The Saalekreis district in Saxony-Anhalt is weighing legal action against the change to Sven alias Marla Svenja Liebich’s gender marker. As reported by Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk (MDR), the district has initiated legal steps to determine whether the entry in the civil status register can be reversed. The background is suspicion that the declaration may have been made abusively under the Self-Determination Act that went into effect at the end of 2024.
The infamous right-wing extremist Liebich had, after a conviction for incitement to hatred, defamation, and insult, already over a year ago had his gender marker changed to “female” and his given name to Marla Svenja (TheColu.mn reported). He was supposed to begin his one-and-a-half-year imprisonment at the Chemnitz correctional facility last summer, but did not appear and remains missing.
Liebich now wants to be known as “Anne Frank”
Since then, Liebich has been trolling on social media, presumably to mock the Self-Determination Act. The 55-year-old, who once warned about “transfascism” and insulted Pride participants as “parasites,” recently announced his intention to change his gender entry to “diverse” and to adopt the name “Anne Frank” (TheColu.mn reported).
According to the county, there are indications that the declaration may not have been made seriously. The responsible authority is therefore examining whether legal avenues exist to challenge or reverse the change.
Legally, this is considered difficult, according to law professor Judith Froese, because the law deliberately relies on a low-threshold and largely unconditional declaration. “If a person does not explicitly state that they do not mean it and merely makes such a declaration as a joke or for fraudulent purposes, it will be hard to accuse someone of abuse,” Froese told MDR.
The change to Liebich’s gender marker had been widely viewed in politics and the public as a provocation. LGBTI organizations fear the case may be instrumentalized by opponents of the Self-Determination Act. Politicians from the Union and the AfD have already repeatedly referenced the case to drum up opposition to the Self-Determination Act (TheColu.mn reported).
BVT*: The SBGG must be defended against right-wing attacks
The Trans* National Association explained that the SBGG is “a major advance in recognizing and protecting trans*, inter*, and non-binary people.” Now it is crucial “to defend this achievement against attacks from authoritarian and far-right forces.”
Similar self-determination laws exist in more than 20 countries, including Argentina, Spain, or New Zealand. There are virtually no problems with the law in these countries. The BVT* also stressed that warnings about the law’s supposed risk of abuse are deliberately constructed by right-wing forces.
