Love across color lines

Drew Gilpin Faust

...[A] fascinating story with important implications for our understanding of European and American cultural history, of women's experiences and available roles, and of the life of Frederick Douglass.
—New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Based on admittedly meager sources (a fragment of an 1874 letter from Douglass, Assing's letters to friends and relatives and the preface to her translation of Douglass's autobiography), Diedrich presumes that the 28-year friendship of German journalist Ottilie Assing and married abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was a love affair. Styling herself as Germany's "Negro expert," Assing "enjoyed the spotlight of scandal," according to Diedrich. She wrote and traveled in the U.S. after having been ostracized in Germany as a "half-breed" whose Jewish father converted to Christianity, believing that her genius would uplift America's underdeveloped cultural scene. Although envisioning herself as egalitarian, Assing told friends she meant to "introduce readers to highly educated darkies"; in writing about Douglass, Diedrich argues, she "carefully avoided any physical feature or character trait that might denote difference," presenting Douglass as "the ideal personification of the classical Western orator." Manuscript revisions in the Douglass Papers in Assing's handwriting indicate she might have served as his secretary, but none of her letters to Douglass survive; she also left instructions that all her letters from Douglass should be destroyed immediately upon her death. When Douglass remarried another woman after becoming a widower, Assing killed herself. Diedrich's at times ponderous prose style may be intended to evoke the rigid class, race and gender conventions of the 19th century, but her expansive rendering of 19th-century Europe and America more than makes up for it. Illustrations not seen by PW. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Diedrich's history resurrects 19th-century prejudice, sexism, morality, and class-consciousness in Europe and the United States while also showing a fallible side of Frederick Douglass, the renowned black abolitionist. It tells the story of the emotional, physical, and intellectual relationship that lasted 28 years between Douglass and a newspaper reporter, Ottilie Assing, who was white, German, and half-Jewish. In captivating detail, Diedrich unveils their shared interests and abolitionist efforts. Diedrich (American studies, Univ. of M nster) spent years conducting extensive detective work in libraries, museums, and archives in Europe and the United States. The result is intriguing, but because of the complexity of the relationship and the destruction of most of the pair's personal correspondence, it is full of unanswered questions and contradictions. The notes and references are extensive and useful. This probing study should contribute to our understanding of race relations in the late 19th century and will also make a welcome addition to the literature on Frederick Douglass's personal life. For informed lay readers and specialists.--Edward G. McCormack, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, Long Beach Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Diedrich (American studies, U. of M<:u>nster, Germany) ferrets out the secret intimate relationship between the giant of the abolitionist movement and the half-Jewish German journalist. The relationship lasted for 28 years, and Assing was primarily responsible for spreading Douglass' writings to a European audience. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Drew Gilpin Faust

...[A] fascinating story with important implications for our understanding of European and American cultural history, of women's experiences and available roles, and of the life of Frederick Douglass."
— The New York Times Book Review

O'Brien

...a book of great fascination.
—The Times Literary Supplement

Kirkus Reviews

A breakthrough biography of Douglass's private life, highlighting the fruitful and romantic relationship between the abolitionist and former slave and his German translator and companion. Diedrich is a professor of American studies at the University of Münster, Germany, and a fellow of Afro-American research at Harvard. She was well situated to do the spadework, as, without a witness to this love affair and with Assing and Douglass's correspondence destroyed by the Victorian guardians of their legacies, all Diedrich had to work with were Assing's German articles and prefaces. Ottilie Assing was a half-German, half-Jewish never-married woman whom Diedrich paints as having an unusually progressive background and personality for her time. She met Douglass as a foreign journalist in 1856 and maintained a serious relationship with him for 28 years, including summers at the Douglass home. She translated his autobiographies and was a major journalistic champion of his civil rights causes on the Continent. Assing read stories to Douglass's children, and his wife didn't seem to mind the two of them walking arm in arm on the streets of Rochester, N.Y. (Anna Murray Douglass had already suffered from her husband's affair with another European woman.) Were Assing and Douglass lovers? Diedrich quotes Assing: "unmarried and yet united in a deeper love than many who are married." The biographer cites other, German references to her lover that are clearer. When Rutherford B. Hayes became president in 1877, his ally Douglass was named marshal of the District of Columbia. The widowed Douglass could now marry Assing, but "his public triumph was defeat for her private ambitions." Instead, hemarried his white secretary, 20 years his junior, and a brave romance turned into tragedy—Assing committed suicide. This is an important contribution to African-American studies and to the history of interracial relationships. (48 b&w illustrations, not seen).