About the work
"Ein Übertritt" ("A Crossing Over"; subtitled on the author's website "alles auf Ende", roughly "everything toward the end") is a text Elfriede Jelinek wrote in 2025 to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War; a first reading took place on 8 May 2025 at Schauspielhaus Bochum. The staged world premiere, directed by Jossi Wieler with set design by Anna Viebrock, takes place on 22 October 2026 at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, two days after Jelinek's 80th birthday.
Plot
Starting from the idea of crossing over or transformation, the text asks a fundamental question: what makes a person human – and what tips them into the inhuman and the animalistic, with a particular focus on a German self-understanding after 1945. Jelinek links this to the historical shift between dictatorship and democracy and between war and peace, using her characteristic associative, language-driven style.
Cultural significance
Jelinek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2004, is among the most widely performed German-language playwrights working today. For the Düsseldorf premiere she is working with Jossi Wieler, one of her long-standing directing collaborators, with set design by Anna Viebrock; the production is one of several world premieres in the new Düsseldorf artistic director's first season.