Historian finds German decree banishing Trump's grandfather

Guardian ^ | 11/21/16 | Kate Connolly in Berlin

[ifinnegan]

A historian has discovered a royal decree issued to Donald Trump’s grandfather ordering him to leave Germany and never come back.

Friedrich Trump, a German, was issued with the document in February 1905, and ordered to leave the kingdom of Bavaria within eight weeks as punishment for having failed to do mandatory military service and failing to give authorities notice of his departure to the US when he first emigrated in 1885.

Kallstadt, Germany: on the trail of 'the Donald' in the Trump ancestral home Read more Roland Paul, a historian from Rhineland-Palatinate who found the document in local archives, told the tabloid Bild: “Friedrich Trump emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1885. However, he failed to de-register from his homeland and had not carried out his military service, which is why the authorities rejected his attempt at repatriation.”

The decree orders the “American citizen and pensioner Friedrich Trump” to leave the area “at the very latest on 1 May ... or else expect to be deported”. Bild called the archive find an “unspectacular piece of paper”, that had nevertheless “changed world history”.

Trump was born in Kallstadt, now in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in 1869. He emigrated to the US aged 16 initially to escape poverty, attracted by the gold rush.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Wikipedia article on William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., has his date of birth as Feb. 27, 1910, and his date of death as May 17, 1946. William Jefferson Clinton was born on August 19, 1946.

Blythe was married three times. The end of his second marriage was after the beginning of his marriage to Bill Clinton's mother.

[PA Engineer]

Odd how they can dredge up the most picayune, obscure things about not just Donald Trump but his ancestors, considering that so many glaringly obvious omissions, deflections and untruths have been repeatedly ignored and glossed over with Obama.

Ditto.

[Defiant]

Does the article say when WJB Jr. returned from WW2?

[COBOL2Java]

Many Germans left to USA and had no love for the Kaiser and serving in the military. My husband’s German family and helping my son do his ancestry project taught me a lot about this.

My grandfather was spirited out of Spain by his uncle after hostilities between it and the US exploded into the Spanish-American War. He was 9 years old at the time. They arrived in Boston.

[independentmind]

Perhaps the Brits don’t realize that Americans don’t put as much emphasis on family history as they do.

[magna carta]

Very interesting

[Verginius Rufus]

It just says he returned after the war...doesn’t give an exact date. The article is worth a look—his personal life was pretty “colorful.” Supposedly Virginia Cassidy, Bill Clinton’s mother, was unaware of Bill Blythe’s three previous marriages. Bill Blythe was still married to wife number 3 when he married her. It’s in Wikipedia as William Jefferson Blythe, Jr.