From an article in The Washington Post on 21 November 2016, a little less than 3 weeks after Donald J. Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. He lost the popular vote by over 3,000,000, but won via the Electoral College - an outdated institution that needs to be shut down.
"A letter publicized this week by the German tabloid Bild reveals how President-elect Trump's grandfather Friedrich Trump begged local authorities in southern Germany to revoke an expulsion order for avoiding military service as a teenager. His plea, it seems, proved unsuccessful, and he had to settle for a life across the Atlantic.
According to a bulletin by the Associated Press, the letter was penned in 1905 and was addressed to Prince Luitpold of Bavaria, a monarch who presided over a realm within the united German Empire. Trump beseeches the "well-loved, noble, wise and just" Bavarian royal not to deport him. Luitpold apparently decided to reject what Trump offered as a "most subservient request." The document was recently identified by a local historian in a state archive.
Friedrich Trump (original family name of Drumpf) reached the United States in 1885 when he was 16, after leaving his home town of Kallstadt, in what is now the southwestern German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Although his arrival in New York City was like that of myriad other European immigrants seeking greater opportunity, his departure from Bavaria was illegal - he skipped mandatory military service in the kingdom's armed forces and was formally stripped of Bavarian citizenship four years later.
Friedrich Trump and wife, 1908
Trump went on to make a fortune out west, including a stint running taverns and brothels amid the gold rush in Canada's Yukon territory. He "mined the miners," as one chronicler put it, and his Arctic restaurant became one of the more infamous institutions of the territory.
"For single men the Arctic has the best restaurant," wrote a moralizing 19th-century journalist in the Yukon Sun. "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."
Trump later returned east and made trips back to his homeland in the early 1900s, including one visit during which he met his eventual wife. Her homesickness compelled Trump to attempt to return to Kallstadt with all of his life savings. But his status as a draft dodger and noncitizen prompted a deportation order.
"The American citizen and pensioner Friedrich Trump, currently residing in Kallstadt, is hereby informed that he is to depart the state of Bavaria, or face deportation," authorities said in a document dated February 1905, according to Deutsche Welle.
Trump attempted to fight the decree but failed."
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Here is the full text of the letter from Friedrich Trump to Prince Luitpold of Bavaria, translated from German by Austen Hinkley and published by Harper's Magazine:
"Most Serene, Most Powerful Prince Regent! Most Gracious Regent and Lord!
I was born in Kallstadt on March 4, 1869. My parents were honest, plain, pious vineyard workers. They strictly held me to everything good - to diligence and piety, to regular attendance in school and church, to absolute obedience toward the high authority.
After my confirmation, in 1882, I was apprenticed to become a barber. I emigrated in 1885, in my sixteenth year. In America I carried on my business with diligence, discretion, and prudence. God's blessing was with me, and I became rich. I obtained American citizenship in 1892. In 1902 I met my current wife. Sadly, she could not tolerate the climate in New York, and I went with my dear family back to Kallstadt.
The town was glad to have received a capable and productive citizen. My old mother was happy to see her son, her dear daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter around her; she knows now that I will take care of her in her old age.
But we were confronted all at once, as if by a lightning strike from fair skies, with the news that the High Royal State Ministry had decided that we must leave our residence in he Kingdom of Bavaris. We were paralyzed with fright; our happy family life was tarnished. My wife has been overcome by anxiety, and my lovely child has become sick.
Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family. What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree - not to mention the great material losses it would incur. I would like to become a Bavarian citizen again.
In this urgent situation I have no other recourse than to turn to our adored, noble wise, and just sovereign lord, our exalted ruler His Highness, highest of all, who has already dried so many tears, who has ruled so beneficially and justly and wisely and softly and is warmly and deeply loved, with the most humble request that the highest of all will himself in mercy deign to allow the applicant to stay in the most gracious Kingdom of Bavaria.
Your most humble and obedient,
Friedrich Trump"
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