How Did the Trump Family First Make Their Fortune?

Video Description

Regardless of your politics, I think we can all agree that Donald Trump is by no means a humble man, and he’d be the first to admit that the Trump Family comprises something of a rich and powerful dynasty. As it turns out though, Trump’s wealth and influence can all be traced back to a bizarre confluence of good fortune that befell, ironically, an unemployed barber who immigrant to the United States to find work- his grandfather, Frederick Trump. Born in 1869 in a small village located in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria called, Kallstadt, Frederick (who went by the decidedly more German sounding “Friedrich” prior to moving to the states) had a fairly humble upbringing. One of 6 children, he was the son of not terribly well off grape growers in the region. Matters got worse for the family in 1877 when Fred’s father, Johannes, died at the age of 48, leaving a wife, 6 children, and quite a bit of debt. To get by, five of the six children were expected to work the fields, but it was decided by his mother, Katharina, that Frederick lacked the physical constitution for manual labor, being a sickly child. Instead, the decision was made by his mother for him to do something a little less labor intensive, and thus, she sent him off to apprentice as a barber in 1883. The young Trump was just 14 at the time. By all accounts Friedrich was an eager student of the trade, working almost literally every day for two years straight to hone his hair care craft. However, upon completing his training and returning to his small village, Friedrich found that Kallstadt simply did not have enough people living there for him to support himself as a barber. It was at this point that he decided that he, like so many immigrants before and after him, would seek work and his fortune in the land of opportunity- the United States.