Mathilde Hübner met Ottokar Hanzel at some point in 1904. Aged twenty at the time, she was preparing for the Maturitätsprüfung and took private tuition in mathematics and descriptive geometry from Ottokar Hanzel, who was training to be a secondary school teacher in these two subjects.
At Easter 1905 Ottokar Hanzel ‚declared his love’ to Mathilde Hübner ‚in a letter‘.