Austria's top court on Friday upheld a law that allowed the compulsory purchase of the house in which Adolf Hitler was born, saying it was necessary to stop the property being used to glorify Nazi ideology. Gerlinde Pommer-Angloher, the former owner of the house, had filed a legal challenge to the constitutional court in January, saying the government's expropriation of the three-storey house in Braunau am Inn on Austria's border with Germany was unconstitutional. The former owner's lawyer said he expected Pommer-Angloher to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. "We will make sure that this building will never fall into the wrong hands to become a site of pilgrimage for those stuck in the past," he said. Austria plans to refurbish the house and convert it into a centre for people with learning disabilities, in a bid to break its historic connection to Hitler's ideology.

Source: dna June 30, 2017 11:26 UTC