(01-25-2015 07:16 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote: Speaking of Douglass, I just recently learned (from Don Doyle's "The Cause of all Nations") of his affair with Ottilie Assing, and I think the "story" and this lady is worth sharing. This is a summary of some Wiki passages with additional info from Don's book.
Ottilie Davida Assing (1819 - 1884) was a German feminist, freethinker, and abolitionist. Born in Hamburg, she was the eldest daughter of a prominent physician, David Assur and the poet Rosa Maria Varnhagen Assing.
In 1852, Ottilie emigrated to the United States, settling eventually in Hoboken, New Jersey. She supported herself by writing articles for the prestigious Berlin journal "Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser" - under a male pseudonym.
When Assing read the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," she was impressed and in 1856, went to Rochester to interview Douglass. They struck up an immediate friendship that evolved into a romantic liaison that endured the next 26 years (Douglass still being married...). Soon her writing focused on the abolitionist movement. Assing and Douglass attended meetings and traveled together, and thought and wrote in tandem. In 1884, while Ottilie Assing was in Europe, trying to establish her claim to her sister's estate (including her mother's, and the Varnhagens' papers) she read in a newspaper that Douglass was to marry his 20-years-younger white secretary, Helen Pitts. She had already been diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. One morning Ottilie Assing committed suicide in Paris in a public park, swallowing a vial of potassium cyanide. As per the will left in her hotel, her correspondence with Douglass was burned and Douglass received her meager estate (the bulk of the family fortune having been given away on a whim by her sister).
Ottillie Assing and this thread came up in a recent trivia thread. I just wanted to add that the accuracy of Assing's account of her relationship with Douglass has been questioned:
http://leighfought.blogspot.com/2011/11/...ssing.html
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