Friedrich Wilhelm Franz Nippold (September 15, 1838 – August 4, 1918) was a German Protestant theologian born in Emmerich am Rhein.
In 1865 he received his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg, where in 1867 he became an associate professor. From 1871 to 1884 he was a professor of church history at the University of Bern, afterwards moving to Jena, where he succeeded Karl von Hase. In 1907 he took his retirement in Oberursel, where he died on August 4, 1918.
Nippold's primary interest involved modern church history, and was associated with a number of current church policy concerns. He was co-founder of the Evangelischer Bund (Protestant Federation), a movement for preservation of German-Protestant interests.
He was a prolific author, his best work being the highly acclaimed, multi-volume Handbuch der neuesten Kirchengeschichte (Textbook of the Latest Church History). He also published a collection of his lectures, sermons and essays called Zur geschichtlichen Würdigung der Religion Jesu (The Historical Assessment of the Religion of Jesus), and a new edition of Karl Rudolf Hagenbach's Vorlesungen über die Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters (Lectures on Church History of the Middle Ages). Other publications of Nippold include: