How Trump’s grandfather laid the foundation stone for his empire

Donald Trump is thrilled. The guest gift, which Chancellor Friedrich Merz presents him with when he was visited in Washington, finds the US President “Beautiful” and “Fantastic”. Because it is very personal, the Merz government has thought.

It is a so-called facsimile, a faithful replica of the birth certificate of Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich, who was born on March 14, 1869 in the German municipality of Kallstadt near the district of Bad Dürkheim in Rhineland-Palatinate. Merz handed over the certificate of his first name to a golden frame. According to his own statement, Trump wants to find a place in the White House.

In an interview in the Oval Office during his first term, the US President still confused his own father and grandfather. His father was German, he said. Now there should be no any irritation, since Trump has the birth of his grandfather in black and white.

But who was Friedrich Trump?

As the son of Christian Johannes Trump and Katharina Kober, Friedrich Trump was born in the Palatinate of Kallstadt, which was still part of the Kingdom of Bavaria at the time, and grew up with four sisters and a brother.

His father was a winemaker and had a small winery. In 1877 he died of a lung disease and left the family high due to medical costs. The older siblings had to help in the winery, but Friedrich’s mother declared her son unsuitable for physical work. So she sent him to the nearby Frankenthal, where the then 14-year-old completed an apprenticeship as a hairdresser.

Since he had few perspectives with his learned profession in the small town, Friedrich emigrated to the United States at the age of just 16 – to his sister, who was already living there. Initially Friedrich Trump worked as a hairdresser in New York. But at some point that was no longer enough; He wanted to make the big money, live the American dream.

With his savings and some money from his sister, Friedrich headed to Seattle in the outermost northwest of the country in 1891. He had his name embarrassed – Frederick Trump became Friedrich Trump. A year later, in 1892, he took over American citizenship.

In Seattle, Trump came to a restaurant in the red light district, which he then operated alone. In it he also offered a “private room for women” – a well -known code for prostitutes at that time. Two years later, in 1893, he gave up the restaurant again and sold it.

Friedrich Trump developed into a businessman: During the Klondike gold rush, he operated further restaurants and hotels-partly with brothel operation-in Seattle, Monte Cristo and in Yukon Canada. He demonstrated an extraordinary feeling. Together with his business partner Ernest Levin, he pulled the gold searchers behind and built hotels and restaurants along their routes and railway lines.

In 1901, however, Trump got out of business because he suspected an early end of the gold rush and also had problems with Levin. Instead, he was moving back to Germany in search of a wife.

Friedrich returned to Kallstadt as a rich man. His assets at that time corresponds to about half a million dollars today. In 1902 Trump married the neighboring daughter Elisabeth Christ, who was eleven years younger.

Friedrich convinced Elisabeth to move to the United States with him, but she soon got homesick. The Trumps returned to Germany with the aim of staying permanent. Friedrich made an application to regain Bavarian citizenship – but everything turned out differently.

The authorities rejected his application. The reason: Trump had bypassed German military service through his time in the United States. He and his wife were therefore finally shown from Germany in 1905.

What initially appeared like a defeat was the beginning of a family success story: the Trumps returned to the United States, settled in the Queens district of Queens and received two children: Frederick Jr. and John George. Friedrich, now Frederick again, began to invest in real estate and thus laid the foundation for today’s Trump empire.

In 1918 he finally died at the age of 49 in New York on the Spanish flu and was dug in Queens on the Lutheran All Faiths. He never met his grandson Donald, born in 1946.

Over 100 years later, he receives Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the White House in Washington and welcomes him with the words: “We love the people of Germany”. And he should. Last but not least, he owes the German authorities to sit in the Oval Office today.