The record
A fragment in the exhibition pavilion of an archive founded to collect the First World War, bought from the group that held the American sales rights.
The Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus was set up in 1919 by the future president Herbert Hoover as an archive of First World War documents, and grew into one of the largest American collections on the political, social and economic upheavals of the twentieth century.
Several small fragments of the Berlin Wall have gone into its German holdings. A larger one, now shown in the institution's exhibition pavilion, was bought in the early 1990s from the Berlin Wall Commemorative Group — the New Jersey company that had taken on the sale of the Wall in the United States for the East German government, and which also supplied the Grand Rapids, Hoover Library and Lyndhurst records in this catalogue.
The record is short because the source is. What it establishes is that a piece of the Wall entered a research archive as a document rather than a monument, which is a different reason for keeping it than almost anything else here.
How did it get here?
Bought in the early 1990s from the Berlin Wall Commemorative Group, which handled the sale of wall segments in the United States for the GDR government.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #192.
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry ↗
The founding and scope of the Hoover Institution, the small fragments of the Berlin Wall in its German holdings, and the larger fragment in the exhibition pavilion bought in the early 1990s from the Berlin Wall Commemorative Group.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17
Hoover Archives Acquires Its Third Piece Of The Berlin Wall ↗
The Hoover Institution Library & Archives says the first of its three pieces of the Wall is on permanent display in the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion, the second is in the Radio Free Europe collection, and the third came as a gift in January 2016.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 192
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record