
The dormitory at 27 Meldemannstraße in
Brigittenau district,
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
, Austria was a public
dormitory
A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm), also known as a hall of residence, a residence hall (often abbreviated to halls), or a hostel, is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential qu ...
for men (''Männerwohnheim'') from 1905 to 2003. It is a subject of public interest primarily because from 1910 to 1913, it was the residence of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
, who later became dictator of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
.
The dormitory in the 1900s

The construction of the dormitory in 1905 was financed by a private charitable foundation which aimed at reducing the number of ''Bettgeher'' ("bed-goers") in Vienna. ''Bettgeher'' were poor people with
no fixed abode, often shift workers from the countryside, who paid a small fee for the use of a bed in a private house for a few hours during the day. In 1910, they numbered 80,000 in Vienna, and were regarded as a threat to the morals of the host family.
The six-story dormitory was among the most modern facilities of its kind when it opened in 1905. It was lit by
gas lamps and light bulbs, and heated by a modern steam heater. On the ground floor, it featured a mess hall, a reading room with daily newspapers and a library. The underground floor held cleaning rooms, a luggage room, a bicycle storage room as well as a
shoemaker
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear.
Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand, often by groups of shoemakers, or '' cordwainers'' (sometimes misidentified as cobblers, who repair shoes rather than make them). In the 18th cen ...
's and a
tailor
A tailor is a person who makes or alters clothing, particularly in men's clothing. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the thirteenth century.
History
Although clothing construction goes back to prehistory, there is evidence of ...
's workshop. Moreover, the dormitory included a sick room with a resident physician, a disinfection chamber for the
de-lousing of new residents,
washroom
A bathroom is a room in which people wash their bodies or parts thereof. It can contain one or more of the following plumbing fixtures: a shower, a bathtub, a bidet, and a sink (also known as a wash basin in the United Kingdom). A toilet is al ...
s, a shaving room and a bathroom with sixteen showers and four bathtubs.
The actual sleeping quarters were located on the upper four stories. Each of the up to 544 residents had a small cabin of his own, measuring by . The cabins, which were unlocked each evening at 8 p.m. and had to be vacated by 9 a.m., had a lockable door, a lightbulb, a bed, a small table, a clothes-hanger and a mirror.
The weekly rent was 2.50
crowns, about as much as a ''Bettgeher'' would have to pay for the use of a bed, which made it very affordable for unskilled labourers or journeyman artisans with an annual income of about 1,000 crowns. When the dormitory opened, the Viennese press praised it as "fantastical quarters, a paradise on earth" and as a "wonder of elegance and inexpensiveness".
Adolf Hitler's stay

According to police registration files,
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
– at the time unemployed and living by selling his paintings – lived in the dormitory for three years, 9 February 1910 to 24 May 1913. He had moved from a
homeless shelter
Homeless shelters are a type of service and total institution that provides temporary residence for homelessness, homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather whi ...
in
Meidling, where he had stayed since December 1909. He moved to
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
in 1913 after receiving his father's inheritance.
Hitler himself appears to have provided no details about his daily life in Vienna, but several of his co-residents later published their recollections of Hitler's stay in the dormitory. They report that he read the newspapers each morning in the non-smoking area of the reading room, where he also painted, discussed politics with other residents and gave speeches.
Among the men who wrote about Hitler's residence in the dormitory were
Reinhold Hanisch, a vagabond and part-time labourer who died in prison in 1937 under unclear circumstances and whose recollections were published in ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'' in 1939; one Karl Honisch who wrote a report for the
Nazi party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
archives in 1938;
Josef Greiner, a worker who published slim memoirs in 1938 and 1947; and an anonymous man who wrote reports that appeared in Czech newspapers in the 1930s.
Other co-residents of the dormitory with whom Hitler was involved included his Jewish friends Eduard Löffner and Josef Neumann, the Viennese laborer who had moved to Munich with Hitler in 1913, and a rival painter,
Karl Leidenroth.
Later history

In the 1990s, the Viennese city government decided to close the timeworn dormitory, which then served as a shelter for the homeless, in favour of a new shelter in
Floridsdorf. Prior to its closure on 28 November 2003, the dormitory served in 2002 and 2003 as the venue of regular productions of
George Tabori's play ''
Mein Kampf
(; ) is a 1925 Autobiography, autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The book outlines many of Political views of Adolf Hitler, Hitler's political beliefs, his political ideology and future plans for Nazi Germany, Ge ...
'', whose subject is Hitler's stay in Vienna.
After its closure, the building was briefly occupied by
squatters
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there wer ...
. In 2007, the former dormitory was converted to a
retirement home with 200 rooms, named ''Seniorenschlössl Brigittenau''.
It opened in January 2009; its entrance is on Winarskystraße.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meldemannstrasse dormitory
Buildings and structures in Brigittenau
Adolf Hitler
Residential buildings in Vienna
1905 establishments in Austria
2003 disestablishments in Austria
20th-century architecture in Austria