Hiller-Kaserne

The Hiller-Kaserne stands in Linz-Ebelsberg, a southern district of Upper Austria. Built between 1940 and 1943, it once housed about 6 000 soldiers on a 16-hectare site. Named after Field Marshal Lieutenant Johann von Hiller, the complex originally included thirty planned buildings. After the war the barracks became a displaced-persons camp called ‘Davidstern’, where about 1 600 Jewish survivors received care. Eleven of the old barracks blocks are now protected monuments within a larger redevelopment area. The site’s layered history makes it worth visiting. From 1938 the SS trained units here before sending them to Mauthausen and Gusen. Later it served as a prisoner-of-war camp and then as a transit centre for ethnic Germans expelled from eastern Europe. After 1945 American forces used it for displaced persons, reuniting Jewish survivors before closing the camp in 1951. The same grounds now form the core of the new Sommerfeld Ebelsberg district. Visitors walk among the eleven listed buildings, their façades unchanged since the 1940s. Nine are being converted to flats, two will house businesses and social services. New apartment blocks rise on the former parade ground, while the Traun meadows beyond recall the site’s original floodplain setting. Interpretive signs explain each phase, from SS training to DP rehabilitation. The contrast between wartime structures and today’s family homes frames the story of a place continually reshaped by history.