Assing, Ottilie (1819–1884)

views updated

Assing, Ottilie (1819–1884)

German-American journalist and essayist. Born 1819 in Hamburg, Germany; committed suicide in 1884; dau. of David Assur Assing (Jewish physician) and Rosa Maria Varnhagen; sister of Ludmilla Assing (1821–1880, writer); niece of Karl Varnhagen von Ense and Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833).

Immigrated to US and worked for German paper Morgenblatt in NY; settled in Hoboken, NJ; met ex-slave Frederick Douglass (c. 1855) and they became lovers; exchanged letters with Douglass for 26 years until her suicide upon hearing of his marriage to Helen Pitts; wrote against slavery and for women's suffrage; some essays published in Was die Deutschen aus Amerika berichten, 1828–1865 (1885); other essays and letters to Frederick Douglass published in Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing's Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (Christoph Lohmann, ed., 1999).

See also Maria Diedrich, Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglas (Hill and Wang, 1999).