Auguste Widal (1822-1875), who used the pen name Daniel Stauben, was born in Wintzenheim in the Alsace region of eastern France. He studied in Colmar and Paris and spent his professional life as a professor of classics and modern languages. His "Letters on Alsatian Customs" began appearing in the French Jewish magazine Archives Israelites in 1849. Widal used the pseudonym Daniel Stauben when he expanded the stories into Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace. He also used that pen name for his French translations of Leopold Kompert's Jewish story collections Aus dem Ghetto (In the ghetto) and Boehmische Juden (Jews of Bohemia). Widal died in Paris at the age of fifty-three.
