Franziska Liebhardt

Franziska Liebhardt was born on 5 January 1982 in Berlin, and German media continued to describe her as a Berliner throughout her career. Little has been published about her childhood beyond her school years in Berlin; a former classmate recalled after her death that they had been in the same class at a mainstream primary school and stayed in touch over the years, describing her as always "so radiantly warm".

As a young woman she was a committed volleyball player. She played as a middle blocker and rose through the Landesliga and Bayernliga to the Regionalliga, until serious illness forced her to give up the sport.

Liebhardt trained as a physiotherapist and specialised in neuropaediatrics and social paediatrics, working with children with neurological and developmental conditions. After her athletics career she returned to Würzburg, where, according to a 2019 FAZ profile, she lived and worked in this field. Details of the school where she trained have not been made public.

At the age of 23, around 2005, Liebhardt was diagnosed with a severe systemic autoimmune disease that attacked many organs and organ systems and kept progressing. In 2009 she needed a lung transplant. She also suffered a stroke, and in 2012 she received a kidney donated by her father. Involvement of the brain left her with a spastic paralysis affecting the right side of her body, which later determined her classification as a para athlete in classes T37 and F37.

The disease flared again later in the decade. In April 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, she told the FAZ she had been waiting seven months for a second donor lung. It arrived at Easter 2020, and she spoke afterwards of the "miracle" of being able to breathe again.

After her first transplant Liebhardt discovered athletics as a competitive sport in 2009. She first competed at international championships for transplant recipients and won several European and world titles there between 2009 and 2013, including three gold medals at the 2011 world event reported by Main-Post. Finding transplant sport not performance-oriented enough, she moved into Paralympic sport, first competing for VSV Würzburg and from 2014 for TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Her coach was Steffi Nerius, the 2009 javelin world champion, and she trained in a group with Paralympic long jump champion Markus Rehm.

In 2014 the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) nominated her for international championships for the first time. At the IPC European Championships in Swansea she won silver in the shot put and bronze in the long jump. At the 2015 IPC World Championships in Doha she won silver in the F37 shot put after a duel with China's Mi Na, setting a European record, and a surprise silver in the T37 long jump with 4.57 metres.

In May 2016 in Breda, Netherlands, she put the shot 13.82 metres to take the world record back from Mi Na. At the 2016 IPC European Championships in Grosseto she won shot put gold with 13.62 metres and long jump silver with a German record of 4.73 metres. She was part of the DBS Top Team Rio 2016 and the Elite Team NRW of the Sportstiftung NRW.

At the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro she won the F37 shot put with a world record of 13.96 metres, beating Mi Na (13.73 metres), who had been unbeaten at major events since 2008. Within about 17 hours she also won silver in the T37 long jump with 4.42 metres. As planned, she retired from competitive sport at the end of 2016.

Organ donation became Liebhardt's second life's work. She was active in the association Sportler für Organspende and in Kinderhilfe Organtransplantation (KiO), raising donations, giving talks, designing organ donation projects and campaigning in interviews for better organ donation legislation in Germany. Immediately after her Paralympic victory, KiO founder Hans Wilhelm Gäb won her for a board role; the Bavarian health ministry dates her board membership to 2017. She later became chair of the association (2023 according to the ministry, 2024 according to KiO and the FAZ).

Under her leadership KiO expanded its hardship fund for families with a child suffering from organ disease, added experiential programmes for siblings and fathers, launched KiO Translate to overcome language barriers in children's hospitals, and built the KiO Young Champions, young elite athletes who promote the cause, and the youth team KiO Youth. She was especially devoted to the young transplanted athletes of KiO's children's and youth team at the World Transplant Games. Together with the association Junge Helden she created the Lebenskreis, a posthumous honour for organ donors that is presented to their families.

She also supported regional groups such as the Organtransplantierte Ostfriesland association (2017), met transplant patients at University Hospital Würzburg, served as an ambassador for the R(h)ein Inklusiv programme of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) in 2022 and was patron of the SoVD inclusion run in 2024.

Liebhardt lived in Würzburg. KiO's tribute described her climbing to 2,000 metres in the Alps as if it were nothing and enjoying riding her bike through the Würzburg vineyards. For a time she volunteered as a rescue dog handler with the Bavarian Red Cross rescue dog squadron in Würzburg. Her father donated the kidney she received in 2012. KiO's farewell referred to her as "Franzi". No spouse or children have been named in public reporting.

Liebhardt often said that sport had prepared her for illness. "The skills learned in sport also carry me through my illness," she told the FAZ, and she compared the competition in the arena with the fight for life in a difficult situation. She spoke of "great humility and deep gratitude" toward the donors whose organs had allowed her to live, and she argued for higher organ donation rates and better legislation in Germany. During the 2020 lockdown she worried publicly that children needed daily exercise, ideally together, and that sitting at home was not good for them. In a 2019 essay for the FAZ she wrote about learning to trust her body again.

Liebhardt is remembered as a Paralympic champion and world record holder who reached the top of her sport with a donor lung and a donor kidney, and as one of the most visible German voices for organ donation. KiO said she personified the double core of its movement, as only founder Hans Wilhelm Gäb and the heart-transplanted Olympic race walking champion Hartwig Gauder had done before her. The projects she helped build, from the KiO hardship fund to the Lebenskreis honour for donors, continue, and KiO said her last wish was that the association remain as varied and active in its help as under her leadership.

Paralympic Games 2016, Rio de Janeiro: gold, F37 shot put (world record 13.96 m); silver, T37 long jump (4.42 m). IPC Athletics World Championships 2015, Doha: silver, F37 shot put (European record); silver, T37 long jump. IPC Athletics European Championships 2016, Grosseto: gold, F37 shot put; silver, T37 long jump (German record 4.73 m). IPC Athletics European Championships 2014, Swansea: silver, F37 shot put; bronze, T37 long jump. Silbernes Lorbeerblatt (Silver Laurel Leaf), presented on 1 November 2016. Third place, German Disabled Sportswoman of the Year 2016. Bavarian Honorary Prize for the Promotion of Organ Donation, 2 July 2026, Munich. Multiple European and world titles at transplant recipients' championships, 2009 to 2013.

Liebhardt appeared on ARD's Brisant on her way to Rio, on SAT.1 Frühstücksfernsehen in a segment about life with donor organs, and in a ZDF interview after her 2015 world championship medals. She wrote the 2019 FAZ essay "Ich vertraue meinem Körper wieder" (I trust my body again) in the series Denk ich an Sport, and she spoke at length about her transplants and medals on the podcasts von Bohne zu Bohne and Dialoge ohne Masken.

Franziska Liebhardt died in Würzburg in the night to Saturday, 7 November 2026, at the age of 44, as reported by the FAZ. Main-Post and some other outlets described the death as occurring in the night to Sunday, 8 November, but her death was already being mourned publicly on 7 November. KiO announced it in a farewell titled "Mach's gut, Franzi", written at her request that "something beautiful" be said about her. The association described her final illness as too insidious and too aggressive to overcome; the specific cause was not made public. Funeral arrangements have not been made public.