The walls of Haussner’s Restaurant, the former longtime German eatery in Highlandtown, were choked with art of busty nudes, marble sculptures and, supposedly, an etching by Rembrandt. But for generations of Baltimoreans, nothing stood out like the giant ball of string.

Restaurant staff made the ball by tying together the strings the linen napkins arrived wrapped in, growing the collection to gargantuan proportions.

The ball is said to weigh 850 pounds; stretched out, the strings could span the distance from Baltimore to Niagara Falls. Its initial sale inspired a play; later, it made a cameo of sorts in the film “Meet the Fockers.”

Now it can be yours: The ball of string will be sold Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. at Stoner’s Auction in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.

Stoner’s owner, Chris Linsenbigler, said he’s already fielded inquiries from representatives at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! about the ball that far outlived its native restaurant on the 3200 block of Eastern Avenue. Should the next buyer wish to enlarge the piece, Linsenbigler has two trash bags filled with additional unused string from Haussner’s, which closed in 1999 and was demolished in 2016.

The ball came to Linsenbigler by way of Bob Gerber, the owner of Antique Man, who has stewarded the novelty for the past 26 years. In July, Gerber closed his Fells Point business, passing on the bulk of his stuff to Stoner’s. Linsenbigler’s grown sons helped him roll the ball onto a truck and take it to Glen Rock, a feat worthy of Sisyphus.

Gerber bought the ball at an auction in Timonium in 1999 for around $8,000, but he would have gone way higher. “It was bought for one purpose: as a draw to get people into my store,” he said. And the investment paid off in publicity and interest from journalists. “I probably had 20 different people do interviews standing in front of the store.”

It even caught Hollywood’s attention. Linsenbigler has a copy of a 2004 letter from Universal Studios to Gerber requesting his permission to feature a sign advertising the ball of string in the movie “Meet the Fockers.”

At least in the collective memory, the massive ball of string has overshadowed the more so-called important works in Haussner’s collection, which together fetched around $12 million at a separate auction in New York. Nancy Harrison, a vice president of the Sotheby’s auction house, called it “one of the great private collections of 19th-century European paintings in America.”

The restaurant was founded in 1926 by chef William Henry Haussner, who had cooked for a former kaiser back in Europe. It quickly became a bastion of gravy-laden Teutonic cuisine for Baltimore’s then large German-speaking population. Not everyone came for the food and classy atmosphere. A men-only stag bar was decorated with nude paintings.

For nearly 75 years, Haussner’s was a destination for tourists and Baltimoreans alike, who often posed for photos with the ball of string. “There was a line out front of 100 people, almost constantly,” Gerber recalled.

“I was entranced by it,” recalled artist Laure Drogoul, who moved to Baltimore in the 1980s and dined at Haussner’s a few times. She thought of the ball as a “magical object,” representative of “a zillion hands over the years that tied these knots on.”

Drogoul recreated the ball of string in her art studio, incorporating the piece into a play inspired by the 1999 auction. A friend dressed in drag like a Haussner’s waitress, passing out slices of strawberry pie like the dessert the restaurant once served.

Other friends of Drogoul’s who owned the Dime Museum in Station North purchased the replica for around $500, roughly the same amount of money Drogoul paid for the string in the first place.

Drogoul notes that bigger balls of string exist. At 17,000 pounds, a ball of twine in Kansas dwarfs that of Haussner’s by a long shot. Another one in Wisconsin weighs even more at 24,000 pounds.

But none of them are Baltimore’s.