Four graffiti-covered giant slabs of the Berlin Wall could fetch as much as $4,350 each at an auction Friday, a Berlin auction house said Thursday.

The four 2.8-tonne chunks of the wall that once divided Communist East Berlin and capitalist West Berlin are pieces of German history, said Hans Peter Plettner, spokesman for Deutsche Grundstuecksauktionen AG.

Even though much of the Berlin Wall was quickly broken up ground down for road construction after it was demolished in 1989, a myriad of its pieces chipped off by souvenir hunters remain popular with tourists and Berliners alike.

Precious few segments of the 3.5-metre high "anti-fascist protection barrier" -- as East German leaders called the 96-mile long fortification -- have survived.

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