Hengstenberg Collection

The Hengstenberg Collection consists of approximately 10,000 bound volumes and 2,500 unbound books and pamphlets, chiefly in the areas of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theology, church history, and biblical literature. The collection was assembled by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, a highly conservative professor of Old Testament at Berlin, and purchased by a group of Chicago businessmen in 1870 on behalf of the newly-founded Baptist Union Theological Seminary. Despite his staunch adherence to conservative doctrines and his intellectual hostility toward those with whom he disagreed, Hengstenberg collected books which reflect the entire spectrum of theological thought, making the collection a rich asset to the study of bible criticism, church history, symbolics, ethics and philosophy. Some of the Collection’s contents thematically overlap with the University of Chicago’s Berlin Collection, such as in Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, church history, and some areas of theology.

A small number of Hengstenberg’s books have been identified in the Library Catalog here.

For a more complete inventory, see Hengstenberg’s manuscript catalog of the collection at the University of Chicago Library’s Special Collections Research Center. Note: some books on the list may no longer be held by the University of Chicago.