While the abbey of Ranshofen was already mentioned in the course of the deposition of
Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria, in 788, Braunau itself first appeared as
Prounaw in an 1120 deed. The
Innviertel region then was part of the
Duchy of Bavaria. Braunau received
town rights in 1260, one of the first in present-day Austria. It became a fortress town and important trading route junction, dealing with the
salt trade and with ship traffic on the Inn. As a major Bavarian settlement, the town played an outstanding role in the
Bavarian uprising against the Austrian occupation during the
War of the Spanish Succession, when it hosted the
Braunau Parliament, a provisional Bavarian Parliament in 1705 headed by
Georg Sebastian Plinganser (born 16 April 1680 in
Pfarrkirchen; died 7 May 1738 in
Augsburg). The
Late Gothic Braunau parish church dedicated to
Saint Stephen was built from 1439 to 1466, replacing an older chapel. Its high spire is one of the tallest in Austria and the town's landmark. The remains of the fortress today house a museum and parts of the former town walls can still be seen. Another museum is housed in refurbished 18th-century public baths. Within 40 years, Braunau changed hands three times: In 1779, it became an Austrian town under the terms of the
Treaty of Teschen, which settled the
War of the Bavarian Succession. During the
War of the Third Coalition, the
Nuremberg bookseller
Johann Philipp Palm was arrested at the Braunau fortress by
French troops and executed for high treason by personal order of
Napoleon in 1806. Under the terms of the 1809
Treaty of Schönbrunn, Braunau became Bavarian again in 1809. In 1816, during reorganisation of Europe after the
Napoleonic Wars at the
Congress of Vienna, the
Kingdom of Bavaria ceded the town to the
Austrian Empire and was compensated by the gain of
Aschaffenburg. Braunau has been Austrian ever since. Braunau remained a
garrison town of the
Austro-Hungarian Army and became the site of a large
prisoner of war camp in the
First World War. During the war, the
Imperial and Royal Naval Academy was moved from
Fiume to
Schloss Hof and then to Braunau am Inn. After the Nazi '''' to
Nazi Germany in 1938, Ranshofen, which at that time had one of Austria's largest aluminium plants, was incorporated into Braunau. Since 1992, the annual
Braunau Contemporary History Days initiated by
Andreas Maislinger concentrate on accounting for the past; the town's administration awards the
Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer Award, named after native diplomat
Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer, to honour committed Austrians abroad. Several '''' were installed in Braunau by the artist
Gunter Demnig.
Adolf Hitler's birthplace for victims of
fascism Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, where his father
Alois Hitler had served as a customs official since 1875. He and his family left Braunau and moved to
Passau in 1892. Hitler was born in an apartment building recorded at Salzburger Vorstadt 15 in an 1890 register, which housed a
craft brewery and several rental flats, one of them occupied by Alois Hitler, his third wife
Klara, their son Adolf, and his elder half-siblings
Alois Jr. and
Angela. In April 1934, the Passau '
published a commemorative article, marking the room where Hitler was born. In April 1938, Braunau renamed to ', and its town plaza to '''', but the building itself remained a , with a sign advertising beer on tap. That same year, Hitler's personal secretary
Martin Bormann purchased the house on behalf of the
Nazi Party; it then became a cult centre containing an art gallery and a public library. At the end of
World War II in 1945, American soldiers
occupied the house and prevented Nazi supporters from dynamiting it. It was then used to temporarily house a documentary exhibition on
Nazi concentration camps. In 1952, it was repurchased by its former owners, the Pommer family, In the process of coming to terms with the history of
Austria in the time of National Socialism, the mayor of Braunau,
Gerhard Skiba, presided over the installation of the
Hitler birthplace memorial stone in front of the building. The installation took place in April 1989, two weeks before Hitler's centenary. The stone, commemorating the victims of World War II, is made of granite from the quarry at the
Mauthausen concentration camp. It states, ''
("For peace, freedom and democracy; never again fascism: millions of dead remind us"). The memorial also serves as a disincentive to "Hitler tourism". In 2011, the Lebenhilfe'' moved out and the Ministry requested permission to renovate the property. But Gerlinde Pommer, the then current owner, refused and she also refused the offer by the Ministry to purchase the house. In 2016, the Ministry pressed for the expropriation of the house by the government. This required a special law in the Austrian parliament. On 18 October 2016, Austrian
interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka said the building would instead be changed to the extent that it "will not be recognizable." The contract was awarded to the architectural firm Marte Marte Architekten. The house was to be restored to its 1790 configuration with a double-gable roof, the removal of all of the 1938 Nazi additions, and a whitewash of the front. Restoring the house was delayed by the
COVID-19 pandemic, and costs considerably increased. In 2023 it was announced that, in addition to the police station, the house would be used as a training center. The restoration is expected to be completed in 2025, with the police station and district police headquarters able to move in in 2026. ==Demographics==