- VIENNA (AP) -- A shabby homeless
hostel where Adolf Hitler once lived closes its doors for good today, almost
a century after it opened.
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- The last of the shelter's 230 residents have moved to
a new building with better facilities, said Monika Wintersberger-Montorio,
the hostel director.
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- The shelter houses mostly alcoholics, drug addicts and
people suffering from psychological problems. But in February 1910, when
the 20-year-old Hitler moved in, it was a home for poor workers with nowhere
else to go.
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- Hitler stayed in the hostel until May 1913, spending
much of his time in its non-smoking community room, where he painted postcards
and watercolours to eke out a living, historian Brigitte Hamann writes
in Hitler's Vienna - a Dictator's Apprentice Years.
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- He retired to his sleeping cabin - cramped with a bed,
a bedside table and a clothes stand - to study as soon as access was allowed
at 8pm.
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- "I read a great deal then, and I pondered deeply
over what I read. All the free time after work was devoted exclusively
to study," Hitler later wrote about his Vienna years in Mein Kampf.
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- The hostel, nicknamed "Hitler's Villa" by its
residents, attracted hordes of tourists.
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