R. Dr. Wolf Alois Meisel was a Hungarian rabbi; born at Roth-Janowitz July 16, 1815; died at Budapest Nov. 30, 1867. Owing to his father's conversion to Christianity, the family relations were so inharmonious that he reached the age of seventeen before he was able to begin definite preparation for the future. In 1832 he went to Hamburg, where he applied himself to the study of the Talmud and graduated from the gymnasium. He entered the University of Breslau in 1838, where he continued his study of the Talmud and attended lectures on rhetoric. In 1848 he was called to the rabbinate of Stettin, and on May 11, 1859, to that of Budapest. Here he was in constant conflict with his congregation owing to the state of transition, both in religion and in politics, through which the Hungarian Jews passed during his administration. His "Homilien über die Sprüche der Väter" (Stettin, 1851; Hungarian transl. by Bauer Márkfi Lörincz, Budapest, 1862) are models of Jewish pulpit-literature. His "Prinz und Derwisch," poems (Stettin, 1847; 2d ed., Budapest, 1860), and "Der Prüfstein," poems (published posthumously by the Meisel-Wohlthätigkeitsverein, Budapest, 1878), are translations. He died suddenly while preaching a sermon, which Simon Bacher and his son Wilhelm Bacher published in German and Hebrew under the title "Die Brunnen Isaak's" (ib. 1867).