German neo-Nazi heads for women's jail after gender change

A fierce debate has erupted in Germany around a neo-Nazi who is set to begin a jail term in a women’s prison on Friday after legally changing gender.

Marla-Svenja Liebich, 54, has been sentenced to 18 months at the Chemnitz prison for offenses including incitement to racial hatred and slander.

At the time of sentencing in 2023, the defendant was called Sven Liebich but legally changed gender after Germany last year passed an identity law called the Self-Determination Act.

The move by Liebich, who started wearing lipstick, golden earrings and a leopard print top, was widely seen as intended to mock the law and perhaps obtain easier prison conditions.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt says that “the judiciary, the public and politicians are being made fools of here because the Self-Determination Act offers the opportunity to do so.”

The conservative minister says Germany needed to have “a debate about how clear rules against the abuse of gender reassignment can be established.”

German neo-Nazi Sven Liebich, jailed in 2023 for hate speech, legally changed gender to female and adopted the name Marla-Svenja.

Now set to serve the 18-month sentence in a women’s prison. pic.twitter.com/wiLoTiPX8x

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 21, 2025

Liebich has been a high-profile figure in eastern Germany’s right-wing extremist scene for decades and used to be a member of the banned Blood and Honor group, according to German media reports.

He also ran a business that sold products online that are popular with xenophobic groups, including a baseball bat with the slogan “deportation assistant.”

In 2022, he disrupted an LGBTQ pride parade in the city of Halle, calling the participants “parasites on society,” according to activists.

Liebich has also claimed to have converted to Judaism and requested kosher meals and rabbinical supervision in prison.

Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, has condemned the move as making “a mockery not only of Jews, but of all religious people, regardless of their faith.”