Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace

Auguste Widal’s fictional accounts of trips to his native Alsace are early French examples of the immensely popular genre of “ghetto fiction.” His picturesque descriptions of the customs and traditions of small-town Alsatian Jews helped popularize ghetto nostalgia, as did his translations of the works of his Czech contemporary Leopold Kompert. A classicist, Widal wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Stauben, perhaps to preserve his somewhat precarious position as one of the few Jews teaching in French universities at this time. In 1873 he was appointed inspector general for French primary and secondary schools.