David Cassel

David Cassel
David Cassel, from the 1901-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, now in the public domain.
Born	(1818-03-07)7 March 1818 Gross-Glogau, Silesia, Prussia
Died	22 January 1893(1893-01-22) (aged 74) Berlin, Prussia, Germany
Nationality	German

David Cassel (7 March 1818 – 22 January 1893) was a German historian and Jewish theologian.

Cassel was born in Gross-Glogau, a city in Prussian Silesia with a large Jewish community. He graduated from its gymnasium. His brother was Selig Cassel.

Cassel's name is intimately connected with the founders of Jewish science in Germany—Zunz, Geiger, Steinschneider, Frankel, and others. In appreciating his great scholarship in Jewish literature it must not be forgotten that he was born in a city in which Jewish learning had been maintained at a very high standard, and which has given to the world many noted scholars: Salomon Munk, Joseph Zedner, Michael Sachs, Heymann Arnheim, and others.

Cassel became a student at the Berlin University, where he attended the lectures of the orientalist Julius Heinrich Petermann, the philosopher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, the philologist Philipp August Boeckh, and others. He, besides, maintained very friendly relations with Moritz Steinschneider, Heimann Jolowicz, Leser Landshuth, and Paul de Lagarde. During the whole time of his university studies he supported himself by giving lessons; and having thus experienced all the bitterness of poverty, he became later one of the founders of the Hülfs-Verein für Jüdische Studierende, a society for assisting poor Jewish students in Berlin, which is still in existence.