‘Alices Reise in die Schweiz. Szenen aus dem Leben des Sterbehelfers Gustav Strom’ by Lukas Bärfuss

In 24 scenes, this play offers insight into the work of physician Gustav Strom who runs an assisted suicide organisation in Zurich. These scenes include dialogues with other characters as well as two monologues in which Gustav explains his commitment to his cause, stating, for example, that “human life derives its dignity from the freedom to choose the time of one’s own death.” Gustav finds an assistant in the young Eva, who shares his idealism. Unlike other organisations, Gustav also provides assisted suicide to people with mental illnesses. As this practice violates the professional code of conduct, he is expelled from the medical association, which means he can no longer prescribe sodium pentobarbital—the drug commonly used for assisted suicide in Switzerland. In addition, criminal charges are brought against him. During pre-trial detention, prosecutors question his motives for assisting patients with mental illness and even cast doubt on his own mental stability, viewing him as fixated on death and—this is implied in the text—as possibly failing to exercise the necessary caution and professional judgment. One of Gustav's patients is the Englishman John who suffers from an unspecified but severe and progressive physical illness. He travels from Birmingham to Zurich three times but ultimately refrains from ending his life each time. The most important figure besides Gustav, however, is the play’s titular character Alice. Presumably suffering from treatment-resistant depression, she travels from Hamburg to Zurich, where—although she appears to improve through her contact with Gustav—she ends her life with his assistance, using Rohypnol and suffocation with a plastic bag. Alice’s elderly mother Lotte, who is physically in good health but sees no further meaning in life after her daughter’s death, takes her own life with Eva’s help. After this, Eva turns away from the provision of assisted suicide and devotes herself to caring for disabled children in a home in Romania. In a final monologue, Gustav Strom once again defends the necessity of his work in light of the medical field’s growing power to extend life, often without considering its quality.

Lukas Bärfuss’s Alices Reise in die Schweiz. Szenen aus dem Leben des Sterbehelfers Gustav Strom (Alice’s Journey to Switzerland: Scenes from the Life of Assisted Dying Provider Gustav Strom), which premiered in Basel in 2005, was widely recognized in the media as a significant contribution to the public debate on assisted dying. Critics particularly highlighted that the play does not adopt a clear position for or against assisted suicide, but instead critically engages with moral grey areas and encourages audiences to form their own judgments. Gustav Strom is portrayed with deliberate ambivalence: while some of his arguments—such as the possibility of ending suffering—may evoke understanding, his missionary zeal comes across as disturbing. The play centers on several problematic aspects of his actions, such as his interactions with John who clearly lacks a firm wish to die. Alice, moreover, appears to revive through her interactions with Gustav and may even fall in love with him. Yet Gustav either fails to perceive this change or consciously ignores it—he rigidly pursues his plan and accompanies her to death in a scene that feels awkward and in which it is unclear if Alice is genuinely certain of her decision. Set against the backdrop of its time, the play addresses two especially controversial issues. First, “suicide tourism”: from the early 2000s onward, a growing number of people from countries with restrictive laws traveled to Switzerland. Gustav Strom can be read as a personification of the organisation Dignitas—indeed, his address on Gertrudstrasse corresponds to Dignitas’s actual location at the time. Second, the issue of assisted suicide for people with mental illness: although Swiss law does not limit access to assisted suicide to those with physical illnesses, organisations such as EXIT and Dignitas at the time refrained from assisting people with psychiatric diagnoses due to the controversy surrounding such cases. The psychiatrist Peter Baumann took a different stance. He founded the association SuizidHilfe to move beyond what he saw as the overly restrictive practices of existing organisations and to offer assistance to those suffering from psychological conditions. He was prosecuted for three cases between 2001 and 2003 and was convicted for two in 2007 by the Basel Criminal Court—though on appeal, this was reduced to one conviction in 2008, which the Federal Supreme Court upheld in 2009. One year later, he was granted a pardon by the Basel Grand Council. As early as 2002, the Zurich Medical Society had already initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. Baumann clearly served as a model for Gustav Strom—evident in verbatim quotations, his use of a plastic bag as a method, his legal and professional conflicts, and his prominently publicized missionary zeal. Finally, through the three cases portrayed in Bärfuss’s play—John, who suffers from a severe physical illness; Alice, from a psychiatric condition; and Lotte, from existential suffering—the play anticipated developments in eligibility criteria for assisted suicide practice in Switzerland. While a physical illness was required at the time the play was written, just one year after its premiere, the Federal Supreme Court recognized the right to assisted suicide for people with mental illness. Cases involving existential suffering only entered public debate several years later.