KLUPFEL, ENGELBERT. - Augustinian theologian, b. 18 Jan. 1733 at Wipfeld (Franconia), d. at Freiburg im Breisgau on 8 July 1811. A religious at Oberndorf (1750), he studied at Fribourg in Switzerland, Erfurt and Freiburg im Breisgau, at whose university for 38 years (1767-1805) he held, with great honor, the chair of theology.
He wrote: De statu naturae purae (Freiburg im Breisgau 1768); De eximiis datibus humanae naturae ante peccatum (ibid. 1769); Christus sacerdos sec. ordinem Melchisedech (ibid. 1772); De precibus pro defunctis (ibid. 1773). In 1775 he founded the Nova bibliotheca ecclesiastica Friburgensis, of which 7 vols. appeared (ibid. 1775-90), in which many dissertations attacked to the core the rationalism of Semler; Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (2 vols., Vienna 1789); this work, improved by the bishop of Linz, G. T. Ziegler
(d. in 1852), became the official textbook of the seminaries and universities of Austria; doctrinally orthodox, it bears, in methodology, the mark of the Enlightenment conceptions then dominant. During the French Revolution K. had the weakness to declare, together with his teaching colleagues, the lawfulness of the civil oath of the clergy.
BBL.: Hurter, IV, coll. 563-67; W. Rauch, E. K., ein führender Theologe der Aufklärungszeit, Freiburg im Breisgau 1922; M. Grabmann, Storia della teologia cattolica, Italian trans. by G. Di Fabio, 2nd ed., Milan 1939, pp. 307-308.
Antonio Piolanti