Steamship Frisia, Ocean

July 25, 1876

My dear Friend:

Tomorrow morning early we shall reach Plymouth and therefore I send your hearty greeting over the waters. Our journey has been most lucky in every respect. The 25. we hope to land in Hamburg from where I shall write you at length. I am awkward writing on a rocking table.

Yours ever on land or water

OttiliaAssing, Ottilie

Ottilie Assing (1819-84) was born to Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline Assing, a Christian, and Assur David Assing, a Jew, in Hamburg, Germany. Assing received an accelerated education from her mother and was generally described as bright and vivacious. After the death of her mother in 1840 and father in 1842, Ottilie and younger sister Ludmilla spent time with relatives, but she grew depressed and attempted suicide in 1843. After returning to Hamburg, Assing began writing reviews of local culture. In 1851 she became a correspondent for the German periodical Morganblatt fur gehildete Leser. Assing first met Frederick Douglass when she came to America in 1855, supposedly inspired to make his acquaintance after reading My Bondage and My Freedom. She arrived in Rochester and interviewed him for an article that subsequently appeared in Morganblatt. Thereafter Assing published numerous articles about Douglass for her German readership, and also translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, contributing an introduction. The two began an intimate friendship in 1856 that lasted twenty-eight years. During that time Douglass and Assing corresponded regularly. When in the United States, Assing was a regular visitor at the Douglass home in Rochester. She was friendly with his children, although his wife, Anna Murray, did not approve of her husband's relationship. Douglass and Assing often appeared in public together, but no contemporary public speculation questioned the propriety of their relationship. Following Anna Murray Douglass's death in 1882, Assing hoped that she might become Mrs. Frederick Douglass. However, in January 1884, while Assing was in Europe, Douglass married his secretary, Helen Pitts. Becoming increasingly more ill, possibly with cancer, and despondent from Douglass's rejection, Assing committed suicide in a Paris park on 21 August 1884. She left her entire estate to Douglass. Christoph Lohmann, ed., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing's Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 69, 329-62; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 23, 38, 56, 184, 368, 371.