The Austrian government says it plans to demolish the house where Adolf Hitler was born and erect a new building in its place in efforts to erase any link to the Nazi dictator's birthplace.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said Monday that "a thorough architectural re-modelling is necessary to permanently prevent the recognition and the symbolism of the building".
Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said that effectively means the house, in the western town of Braunau, will replaced by a new structure.
Sobotka says he wants to ensure that any association with Hitler be eliminated at the site, now an occasional place of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.
The owner had repeatedly refused to sell the building. It was unclear whether she changed her mind or if the government acted on plans to dispossess her.
