Paulus Stephanus Cassel (Selig; 1821–1892), German theologian and historian, convert to Christianity; brother of David Cassel. Cassel studied in Berlin, in particular under the historian Leopold von Ranke. He wrote a study of Jewish history from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 to 1847 for the Allgemeine Encyklopaedie der Wissenschaften und Kuenste... published by J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber (2nd series, vol. 27), the first historical examination of the subject to rely extensively on non-Jewish sources and take into account political and social considerations. From 1850 to 1856 Cassel was editor of the Erfurter Zeitung. After his conversion to Christianity in 1855 he was appointed librarian at the Royal Erfurt Library. In 1866 he was returned as conservative member to the Prussian Landtag. From 1868 to 1891 he was mainly concerned with his duties as preacher at the Christuskirche in Berlin and as a missionary for the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. However he combated anti-Semitic allegations and directed a pamphlet against the anti-Jewish literary campaign of Heinrich von Treitschke (1880). He also responded to the anti-Semitic charges made by E. von Hartmann, A. Stoecker, and Richard Wagner, and published a brochure entitled Die Anti-semiten und die evangelische Kirche (1881). In the field of biblical research he wrote on the Books of Judges and Ruth (1865), Esther (1878), and on the Targum Sheni to Esther (1885). A very prolific author. Sabbathliche Erinnerungen was published before Cassel's conversion, the first part anonymously; the second (signed "S. C." in the preface) being put forth for the benefit of indigent veterans of 1813-15.