Trump Family Patriarch Friedrich: Patriotic Pimp

The story of our Patriotic Pimp (PP) begins with Fritz fleeing Germany to avoid military conscription. He made his way to New York and eventually wandered west to Seattle, where he operated an eatery. Then came the Klondike Gold Rush. After reading the equivalent of a nineteenth-century financial clickbait headline—“Gold! Gold! Gold!”—Fritz packed his bags and headed for Yukon, Canada.

There, he struck gold. Well, technically, he struck something else first.

Fritz made his fortune operating a brothel—also known as a whorehouse—for miners in Whitehorse. Because apparently when you're trying to build a diversified business empire, prostitution is just another vertical.

His Whitehorse establishment also included an eatery. And in a shining example of Fritz’s commitment to affordable dining, he reportedly served meat obtained from local game and roadkill. Nothing says “Fine Dining in the Yukon” quite like a steaming bowl of roadkill stew featuring a hoary marmot, a large ground squirrel that presumably never dreamed it would one day become an entrée.

And when it came time for the miners to settle their bills for the prostitution and gourmet cuisine, Fritz demonstrated the sort of entrepreneurial foresight that would presumably make later generations of Trumps proud. He accepted gold as payment—and conveniently had a gold-weighing scale right on the premises.

Efficiency!

Eventually, Fritz amassed a fortune reportedly worth several hundred thousand dollars and returned to Germany. There, he wooed and eventually married Elizabeth Christ, despite strenuous objections from her wealthy and socially prominent family.

Holy Christ—did Fritz hit the jackpot or what?

Fritz and his new bride returned to New York, but homesickness soon got the better of them, and they moved back to Germany in 1904. Unfortunately for Fritz, the Bavarian authorities were less than thrilled to see him. Having previously left Germany to avoid mandatory military service, he was denied permission to remain and was ultimately forced to leave.

And so, the family patriarch was sent packing.

Suffice it to say, had Fritz not pursued his remarkably unconventional path to prosperity—combining prostitution, questionable cuisine, gold payments, and a convenient weighing scale—we might never have enjoyed the spectacle of his grandson, Donald Trump, making his own attempts to audition for the family legacy.

From Yukon brothel proprietor to presidential patriarch, Fritz Trump certainly left behind an unusual entrepreneurial blueprint.

Some families pass down recipes. The Trumps apparently passed down a business model.