In the 1980s, Mattheuer was to develop what, in retrospect, was the most significant parable for his entire work, his own mythological figure – the Step of the Century.

Loss of center!In the garden of his Reichenbach house, Mattheuer works on the sculptural realization of the figure, which was planned from the beginning.

The response was even greater a few years later when a bronze cast of the Step of the Century was shown at the Xth and last Kunstausstellung der DDR (art exhibition of the GDR) in Dresden.

Mattheuer said about his sculpture: "This nightmare figure, as the embodiment of absurdity, is 'that conflict between the longing mind and the disappointing world', it is '... homesickness for unity, this fragmented universe, and the contradiction that connects both' (Albert Camus) and which all too often erupts into aggression and destructiveness, as a centrifugal force that tears the individual apart.

"[6] Eduard Beaucamp, long-time feature writer for Die Zeit and advocate of the Leipzig School artists in particular, writes: "This paradoxical metaphor of the century, an aggressive, fleeing end-time figure who has lost his body and his 'center' is a mocking, bitter swan song for modern dictatorships.”[7] The message of the Step of the Century was also recognized in the then West Germany.

Richly placed on the threshold between the two rooms, Wolfgang Mattheuer's Step of the Century from 1984 creates the leap from east to west.

Their locations are: In October 2017, the city council of Reichenbach in Vogtland decided to purchase the last unsold example (bronze, unpainted) and put it up publicly.

At the Bonn and Leipzig locations, 2.5 m (8.2 ft) tall bronze casts mark the entrance to the foundation's exhibition halls.

At the end of the 1990s, Hermann Schäfer, then director of the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, won Mattheuer over to the idea of making a 5 m (16 ft) tall bronze cast of the Step of the Century.