Right Rev. Dr. Dr. h. c. Johann Schneider has been regional bishop of the Halle-Wittenberg provost district of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM) since June 2012. From October 2007 to May 2012, he was Senior Theological Councillor for the Ecumenical Fellowship-Orthodoxy Department at the Church Office of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in Hanover. From 2003 to 2007, he was a consultant for scholarships at the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (DNK/LWF) and the Ecumenical Diaconia in Stuttgart. From 1997 to 2002, Schneider worked as a research assistant and lecturer at the Institute for Church History at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. During the same period, he worked as a pastor at the Neustädter (University) Church in Erlangen.
Born in 1963 in Mediasch, Transylvania (Romania), Johann Schneider initially completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker (1982 to 1985), as he had not been admitted to university in Romania. During this time, he was influenced socially and above all culturally by the church community in a diaspora parish and the everyday experience of different nationalities living together. In 1985, he moved with his family to Würzburg, where he successfully completed his Abitur at Wirsberg-Gymnasium Würzburg in 1986.
From 1986 to 1992, Schneider studied Protestant theology and philosophy in Neuendettelsau, Tübingen, Munich and Erlangen as a scholarship holder of the Ev. Studienwerk Villigst and graduated in 1993 with the First Theological Examination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. He was already interested in ecumenical issues during his studies. From 1993 to 1994 he was an ecumenical scholarship holder of the LWF in Rome. Schneider completed his vicariate (1994 to 1997) in Nuremberg/Bayreuth and was ordained in St. Nicholas and St. Ulrich Church in Nuremberg in March 1997 after passing his second theological examination (1997).
In 2004, Schneider was awarded a doctorate in theology by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and received the doctoral prize from the Staedtler Foundation, Nuremberg, in 2005. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Lucian Blaga in Sibiu/Hermannstadt (Romania).
Schneider is a member of the EKM state synod, the Committee for Constitution and Law, the Finance Committee and the shareholders' meeting of Diakoniewerk Halle. He chairs the Board of Trustees of Diakoniewerk Halle and the Gustav-Adolf-Werk of the EKM and is Vice President of the Gustav-Adolf-Werk of the EKD. He is also a member of the board of trustees of numerous foundations and institutions such as the Paul Gerhardt Foundation, Evangelisches Studienhaus Halle, Francke Foundations, Petersberg Ecclesiastical Foundation, Luther Memorials Foundation Saxony-Anhalt and the Foundation Council of the Protestant Academy of Saxony-Anhalt.
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