Chapman University’s piece of Berlin Wall is vandalized
The piece of the Berlin Wall that sits at Chapman University’s campus in Orange was vandalized last week, officials said Monday.
The 12-foot-high chunk of the historical wall – which came to the Liberty Plaza near Memorial Hall in 1998 – was believed to have been vandalized sometime between July 21 and 11 a.m. on July 22, university spokeswoman Amy Stevens said. The bottom portion of each side of the wall was painted brown.
University officials were working with restoration experts to develop a plan to restore the artifact, she said.
The university and Orange Police Department were working together on the investigation, police Sgt. Phillip McMullin said. The motive for the vandalism was not known but some evidence has been collected, he said.
“I am outraged by this senseless attempt to destroy a priceless piece of history and heartbroken that this can happen on our own campus,” university President Daniele Struppa said in a Monday statement.
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The piece of the wall was preserved at the time of its installation and university officials were confident it could be restored without permanent damage, Struppa said. When asked about potential plans on how to protect the artifact in the future, Stevens said she was unable to answer that because of the ongoing investigation.
The brown paint could be seen covering some of the wall’s graffiti written before it fell in 1989, symbolizing the end of the Cold War.
The university’s former president, Jim Doti, worked for about three years to bring the chunk of the wall to the campus. Doti wanted his students to have a connection to the history of the Berlin Wall, especially for those born after it fell and only read about its significance in textbooks, he said earlier.
“You have the symbol of freedom against the symbol of totalitarianism,” Doti said earlier. “That tension between these two things, there’s a certain drama to that, and I think students pick up on it.”
After finally gaining permission to have the artifact, Doti also had to figure out how to ship the heavy slab of concrete from Germany to California. After four weeks of traveling by crane, ship, truck and train, Doti enlisted art professor Richard Turner to create the Liberty Plaza, including a reflective pool and grassy knoll.
“Let this terrible act of vandalism be turned into a time to celebrate how fortunate we are to be the home to an important piece of history,” Struppa said.
Anyone with information about the vandalism was asked to call the Orange Police Department at 714-744-7444.