Thunderbird + Mac Sierra 10.12.3 is currently a bad combination. Even worse if you have a NEW Mac with the touchbar.

1. Try System Preferences > Security & Privacy and select the Privacy tab. Select that Thunderbird does not access your Mac contacts. Please tell us, does that help?

2. Please post your crash IDs here (in text form) so I can correlate your example to the bug report. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozilla-crash-reporter-tb#w_viewing-crash-reports

(See also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1286613 )

looks like disabling contact-access helped

I'll post a crash id if it happens again

oh it did it again ... looks like I have to wait a little longer until I open the lid

crash-ID: 8f15ba62-0377-4916-9935-28fa92170116

yeah, bp-8f15ba62-0377-4916-9935-28fa92170116 is also the sleep-related crash.

Some users report that 50.0b doesn't crash. YOu can get it from https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/50.0b3/mac/en-US/Thunderbird%2050.0b3.dmg

Do you find that 50.0b works for you?

i installed this version ... it worked now two times in a row. I'll do a few more tests and give you feedback . Thank you for your help!

it works better ... it crashes not so often. but after several hours of sleep it still does it

Same problem here, crashes very often...

You can find some crash-ID below

bp-7a3a85a8-56f9-4440-81ad-803c32170123 bp-9d8067d4-63d6-4537-8e45-5278c2170123 bp-5e776ea6-6d55-4cec-8d96-23eaa2170123 bp-4f96e141-0be4-4f28-93ee-b4fd82170123 bp-076457ee-9589-4857-887a-1a7272170123 bp-696433cb-c0bd-4421-8a9e-5fc0a2170122 bp-2ee437c1-31a4-44ae-a349-a9e692170122 bp-2006cc10-3985-4a4d-bcd5-27cd42170122 bp-5048e5dd-e05d-4ead-aa68-182af2170116

Please update to MacOS 10.12.3 - it came out today.

yes that finally fixed it!