COLLENBUSCH, SAMUEL. – Protestant Pietist and mystic, born on 1 September 1724 at Wichlinghausen (near Barmen in the Rhenish Prussia), physician in Duisburg (1756), then from 1784 in Schwelm and Barmen, where he died on 1 September 1803. His doctrine bears the imprint of Oetinger, Bengel, and Fricker. Both in Duisburg and in Barmen he gathered followers around himself for the study of the Bible in the Pietist sense. He exerted a considerable influence on Protestant theology (the Hasenkamp brothers, Menken, Thomasius, Hofmann) and on their missionary work (Barmer Missionsanstalt).
Works: Erklärung biblischer Wahrheiten (2 vols., Barmen 1807–16 and Erlangen 1821); Auszüge aus dem Tagebuche... (Stuttgart 1883).
BIBL.: E. Krug, Die Lehre des Dr. Collenbusch nebst verwandten Richtungen, Elberfeld 1846; H. Cremer, in Realencyklop. für protest. Theol. und Kirche. IV (1898), 233–41; F. Augé, C. und seine Freundeskreis, 2 vols., Neukirchen 1905–1907.