 |
| Frederick Trumpf, our President's Grandfather |
Some people are lucky. They have family names that elicit respect, like names of Scottish clans or old Saxon names like Armstrong or Goodrich. But others have names that are a warning sign for those who are unlucky enough to cross their path.
One of those names is ‘Trump’. It is a surname derived from Old French ‘tromper’, which means, "to cheat". The word ‘trumpery’ first appeared in English in the mid-15th century with the meanings "deceit or fraud". To trump up means, "to concoct with the intent to deceive"
Donald Trump’s original family name was Drumpf. It is derived from the word "Dumpf", which means dull.*
The ‘Drumpf’ family originates in Kallstadt Germany, where the first known person with that surname was Hanns Drumpf. He was so dull, that his relatives advised him to go into the wine business, so that he would be acceptably entertaining, at least when he was slightly inebriated.
Dullness being a trait that is passed on to your offspring, his son Johan Philip Drumpf also remained in the winegrowing business. He was often seen in the local wine cellars, sampling his own wine and making bad jokes, trying to hide his genetic boorishness. **
But all this changed when their son (and our very own President’s grandfather) Frederick Drumpf was born. Friedrich, then 14, was too sickly to work in the grape fields, so his mother sent him to work as a barber’s apprentice. When he returned home, the wine business was in a slump and realizing that he was old enough to be called to join the Imperial German Army, Friedrich decided it would be better for his health if he emigrated to the United States. He quickly scribbled a note to his beloved mother and secretly left in the middle of the night.
He worked as a barber for a while in the Lower East Side, but then moved out West, together with a couple of other million immigrants. Already back then, the food service business was in the family’s blood. He bought a Restaurant in the Red Light District of Seattle, where in addition to food and liquor, the establishment had "Rooms for Ladies", a common euphemism for prostitution.
But Friedrich was ambitious. Our not so dull hero had his eyes on a plot of land to build a hotel, but he had no money. So, he filed a Gold placer claim, which gave him exclusive mineral rights to the land without having to pay for it. Someone else had already claimed the land, but Friedrich knew how corrupt the U.S. Land Office was and frequently allowed multiple claims. He had no right to build on the land but did it anyway and became very good at ‘mining the miners’.
He then turned his attention to the Yukon Gold Rush, knowing how lucrative it would be to offer food, lodgings and sex to all those horny, hungry prospectors. It wasn’t long before his new establishment 'the Arctic' in Bennett, became the most famous place around. But the Government was cracking down on prostitution, gambling and liquor, so Friedrich, always the shrewd businessman, sold his share of the restaurant and left the Yukon.
He went back to his beloved Bavaria and got married but the authorities determined that he had left to avoid military-service, and he was classified as a draft dodger. They stripped him of his German citizenship.
So he came back, with his tail between his legs. A year later, while walking the streets of New York with his son Fred, he suddenly fell ill and died, one of the first victims of the Spanish flue. He was 49 years old.
Fred Trump, our beloved President’s father, had a good role model. After WW2, he built row houses for returning soldiers and their families, adroitly jumping through the loopholes of the Federal Housing Administration and making gargantuan profits from public contracts.
For decades after World War II Trump told friends that his family was of Swedish origin, since being of German descent didn’t sit well with his many Jewish tenants.
Woody Guthrie, one of the many tenants who got trumpfed by dear Fred, wrote some not so flattering lyrics about his landlord.
Woody Guthrie -- I Ain't Got No Home/Old Man Trump by the Missin' Cousins
So there you have it. How can our President not be proud of a family that started out as a bunch of Drumpf (dull), winegrowing Bavarians, but then produced an individual that puts Al Capone to shame in his capacity for Trumpfing everyone and getting rich by mining the miners out West and in turn producing offspring that are even better masters of the Art of Trumpfing? leave comment here
* Someone changed the original family name to Trumpf, going from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.
** These few facts are not substantiated, but everything else IS.
