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When communist East Germany collapsed in 1989, Berliners were eager to tear down its most detested symbol, the Berlin Wall that divided their city during the Cold War.

Seventeen years later, city officials and artists are arguing about how to do the exact opposite: keep the wall's largest remaining section, now a major tourist attraction, from falling apart.

"The wall is rotten inside, crumbling away on the outside, and there is not enough money to pay for its entire preservation," said city official Joerg Flaehmig, referring to the East Side Gallery, a 1.3-kilometre stretch of the wall in Berlin's Friedrichshain neighbourhood that 118 international artists commissioned by the city covered with graffiti in 1990.

Car emissions, rain and ice have turned famous images such as the fraternal communist kiss between East German leader Erich Honecker and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and the East German Trabant car that appears to be bursting through the wall, into a sad sight. There are long cracks in the concrete, and big chunks of paint are flaking off.

"On top of this, people keep chipping off pieces for souvenirs or they write their names across the paintings," Flaehmig said.

He said restoration of just the wall's structure would cost an estimated $1.9-million. But in order to get at and restore the wall's rusty insides, the artwork would need to be scraped off and reapplied, which would cost even more.

"We don't have that money for the restoration of the artwork yet - that's why we can't start with the reconstruction."

Kani Alavi, the head of the East Side Gallery's Artists' Association, disagreed.

"We were told the 850,000 euros needed to fly in all the artists and have them repaint their works were available," said Alavi, an Iranian-born artist who in 1990 painted a mural of East Germans crossing Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989.

"The main problem is that the Berlin authorities are so slow and prefer dreaming instead of doing their job."