The composition includes the figures of a teacher, a diagnostician, a rationalizer, a city decorator, and an art theorist. All of them are naked and they are balancing on a beam. Some parts are covered with gold, this is why they are easy to notice (the saw, the laurel wreath, an ear trumpet, and other things). The bronze beam that they are standing on has the caption, “Of course, you can sacrifice a life for a principle, unless it is your life.”

The figures show the people who decided to blow up the university church of Saint Paul on Augustusplatz — the only gothic church that had survived the war. Bach and Mendelssohn performed inside of it. The church was blown up in 1968 after the GDR government decided to do it. It didn’t look fitting in the socialistic image of the square. The artist, Bernd Göbel left a reminder of how the actions of a group of people, that can’t see any farther than their noses, can lead to irreversible consequences.