the
minister's statements and also said that there was only a recommendation
to change the appearance so that the house could no longer be used as a
symbol.