He trained as a barber, but made his money with a string of saloons and brothels, flogging cheap booze and “sporting ladies” to miners during the Klondike gold rush. He skipped military service in his native Germany, arrived in the US as a penniless immigrant, and left behind a tidy fortune, which became the basis for a vast real estate empire.
Meet Friedrich Drumpf, grandfather of Donald Trump.
Presidential candidates usually make political capital out of their antecedents: George W Bush traded heavily on the power of the Bush dynasty; Bill Clinton alluded often to his down-home Arkansas roots; Barack Obama made his absent Kenyan father and African pedigree the central story of his campaign.
By contrast, Trump seldom mentions his grandfather. In his autobiography, Trump suppressed his Germanic origins entirely and claimed to be Swedish. But to understand The Donald, you first need to know Grandpa Drumpf, a hard-nosed, opportunistic immigrant, the huckstering hairdresser from the Rhineland.
In 1885, aged 16, Friedrich left the little village of Kallstadt in southwest Germany, boarded a steamship in Bremen, and sailed for America. For the next six years he worked as a barber in New York. It is tempting to see Trump’s elaborate, combover coiffeur as simply a throwback to his grandfather’s first profession, a touching tonsorial tribute.
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The ambitious Drumpf (who had become Trumpf on his immigration form and may already have anglicised his name to Trump), opened a restaurant called the Poodle Dog in Seattle, which was “French” — in other words, debauched.
In August 1896 gold was discovered in the Klondike region of the Yukon. More than 100,000 prospectors stampeded north, and with them went Grandpa Drumpf, who realised that
“He realised there was good money in “mining the miners”
there was good money to be made out of “mining the miners”. In the town of Bennett, on the Dead Horse Trail, he opened the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel. Initially no more than a huddle of tents, it grew into a two-storey building, with a restaurant offering such delicacies as caribou and horsemeat, and plenty of “private boxes” for assignations. A set of scales on the bar enabled miners to pay in gold-dust or nuggets.
A letter written to the Yukon Sun newspaper gives the flavour of the establishment: “For single men the Arctic has excellent accommodations as well as the best restaurant in Bennett, but I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings — and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex.”
A second tavern, in the booming railroad town of Whitehorse, was open 24 hours and served up to 3,000 meals a day. By 1901, the gold rush was slackening, and the Canadian Mounties were beginning to crack down on prostitution, gambling and illegal liquor sales. Friedrich sold up just in time, returned to Germany, and married his former neighbour, Elizabeth Christ. The German authorities, however, decided that he had dodged military service and tax obligations, and he was expelled back to the US. A son, Fred, was born in 1905 and went on to sire Donald. Friedrich Drumpf, now firmly renamed Frederick Trump, died in 1918 at the height of the Spanish flu epidemic. He was 49, and left behind a fortune worth an estimated $582,000 in today’s money. His widow and son invested in New York property, as E. Trump & Son.
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By the time of his death, Fred Trump Jnr was worth £300 million, a fortune which his son Donald transformed into a global brand worth £10 billion (according to him), or $4 billion (according to Forbes).
Trump would not be the first German-American president. Dwight Eisenhower’s family, the Eisenhauers, came from Karlsbrunn; Herbert Hoover’s ancestors, the Hubers, hailed from Baden. Some 55 million Americans claim full or partial German heritage. But The Donald’s attitude to his German forebears has been ambivalent, reflecting his father’s qualms about being identified as German during the Second World War when anti-German feeling was running high. He is far more likely to allude to his mother’s roots on the Isle of Lewis — “I feel Scottish,” he insists — than trumpet his Germanic antecedents.
In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump stated that he was of Swedish decent, and in an interview three years later insisted: “My father was not German”. The Swedish town of Karlstad began planning a museum in his honour. Trump asserted vaguely that his ancestors had come from “sort of all over Europe”.
Trump has said that millions of undocumented immigrants in the US would be deported under his administration, but the “good people”would be allowed to come back and settle. Grandpa Drumpf arrived in the US without a passport, but presumably, under a Trump presidency, would be classified as a good person on account of his entrepreneurial drive, and allowed to become American.
The name Trump is a gift for both a businessman and politician, with echoes of the winning trick, the trump card. But in the interests of historical accuracy (Trump is very keen on the nostalgic past: “Make America Great Again”) he must return to his roots and embrace his immigrant heritage. The Republican frontrunner should proclaim it from the top of Drumpf Tower, from every Drumpf hotel, casino and golf course: “Drumpf for President!”