Meldemannstraße dormitory

The men's dormitory on Meldemannstraße 27 in Brigittenau district, Vienna, Austria was a public dormitory for men (German: Männerwohnheim) from 1905 to 2003. It is a subject of public interest primarily because it was the residence of Adolf Hitler, the later dictator of Nazi Germany, from 1910 to 1913.

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 was 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's and a tailor's workshop. Moreover, the dormitory included a sick room with a resident physician, a disinfection chamber for the de-lousing of new residents, washrooms, a shaving room and a bathroom with sixteen showers and four bathtubs.

The actual dormitory was located on the upper four stories. Each of the up to 544 residents had a small cabin to his own, measuring 1.4 meters (4.6 ft) by 2.17 meters (7.1 ft). 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 a very affordable lodging 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".

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Wikipedia