KEPPLER, PAUL WILHELM. — Bishop, b. 11 Aug. 1822, d. 16 July 1926 at Rottenburg. Ordained priest in 1875, he then carried out pastoral work in the parish of Cannstatt. In 1883 he became professor of New Testament exegesis at Tübingen, where he taught until 1894, after having moved in 1889 to the chair of moral theology and pastoral theology. In 1894 he became professor of moral theology at Freiburg im Breisgau, and in 1898 was appointed bishop of Rottenburg, a position he held until his death. A gifted preacher, he considered the Sacred Scriptures to be the primary source of homiletics.
As head of the diocese of Rottenburg, he took a keen interest in the fate of all those who had been harmed by the First World War and the post-war inflation, and carried out extensive pastoral activity, including the founding of new convents. He played an active part in the anti-Modernist struggle and promoted studies on Christian art; he directed the Archiv für christliche Kunst from 1885 to 1894 and in 1888 published his monograph Würtemberg's kirchliche Kunstaltertümer.
Among his principal works are: Das Johannes-Evangelium u. das Ende des I. christl. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Breisgau 1883); Aus Kunst u. Leben (ibid. 1905, 8th ed. 1923); Mehr Freude (ibid. 1909, 18th thousand, ibid. 1929, translated into 13 languages, Italian ed., Rome 1911); and numerous volumes of sermons and homilies.