What was the profession of Trump's profession recorded on the official documents when he emigrated?
Executive summary
Frederick (Friedrich) Trump—Donald Trump’s grandfather—was recorded as a “hotelkeeper” on a U.S. passport application he filed in New York in May 1904, a contemporaneous official document cited in modern accounts [1]. His broader life trajectory—emigration in 1885, business activities in the United States, and later confrontation with Bavarian authorities—appears across multiple sources and provides context for that occupational listing [1] [2] [3].
1. How the question narrows: which “Trump” and which document
The reporting provided centers on Friedrich (Frederick) Trump, born 1869 in Kallstadt, who emigrated from Bavaria to the United States in 1885 at age 16 and later sought documents as an American citizen; the passport application from May 1904 is the clearly referenced official record in which his occupation is explicitly stated [1] [2]. The materials do not offer an alternative “official” emigration-era labor designation from 1885 itself, so the 1904 passport entry is the most direct contemporaneous occupational statement available in these sources [1].
2. The explicit occupational entry: “hotelkeeper” on the 1904 passport application
When Frederick Trump applied for a U.S. passport in New York in May 1904—while traveling with his wife and daughter—he listed his profession as “hotelkeeper,” a fact reported in biographical summaries and encyclopedia entries that cite the passport application [1]. That single-word occupational designation on an official travel document is the clearest statement of how he identified his trade to U.S. authorities at that moment [1].
3. Business activities that support the “hotelkeeper” label—and the limits of those labels
Contemporaneous and later accounts depict Trump as engaged in hospitality and catering-related enterprises after arriving in America—reports note that he “carried on [his] business with diligence” and became prosperous, and other reporting ties his income stream to servicing gold rush populations in Alaska—activities consistent with operating hotels, restaurants and related establishments, which helps explain the “hotelkeeper” description on his passport [2] [3]. At the same time, historians have documented contentious aspects of his enterprises in frontier boomtowns—summaries reference catering and alleged brothel operations during the Klondike/Alaska period—so the single-word occupational entry on a passport simplifies a more complex set of business activities [3].
4. Conflicting administrative findings in Germany and what they show about official records
Bavarian authorities later treated Friedrich Trump as having illegally emigrated in 1885 to avoid two years of mandatory military service and formally labeled him a draft dodger; a royal decree in February 1905 ordered him to leave Bavaria, showing that German administrative records recorded his emigration and military-service status in punitive terms even as U.S. paperwork described him as a hotelkeeper [1] [3]. These contrasting official stances—U.S. passport occupation versus Bavarian deportation/repatriation rulings—underscore that different governments recorded different facts about the same person depending on legal, administrative, and political priorities [1] [3].
5. Direct answer and caveats
Directly: on the U.S. passport application filed in New York in May 1904—an official document cited in the provided reporting—Frederick (Friedrich) Trump listed his profession as “hotelkeeper” [1]. The sources do not supply an 1885 emigration-era U.S. arrival form with a different occupational entry in the provided set, nor do they claim the passport term captures every dimension of his business ventures; contemporaneous narratives and later historians show a portfolio of hospitality-related activities in North America that contextualize but do not contradict the passport’s “hotelkeeper” designation [2] [3].