Fred Trump

Friedrich returned to Kallstadt in 1901, and, by the next year, met and married Elizabeth Christ.

They moved to New York City, where their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1904.

Later that year, the family returned to Kallstadt.

Fred was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to re-establish residency, but Friedrich was banished for dodging the draft.

Frederick Christ Trump Sr. (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999) was an American real-estate developer and businessman.

The family returned to New York on July 1, 1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Frederick Christ Trump was born on October 11.

Fred's younger brother, John G. Trump, was born in 1907.

All three children were raised speaking German.

In September 1908, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens.

Many details of Trump's childhood come from autobiographical accounts and emphasize independence, learning and especially hard work – to the point of being somewhat fictionalized.

At the age of 10, Trump worked as a delivery boy for a butcher.

About two years later, on Memorial Day, his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic, according to Fred quite suddenly.

From 1918 to 1923, Fred attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens, while working as a caddy, curb whitewasher, delivery boy, and newspaper hawker.

Meanwhile, his mother continued the real-estate business Frederick had begun.

Interested in becoming a builder, Fred put up a garage for a neighbor and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints; he reputedly studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses, although other biographical sources limit his construction education to the period after high school when he was also working in the field.

Born in the Bronx to German immigrants, Trump began working in home construction and sales in the 1920s before heading the real-estate business started by his parents (later known as the Trump Organization).

His company rose to success, building and managing single-family houses in Queens, apartments for war workers on the East Coast during World War II, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City overall.

After graduating in January 1923, Trump obtained full-time work pulling lumber to construction sites.

He studied carpentry and became a carpenter's assistant.

Trump's mother held the business in her name until he reached 21, the age of majority.

The company name "E. Trump & Son" appeared in advertising by 1924, by which year Trump ostensibly used an $800 loan from his mother to complete and sell his first house.

Trump purportedly built 19 more homes by 1926 in Hollis, Queens, selling some before they were finished to finance others.

In 1927, Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan parade; there is no conclusive evidence that he supported the organization.

From World War II onwards, to avoid associations with Nazism, Trump denied his German ancestry and also supported Jewish causes.

Trump's father, the German American Friedrich Trump, amassed considerable wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant and brothel for the miners.

Public records, however, do not support him building until 1927, the year the company was incorporated (and following Trump's 21st birthday).

In 1933, Trump built one of New York City's first modern supermarkets, called Trump Market, in Woodhaven, Queens.

It was modeled on Long Island's King Kullen, a self-service supermarket chain.

Trump's store advertised "Serve Yourself and Save!"

and quickly became popular.

After six months, Trump sold it to King Kullen.

Investigative journalist Wayne Barrett posits that Trump exaggerated the length of his career in 1934 while arguing in federal court why he should deserve a dissolved company's mortgage servicer.

In federal court in 1934, Trump and a partner acquired the mortgage-servicing subsidiary of Brooklyn's J. Lehrenkrauss Corporation, which had gone bankrupt and had subsequently been broken up.

This gave Trump access to the titles of many properties nearing foreclosure, which he bought at low cost and sold at a profit.

He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

Trump was investigated for profiteering by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 and again by New York State in 1966.

Donald Trump became the president of his father's real-estate business in 1971.

Two years later, they were sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for apparent racial discrimination against black people.

In 1992 Fred and Donald set up a subsidiary which was evidently used to funnel Fred's finances to his surviving children; shortly before his death, Fred transferred the ownership of most of his apartment buildings to his children, who several years later sold them for over 16 times their previously declared worth.

Contradicting Donald Trump's claim that he built a multibillion-dollar company using "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father, in 2018 The New York Times reported that Fred and his wife, Mary Trump, provided over $1 billion (in 2018 currency) to their children overall, avoiding over $500 million in gift taxes.