A constitutional court official has confirmed a lawsuit against the Austrian state for the seizure of the dictator's birthplace. The owner is arguing that the expropriation failed to meet 'standard legal requirements.'
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Gerlinde Pommer, the former owner of Adolf Hitler's birthplace, launched a legal challenge against the Austrian government for expropriating the building, a court official said on Tuesday.
"We received a claim by the owner. This is about the owner contesting the constitutional validity of the law," said a spokesman for the constitutional court.
The men who led Nazi Germany
The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?
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Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.
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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)
As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
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Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.
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Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.
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In December, Austria's parliament voted in favor of seizing the property in the northern town of Branau in a bid to end a long-standing dispute with the owner.
Pommer had rented the building to the interior ministry since 1972, but the agreement collapsed after the government pushed for much-needed renovations.
In 2011, Pommer rejected a proposal for the renovations and abruptly ended the rental agreement.
Parliament voted in favor of the expropriation to effectively prevent the building from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.
'Never again'
However, Pommer's lawyer argued that the targeted legislation failed to meet the legal criteria for seizure.
"To put it bluntly, the standard legal requirements for an expropriation are missing," Pommer's lawyer Gerhard Lebitsch told Austrian daily "Kurier."
Hilter was born on April 20, 1889. He was responsible for leading Nazi Germany and perpetrating the Holocaust, which left up to 11 million Jews, Poles, Slavs, Romani and members of other ethnic and social groups dead.
Anti-fascist protesters organize a rally each year on Hitler's birthday next to a memorial stone that reads: "For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism, millions of dead warn."
