Christian Hein (born 6 September 1982) is a German former swimmer, who specialized in long-distance freestyle events and open water marathon.

[2] He won two silver medals in both 5 and 10 km open water swimming at the 2003 FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 53.13.9 and 1:51.06.5, respectively.

[5][6] Hein missed out a spot for the eight-man final, as he placed tenth out of 47 swimmers in the morning's preliminary heats, lowering his entry time to 3:49.66.

[7] In the 1500 m freestyle, Hein finished twelfth overall on the morning's preliminaries by exactly one second ahead of Japan's Takeshi Matsuda with a time of 15:15.42.

He also picked up a bronze medal in the 10 km race, but finished behind Maarten van der Weijden of the Netherlands by approximately three seconds, in a time of 1:58:16.6.