Assia Wevill
| Assia Wevill | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Assia Esther Gutmann May 15, 1927 Berlin, Germany |
| Died | March 23, 1969 (aged 41) London, UK |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Nationality | German |
| Alma mater | University of British Columbia, Vancouver |
| Known for | Ted Hughes's partner |
| Spouse(s) | Sgt. John Steel, Richard Lipsey, David Wevill |
| Children | Alexandra Tatiana Elise Wevill ("Shura") (deceased) |
Assia Wevill (May 15, 1927 – March 23, 1969) was a German-born woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Mandate Palestine, then later the United Kingdom, where she had a relationship with the English poet Ted Hughes. She killed herself and Hughes's four-year-old daughter Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed "Shura") in a fashion similar to that of Sylvia Plath, world renowned writer and Hughes's first wife, who six years earlier had also committed suicide, by use of a gas oven.
Assia Gutmann was the daughter of a Jewish physician of Russian origin, Dr. Lonya Gutmann, and a German Lutheran mother, Elizabetha (née Gaedeke). She spent most of her youth in Tel Aviv. Cited by friends and family as a free-spirited young woman, she would go out to dance at the British soldiers' club, where she met Sergeant John Steel, who became her first husband and with whom she moved to London in 1946. According to her biographers, Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev, "she had entered an essentially loveless marriage with an Englishman at the age of 20 – largely to enable her family to emigrate to England. The couple later emigrated to Canada, where Assia enrolled in the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and met her second husband, Canadian economist Richard Lipsey.
In 1956, on a ship to London, she met the 21-year-old poet David Wevill. They began an affair, and Assia divorced Lipsey; she married Wevill in 1960.
Wevill was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and was linguistically gifted. She had a successful career in advertising and was an aspiring poet who published, under her maiden name Assia Gutmann, an English translation of the work of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
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