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German
society in the mid-1800's held little room for an intelligent
and independent female social activist. These
circumstances, and the prevalent anti-Semitism of the time,
led journalist Ottilie Assing to move from her German homeland
to the United States. Here
she hoped to support herself as a correspondent, writing
about life in America for the prestigious German newspaper Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser. Much
of Europe was experiencing social unrest and the German people
especially were eager to learn more about the New World's
fledgling democratic experiment as it teetered on the brink
of Civil War. Assing intended to bring this information to her readers,
as well as details about African-American life. Feeling
an outcast herself, she identified with the African-American
experience, becoming a spokesperson for abolition even when
she lived abroad.
Soon after she
arrived in 1856, Assing arranged to interview Frederick Douglass
and to tell about her writing and her desire to translate
his autobiography into German. They met, and the intellectual gifts they shared developed
into a long-term collaborative relationship. Assing
spent the next 22 summers with the Douglass family, working
on articles, the translation project, and tutoring his children. Douglass'
wife, Anna, who was somewhat older than Douglass and illiterate,
was ill much of the time. She
shared little of her husband's intellect or interests, and
seemed unable to cope with the large household. Assing,
on the other hand, was a passionate abolitionist, was politically
astute, and contributed a great deal to Douglass' work. This
collaboration, however, had an unhappy ending.
Shortly
after learning she had cancer, Assing committed suicide and
left Frederick Douglass as the sole heir in her will. While
their friendship was known at the time, little passed into
history about it, or so we thought. For most of their
28 year friendship, they wrote each other almost weekly. No
letters from Douglass to Assing survive. And Douglass,
or his descendants, destroyed all but a few from her. The
most convincing information of the collaboration comes from
letters Assing wrote to her sister which were recently discovered
in Germany. This
correspondence, combined with her Morgenblatt articles
and other contemporaneous events, confirm the extent of the
Douglass-Assing relationship.
The facts surrounding
the discovery of Assing's letters to her sister are almost
as amazing as what they describe. Assing's
uncle, husband of her Jewish aunt, was not Jewish himself
but was a German aristocrat and government official. When
their aunt died, Assing's sister, Ludmilla cared for him
until he died. Ludmilla
saved her sister's letters from America, and on her death
these papers were combined with their uncle's official documents
and given to a local university. Much
later, to save German historical records from being destroyed
during World War II, the Nazi government hid thousands of
library and university collections in protective bunkers. Just
a few years ago, Ludmilla's papers were found. In
a historical twist of fate, the Nazi government had inadvertently
protected the letters documenting the intellectual collaboration
between a German Jewish journalist and the most prominent
African-American of the 19th Century.
Assing's
letters give insight into the mid-1800 world of America and
Europe. In particular,
they tell about the life and choices available to foreign
women and African-American men in what at the time was the
most democratic country on earth. They
tell about Assing and Douglass, two exceptional individuals
who made undeniable contributions to society, contributions
made possible because of their friendship.
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