Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass

Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass. By Maria Diedrich. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999. Pp. viii, 480. Illustrations. $35.00.) Love Across Color Lines is a thorough and fascinating account of the life of Ottilie Assing and her love for Frederick Douglass. This book broadens the growing literature on interracial relationships in the United States by addressing the ways in which European theories of race may have affected immigrants to the United States and their relationships with blacks. Ottilie Assing was born in Hamburg, Germany. Maria Diedrich paints a vivid picture of her childhood and youth in Europe and the intellectual and familial influences that inspired her relatively progressive attitudes towards race and racial identity. Her father was Jewish and her mother Lutheran, so issues of racial identity and racial equality were of concern to the Assing family. Although both Christians and Jews ostracized the family, the Assings were nevertheless at the center of a rich intellectual community that idealized the Assing marriage as a model of intellectual and emotional partnership. The death of her parents and tensions with her overbearing sister ultimately drove Ottilie to the United States in search of greater autonomy. There, in 1856, she met Frederick Douglass, who came to symbolize for her the best potential of the United States for racial equality. According to Diedrich, over the next twenty-six years the two sustained a relationship as intellectual companions and lovers. For Assing, this relationship was the fulfillment of her ideal: a meeting of minds, each learning from the other; a deep erotic attachment; and a dedication to fighting for freedom and equality. Unfortunately for Assing, Douglass's wife Anna and his children stood in the way of an open relationship and marriage. Douglass refused to leave Anna, probably for reasons of loyalty to his wife (who was central to his escape from slavery) and deep love of his children, but also out of fear that divorce and remarriage would damage his public image. Spending months at a time in the Douglass households in Rochester, Washington, DC, and Anacostia, Assing repeatedly was frustrated by Douglass's refusal to leave his wife. Diedrich contends that Ottilie and Frederick both referred to Anna Douglass disparagingly as "Border State" (186). Assing thought Anna a "stupid old hag" incapable of love and unfit to be a partner to Frederick Douglass owing to her lack of education (306). Assing was also increasingly resentful of the demands for financial help of Douglass's children, who found it difficult to hold jobs and make careers amid the increasing racism of the 1870s. The inability of Douglass to commit to Assing was most fully symbolized in that both appear to have fantasized about a European trip together, culminating with a lovers' visit to Paris. But time and again Douglass refused to travel to Europe with Ottilie, although they did travel together on short trips on the East Coast, and a trip they planned to Haiti in 1861 appears to have been halted only by the outbreak of the Civil War. Finally, while Ottilie was alone in Europe on family business in 1882, Anna Douglass died. No doubt Ottilie thought that at last her love for Douglass would result in their marriage. …