Austria’s Top Court Upholds Seizing of Hitler’s Birthplace<br />Wolfgang Sablatnig said that The owner argued that there are other possibilities to make sure there is no misuse of the house,<br />The court is Austria’s highest body for constitutional matters,<br />but Mr. Sablatnig said Ms. Pommer could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights or to an Austrian court with the aim of increasing her compensation for the home.<br />Seizing the building enables the government to prevent it from becoming a site for neo-Nazi activity, the court said in its statement, after<br />hearing arguments following its decision to take ownership from Gerlinde Pommer, the longtime owner who had refused to sell the property.<br />The court said in a statement that a law passed late last year allowing the expropriation of the three-story building was "in the public interest, commensurate<br />and not without compensation, and therefore not unconstitutional." Austrian law prohibits the promotion of Nazi ideology, including Holocaust denial or the display of swastikas.<br />By DAVID SHIMERJUNE 30, 2017<br />BERLIN — The Austrian Constitutional Court said on Friday<br />that the government had acted legally when it seized the apartment complex in which Hitler was born, the latest and probably the last chapter in the long battle for ownership of the Nazi dictator’s birthplace.<br />Gerhard Lebitsch, the lawyer representing Ms. Pommer, argued<br />that expropriation should not have been allowed for reasons of public interest, as the home’s appeal as a pilgrimage site would remain even if the property changed hands.<br />Mr. Lebitsch said that if the government were allowed to seize the property, compensation<br />for Ms. Pommer should be determined by a court and based on current market valuations.
