Franz Hildebrandt (February 20, 1909, in Berlin – November 25, 1985, in Edinburgh) was a German-born Lutheran, and later Methodist, pastor and theologian, forced into exile during World War II, and subsequently active in the United Kingdom and the USA.
In 1930, he was awarded a licentiate (comparable to a Ph.D.) by the University of Berlin; his first book (EST: Das Lutherische Prinzip) was based on his doctoral dissertation.
Since his mother was of Jewish descent, he was affected by the introduction of the so-called Aryan Paragraph in some of the Protestant Churches in Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933.
Hildebrandt resigned from his post as a sign of protest against this church measure and left Germany to join his friend, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was pastor to the German congregation in London at the time.
In subsequent years, Hildebrandt helped build up the German-speaking Protestant congregation in Cambridge, and worked for a number of church-related projects, including German-language broadcasts on the BBC.