Paweł Anweiler

Paweł Ryszard Anweiler was born on 16 June 1950 in Kalisz, a historic city in the Greater Poland region of western Poland. It was there that he later began his ministry as a vicar. Details of his parents and childhood have not been made public.

He studied Protestant theology at the Christian Theological Academy (Chrześcijańska Akademia Teologiczna, ChAT) in Warsaw, the ecumenical state university that trains clergy for Poland's Protestant and Orthodox churches. He graduated in 1974 with a master's degree in Evangelical theology. That same year he passed the first church examination, pro venia concionandi, which qualified him for ordination.

Bishop Andrzej Wantuła ordained him a pastor of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland on 24 February 1974. He served as a vicar in Kalisz and Kępno (Polish Wikipedia also lists Ostrów Wielkopolski). In 1979 he took over the parish in Częstochowa, where the congregation elected him pastor in 1981.

From 1985 he was a member of the Synod of the Church. When Bishop Jan Szarek, head of the Cieszyn Diocese, became Bishop of the Church, Anweiler succeeded him as pastor of the Church of the Saviour parish in Bielsko, a post Polish Wikipedia dates from 1991 to 2016. On 24 November 1991 the diocesan synod elected him bishop of the Cieszyn Diocese. He was consecrated on 9 February 1992 in Bielsko-Biała by Jan Szarek, with Pavel Uhorskai, Dieter Knall and Władysław Volny as co-consecrators. He was re-elected in 2002 and 2012 and completed his service on 6 January 2016, when the Rev. Adrian Korczago was installed as his successor.

His other roles included chairman of the board of the Eben-Ezer Deaconate in Dzięgielów (from 1992), member of the supervisory board and, from 2008, chairman of the council of the Augustana publishing house in Bielsko-Biała, president of the council of the Centre for Mission and Evangelism (from 1998), member of the editorial college of Zwiastun Ewangelicki (2002 to 2010) and of the editorial board of Przegląd Ewangelicki (2003 to 2010).

On 24 June 1976 he married Halina Mendrek, a parishioner from Jaworze near Bielsko-Biała. The couple had one son. At his death he was survived by his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law and two granddaughters. Their names beyond his wife's have not been made public.

Anweiler was a committed ecumenist. As chairman of the Silesian branch of the Polish Ecumenical Council from 2008, he took part every January in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, hosting Catholic bishops in the Lutheran Church of the Saviour and preaching in Catholic churches. In 2013 he told Polish media that ecumenism is a movement that leads to common prayer and an idea meant to bring Christians closer to Christ himself, and that Poland still had much work to do because misunderstandings and old habits persisted between neighbours. He pointed to practical projects such as a shared ecumenical hospital chapel as things that forced Catholics and Protestants to agree.

He also spoke frankly about tensions inside world Lutheranism. In the same 2013 remarks he said Lutheran churches in other countries sometimes looked on Polish congregations as provincial because they did not ordain women and held a different view on the ministry of homosexual people, while Polish Lutherans saw those changes as sociological modernity rather than a matter of salvation.

Anweiler led the Lutheran Cieszyn Diocese through the years after the fall of communism, a period of rebuilding church institutions, publishing and diaconal work in Cieszyn Silesia. Regional media summed up his life as half a century of service to the faithful. His long chairmanship of the Silesian ecumenical council helped make joint Catholic and Lutheran prayer, Bible marathons and services a normal part of public life in Bielsko-Biała. The diocese plans to publish a final book he prepared before his death.

Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Krzyż Oficerski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski), awarded 18 December 2011. Silesian Juliusz Ligoń Award (Śląska Nagroda im. Juliusza Ligonia). Karol Miarka Award of the Silesian Voivodeship, 2015.

He was a poet and essayist. His poetry collection Błogosław, duszo moja, Panu was published in 2005, and the Lutheran Church website luteranie.pl hosted a selection of his poems. Recordings of him survive on YouTube, including his address at the Concert of Christian Unity in the Valley of Mercy (19 May 2013), his speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the Katowice Archdiocesan Synod (17 October 2015) and a Christmas greeting recorded for Portal OX.PL in December 2015.

Paweł Anweiler died on 9 November 2026, aged 76. The Cieszyn Diocese of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland announced his death on social media the same day, and the church press office confirmed it. The cause and place of death were not made public. His funeral is scheduled for Friday, 13 November 2026, at 12 noon at the Church of the Saviour in Bielsko-Biała. Instead of flowers, the diocese asked for donations toward publishing a book he prepared before his death.