\u201cWhy 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\u2014not to mention the great material losses it would incur.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 110 years have passed\u00a0since a\u00a0hand-written letter was penned by a fearful citizen begging not to be deported from the country he called home. That man\u00a0was\u00a0Friedrich Trump, grandfather of President Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter, originally unearthed by a German tabloid magazine in November,\u00a0has been translated in its entirety in Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1905, Friedrich wrote the heartbreaking letter to Luitpold, prince regent of Bavaria, begging the royal to spare\u00a0his family\u00a0the pain of exile.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was born in Kallstadt on March 14, 1869,\u201d Friedrich explained. \u201cMy parents were honest, plain, pious vineyard workers. They strictly held me to everything good\u2014to diligence and piety, to regular attendance in school and church, to absolute obedience toward the high authority.\u201d<\/p>\n In his letter, Friedrich wrote he left his home of Kallstadt in 1885 at the age of 16 to emigrate to America. \u201cIn America I carried on my business with diligence, discretion, and prudence. God\u2019s blessing was with me, and I became rich. I obtained American citizenship in 1892,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n However, in 1902 he met his wife, who couldn\u2019t tolerate the harsh climate in New York. So they headed home\u00a0to Kallstadt. But the\u00a0family did not receive the warm welcome they expected from their government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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 the Kingdom of Bavaria.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Like many U.S. citizens currently facing the same potential\u00a0fate, Friedrich wrote that he and his family were overcome with anxiety and fright.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy 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\u2014not to mention the great material losses it would incur. I would like to become a Bavarian citizen again,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n He then ended his letter and simply signed, \u201cYour most humble and obedient, Friedrich Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Image via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhy 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\u2014not to mention the great material losses it would incur.\u201d More than 110 years have passed\u00a0since a\u00a0hand-written letter was penned by a fearful citizen begging not to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}