Johann Christian Wernsdorf I (6 November 1723 in Wittenberg – 25 August 1793 in Helmstedt) was a German writer, poet, and rhetorician.
[1] Born the son of Gottlieb Wernsdorf the Elder and his wife Magaretha Katharina (nee Nitsch), he lost his father at an early age.
At the instigation of Old testament scholar Johann Gottlob Carpzov, he was appointed by Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in autumn 1752 to the faculty of the University of Helmstedt, where he remained as a professor of rhetoric and poetry until his death in 1793.
After the death of philologist Pieter Burman the Younger in 1778, Wernsdorf succeeded him as the editor of the Latin Anthology.
[3] He had a daughter Louise, married to the German theologian Karl Ludwig Nitzsch, and a son Christian Gottlieb Wernsdorf.