David E. Wellbery (born 1947) is an American professor of German Studies at the University of Chicago.
He studied for a year at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, then received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1977.
Between 1990 and 2001, he taught at the Johns Hopkins University as the William Kurrelmeyer Professor of German.
He holds appointments in Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature and serves on the Committee on Social Thought.
In 2001, he was a faculty member of the Cornell University School for Criticism and Theory.