The building in which Adolf Hitler was born will be turned into a museum memorializing the crimes and victims of the German dictator, under a plan currently being discussed by Austrian authorities. 
 
 The former pub Gasthaus zur Pommer in the small town of Braunau-Am-Inn has been empty for three years, according to an article in the London-based Mail Online. The local municipality pays the owners 4,000 euros a month to prevent it from falling into the hands of neo-Nazis. 
 
 
 
 When Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, the building was an inn. Alois and Klara Hitler moved out of the inn shortly after Adolf's birth, but the building has remained a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis from across Europe. 
 
 Since the end of World War II, the building has been variously a bank, workshop, library, school and home for the disabled 
 
 Now, the Austrian interior ministry is supporting a private initiative by historian Andreas Maislinger to renovate the former pub into a "House of Responsibility." 
 
 Backing the Maislinger project is Oscar winning, Jewish-born Hollywood producer Branko Lustig, who has pledged big money from movie industry players for the museum. 
 
 Other mooted plans for the building, which included demolition and turning it into luxury flats, have failed to gain traction. "This combines to make it increasingly difficult for opponents to raise further objections against the idea of a museum," wrote German magazine Bild. 
 
 Supporters of the museum hope that it will slowly strip the house of its appeal for extremists who come every year on Hitler's birthday to worship outside the building. This year, a remembrance stone quarried from the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where thousands were killed, was defaced with paint. 
 
 "The house will only lose its appeal for such people when it stands as a clear and just symbol against Nazism," said Maislinger. 
 
 Mayor Johanne Waidbacher said: 'It is a difficult subject. But the idea in principle of a House of Responsibility is, in itself, not a bad one.' 
 
 The building was bought by Nazi party secretary Martin Bormann after the 1938 Anschluss, in which Austria was absorbed into Greater Germany and converted into a Nazi cultural center. Hitler himself visited only once while in power. 
 
 The only remaining Nazi-era relic is an iron gate outside the building bearing Bormann's initials. 
 
 A final decision on what to do with the building is expected within weeks. ||||| The building, for the moment, is empty. Most recently, it was used as a workshop operated by a charitable organization for disabled people. But the group moved out a year ago and since then little has happened at Salzburger Vorstadt 15. 
 
 This week, though, the site has found itself at the center of a heated debate over its future. The structure, after all, is located in the tiny town of Braunau am Inn on Austria's border with Germany. And it is the place where Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. 
 
 The back-and-forth was triggered last week when the mayor of Braunau, Johannes Waidbacher, hinted in an interview with the Austrian daily Der Standard that he was in favor of using the property merely as a residential building. "It would certainly be easier to transform the site into apartments," he said. 
 
 Waidbacher didn't stop there. Saying he was "open to many ideas," he added: "One should also ask the question in general as to whether a further Holocaust memorial makes sense when there are already so many in the area. We are stigmatized anyway. Hitler spent the first three years of his life here in our city. And it most certainly was not the most formative phase of his life. As such, we in Braunau are not prepared to take responsibility for the outbreak of World War II." 
 
 Waidbacher's comments, perhaps unsurprisingly, were not universally well received. Local politicians have since demanded that the site be transformed into some kind of memorial and the reaction from overseas has also made it clear that simply ignoring the building's history would not go over well. 
 
 'A Difficult Topic' 
 
 Indeed, the backlash has been such that Waidbacher has since backed away from his preference for transforming the building into an apartment complex. He told the German daily Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung this week that "there will ultimately be a proposal that everyone involved can accept," allowing that it was "a difficult topic." 
 
 For years, it was an easy topic to ignore. The building, privately owned, is rented by the Austrian Interior Ministry and sublet to the town of Braunau. Given Hitler's systematic murder of handicapped people during the Third Reich, many felt it appropriate that his birthplace be devoted to helping the disabled. There seemed little need to launch a discussion about transforming the three-story structure into a museum. 
 
 Now that the facility has moved out, however, many are turning to a proposal made several years ago by local historian Andreas Maislinger, who helped found the Braunau Society for Contemporary History in 1993. In 2000, he submitted a plan to establish what he calls a "House of Responsibility" at the site. He envisions a historical exhibition in combination with a social services facility and projects to promote intercultural understanding. 
 
 "The mayor says he supports the idea, but he has been a bit hesitant," says Maislinger. "It's normal that people in Braunau don't want to think the entire time about Hitler. If you look at Berlin, people there don't always think about the fact that Hitler made his decisions there. It's a big city. But with smaller cities, like Dachau for example, it is more difficult. And Braunau is even smaller than that. One can understand it, but still, there are a lot of people that agree with my concept." 
 
 'Something Has to Happen' 
 
 And the building, part of a collection of older structures which have enjoyed protected status since the early 20th century, isn't going anywhere, despite periodic proposals to simply tear it down and be done with it. 
 
 At the time of Hitler's birth, it was a boarding house, and his father Alois and mother Klara didn't stay there for long, moving to Passau in 1892. Following the German annexation of Austria, however, the Nazi party took an interest in the building. In 1938, Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann bought it in the hopes of eventually turning it into a monument on par with the birthplaces of Stalin and Mussolini. After the war, the US wanted to turn it into an exhibition on the horrors of the Holocaust. 
 
 But in 1952, the building was bought back by the family that had sold it in 1938 -- and that remains the primary hurdle to any plans for its future today. The family, simply put, has shown no interest in selling the property. Indeed, as Maislinger admits, the current debate sparked by the mayor remains academic until the building changes hands. 
 
 Maislinger, though, is optimistic that it ultimately will. "Something has to happen with the house. It can't just sit there empty for the next 10 years," he says. "Owning property is also a responsibility. And if there is a historical connection, no matter what kind of connection it might be, that responsibility is even larger." ||||| Austria's interior ministry is appealing to other ministries to take over Hitler's birthplace in Braunau, amid a years-long debate over what should become of the building. 
 
 The interior ministry has rented the large pale yellow house where the future Nazi leader was born since 1972 and variously sublet it to a technical institute and an aid organisation. 
 
 But it has stood empty since 2011 and the 4,600-euro ($5,820) monthly rent has been burning a hole in the ministry's pocket. 
 
 The ministry is now contacting other Austrian ministries to see if they can use the 800-square-metre (8,610-square-foot) space and is hoping for a reply "by the end of the year", an official said Tuesday. 
 
 The fate of the house has been a matter of debate for years amid fears that it could be used as a meeting point for Hitler sympathisers or fascist and neo-Nazi groups. 
 
 To prevent this, the rental contract stipulates that it must be used for a social or educational purpose and not as a museum. 
 
 The owner however continues to have a say in who occupies the building and recently quashed a proposal to install an adult learning centre or another aid organisation on the premises, for reasons unknown. 
 
 Adolf Hitler was born at the address Vorstadt 15 in Braunau, near the German border, on April 20, 1889 but only lived there for a short while before he and his family moved away.
– A home's history can really make or break its marketability. Such is the case with what would otherwise be prime real estate in Austria's Braunau am Inn, a town near the German border. This house marks the spot where Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889; it was an inn at the time, and though he only lived there briefly as a baby before his family relocated, the 8,610-square-foot building that rents for nearly $5,820 a month has gone unoccupied since 2011, much to the displeasure of the country's interior ministry. The ministry has rented it from the home's private owner (Haaretz reports it does so to keep it from being used by neo-Nazis) since 1972 and sublets it, reports AFP. Hitler's personal secretary, Martin Bormann, purchased the building in 1938 in the hopes of eventually fashioning it into a monument to the führer, der Spiegel reports. A gate marked with Bormann's initials is the final lingering Nazi-era item present at the location, which Hitler visited a single time during his reign. Neo-Nazis gather there much more frequently: each year on Hitler's birthday. The owners who sold the building in 1938 repurchased it in 1952, with the interior ministry stepping in two decades later. The Local reports that the owner has apparently been quite particular, quashing potential plans that would see a community college or migrant center occupy it. The owner has apparently also nixed a proposal by historian Andreas Maislinger that it be made into a "House of Responsibility." AFP reports the ministry is trying to hand off the location to another ministry and is hopeful it will get a response by year's end. (Meanwhile, a new report says Hitler took crystal meth.)