BERLIN—An impassioned 111-year-old letter written by Donald Trump’s grandfather appealing his expulsion from his German homeland has turned up in regional German archives. 
 
 In the letter signed by Friedrich Trump, then a newly minted U.S. citizen, he urged the “well-loved, noble, wise and just” Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria to grant his “most subservient request” to remain in the Kingdom of Bavaria with his wife. 
 
 The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, was unearthed in the state archives of Rhineland-Palatinate by a local historian. The mass-market Bild tabloid first printed excerpts from the letter on Monday. 
 
 Letter penned by President-elect Donald Trump's grandfather Friedrich Trump to Leopold, the Prince Regent of the Kingdom of Bavaria, pleading to be allowed to remain in Germany, after being threatened with deportation. Photo: Speyer State Archive 
 
 While it was well-known that Mr. Trump’s grandfather had sought to turn his back on the U.S. almost 20 years after he arrived, this is the first time his actual appeal to permanently return to Germany has emerged. 
 
 Had that appeal succeeded, Friedrich’s time in the U.S. might have remained a footnote in his biography. Instead, the banished patriarch made his way back to America, entered the real-estate business, and put in motion the chain of events that made possible his grandson’s election as the 45th U.S. president. 
 
 His appeal to remain in Germany might not have fallen on deaf ears had Friedrich not set off for the U.S. in 1885 at the age of 16 without leaving behind a security deposit with the government to ensure he would return for compulsory military service, according to the historian Roland Paul. When he later returned to Germany to live with his wife, he was discovered to be a scofflaw by local authorities and ordered out. 
 
 At the time of grandfather Trump’s birth, his hometown of Kallstadt belonged to the then-independent Kingdom of Bavaria, which now makes up a large swath of southern Germany. 
 
 More than a century after his grandfather’s ousting, Mr. Trump has emerged as a withering critic of his ancestral home, lambasting German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her pro-immigrant policies. His sideswipes have left officials in Kallstadt debating whether to congratulate the president-elect. 
 
 The owner of the former Trump family home in the southwestern town put the property on the market to avoid unwanted attention. 
 
 Friedrich Trump set off for America because he couldn’t get a paying job at home as a barber, he told officials from the Kingdom of Bavaria who were investigating his service-dodging in 1905. 
 
 He picked the profession “because I was frail by nature and my mother and I thought that I couldn’t withstand agricultural work,” he said. 
 
 When his time came to serve in the military, the elder Trump was working as an assistant in a New York barbershop and had given up any plans to return to German soil, he told the officials. 
 
 In fact Mr. Trump had returned several times to visit Germany, where he met and later married his wife Elisabeth Trump, nee Christ. He brought his wife back to New York, promising his father-in-law they would return if she didn’t like America. 
 
 This happened in 1904, when the couple went back with their months-old daughter and 80,000 marks, according to Mr. Paul’s research. 
 
 Despite his evident ability to support his family and positive character recommendations, the local authorities seized on his rule-breaking. Mr. Trump’s grandfather was ordered to leave Bavaria and forbidden from visiting the country again. 
 
 Write to Zeke Turner at Zeke.Turner@wsj.com ||||| Trump’s Family Fortune Originated in a Canadian Gold-Rush Brothel Michael Prochazka of Parks Canada, holds a photograph of Front Street in Bennett, British Columbia from 1900. The town is where Donald Trump's grandfather, Friedrich Trump, opened the Arctic Hotel. Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump ran a restaurant, bar, and brothel in British Columbia. 
 
 Buried in a ghost town in Canada’s subarctic are the roots of the family fortune that paved Donald Trump’s path to prominence. 
 
 Only shards of glass bottles remain on the lake shore in Bennett, British Columbia—remnants perhaps of the lively establishment operated by Trump’s grandfather that was known for good food, booze and ready women. A church sits further up the slope, its lonely spire peeking out from a thicket of pines. 
 
 Friedrich Trump, circa 1918. Source: Wikipedia 
 
 Bennett was once a thriving transit point for prospectors in the Klondike gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, and Friedrich Trump made a killing running a restaurant and bar. The nest egg he generated in just two years grew into the fortune that has supported his grandson’s bid for the U.S. presidency. 
 
 “Who else can say that someone running for president of the United States of America owes his fortune to your hometown?,” says Scott Etches, 55, a shop owner hawking Trump t-shirts in Whitehorse, Yukon, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Bennett. “It doesn’t matter whether you support or oppose Trump. It’s actually a great history.” 
 
 More than a century after Trump’s grandfather left the Yukon, Canadian developers and entrepreneurs are torn over whether to exploit the connection to one of the most recognized surnames on the planet. A luxury wilderness resort is planned for Bennett, complete with a lodge that would look just like Trump’s watering hole. 
 
 “There’s so much history, so many stories around here—Trump is just one of them,” says Nelson Lepine, who runs the development arm of an indigenous group leading the project. 
 
 The Trump family’s gold-rush story began when Fred, as he was known, left Germany at the age of 16 with little more than a suitcase. He headed to New York to work as a barber before venturing west in search of riches. Following stints in Seattle and now-defunct Monte Cristo, the gold fever carried him to Bennett, where he and partner Ernest Levin built the Arctic Restaurant, which touted itself as the best-equipped in town. 
 
 It was open around the clock with “private boxes for ladies and parties,” according to an advertisement in the Dec. 9, 1899 edition of the Bennett Sun newspaper. The boxes typically included a bed and scale for weighing gold dust used to pay for “services,” according to a three-generational biography by Gwenda Blair, who traced the origins of the Trump family’s wealth. Of course, in the rough-and-tumble frontier towns of that era, the Arctic’s business model built on food, booze and sex was common. 
 
 The new central guest lodge that will open to the public in Bennett. Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg 
 
 The Arctic sat a stone’s throw from Bennett Lake in the heart of the township, amid a row of similar establishments and a sea of white canvas tents set up by prospectors. It was constructed of milled lumber and stocked fresh oysters, extravagant luxuries in a place where supplies were brought over arduous overland routes. 
 
 “I would advise respectable women travelling alone, or with an escort, to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett,” according to a letter penned by “The Pirate” in the Yukon Sun on April 17, 1900. For single men, the Arctic offered excellent accommodations but women should avoid it “as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex.” 
 
 Trump quickly saw where the real profits lay amid the gold-rush frenzy. An estimated 100,000 prospectors set out for the Klondike, of which only a third actually made it, and a mere 4 percent ever struck gold. Given those odds, Trump’s willingness to lay down his pick was “a shrewd move," according to Blair. “He was mining the miners.” 
 
 Bennett was a key hub for prospectors, who trudged from Alaska across frozen mountains and floated rickety rafts down the treacherous rapids of the Yukon River to Dawson City in search of elusive gold. The town lost its allure with the construction of a railway link from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, allowing miners to bypass Bennett. 
 
 In response, Trump dismantled the restaurant and its precious lumber and rebuilt it in Whitehorse. A photo in Blair’s book shows a mustachioed Fred Trump in a white apron. He’s standing at the bar near a wall of drapes behind which women, known as “sporting ladies,” entertained miners in privacy. 
 
 Trump was a rich man when he left Whitehorse in 1901 to return to his native Kallstadt, Germany, where he later deposited savings of 80,000 marks in the village treasury, Blair recounts. Unable to regain German citizenship, he returned to New York with his riches. That amount—equivalent in purchasing power to about half a million euros in 2014—ended up funding the Trump family’s first residential real estate investments in the New York area, later carried on by his son Fred and grandson Donald. 
 
 Trump, who claims in his memoir that his grandfather was Swedish, told the New York Times in August that Blair’s portrayal of Friedrich’s business was “totally false.” Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, didn’t reply to two voice mails and an e-mail requesting comment. 
 
 Clockwise from top left: A float plane in dock at Yukon River south of Whitehorse; St. Andrew's Church built in 1899 stands in the abandoned gold rush town of Bennett; Hiking the Chilkoot Trail in Bennett; Various liquor bottles and glass from the late 1800's lay on the ground in the abandoned gold rush town of Bennett. Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg 
 
 The Yukon’s rolling hills, cerulean lakes and aurora displays have long been a magnet for intrepid travelers, canoeists and hunters on pricey expeditions. Capitalizing on its indigenous history and links to a business tycoon like Trump could forge a tourist mecca, according to a 2014 plan drafted by the economic development arm of a First Nation community, the Carcross Tagish Management Corp., along with the Parks Canada government agency. 
 
 Justin Ferbey, then-chief executive officer of the Carcross group who is now Yukon’s deputy minister of economic development, said he tried to get a resort proposal into Donald Trump’s hands. The plans called for a luxury wilderness camp in Bennett, including a replica of the Arctic Restaurant to serve as the central guest lodge. 
 
 Trump either didn’t bite or never saw it, though the project has proceeded without him. Four wooden platforms overlooking the lake are nearly complete and will be fitted with luxury tents housing antique furnishings, wrought-iron bed frames, and high-end mattresses. Guests, limited to eight at a time, will dine at a central guest lodge with a modern kitchen made of old-growth fir reclaimed from a Klondike mine. A four-day, all-inclusive package—including a float plane transfer—is tentatively priced at C$1,675 ($1,250) a person. A soft opening is planned for next summer with full operations by 2018. 
 
 A valley near the Chilkoot Trail south of Carcross, Yukon, Canada. Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg 
 
 “They’ll be wined and dined; we’ll serve top-notch foods. But you’ll still be connected to nature—there’ll only be one piece of canvas between you and the bears,” says Lepine, CEO of Carcross Tagish. “It’s the kind of experience people are really seeking out.” 
 
 Lepine and Michael Prochazka, a product development officer at Parks Canada, aren’t as keen as their predecessors to play the Trump card. The central lodge with its arched facade, gabled roof, scrollwork and pine cladding bears a striking resemblance to photos of Trump’s eatery. Prochazka says it’s not a replica of the Arctic, more an archetype of designs common at the time. 
 
 The ‘Arctic Restaurant’ shop in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. The shop is in the same location that Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump owned and operated a hotel and restaurant under the same name. Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg 
 
 Meanwhile in Whitehorse, Etches has a different take on the Trump connection potential. In a shopping mall on the site of the former transplanted restaurant, he’s rented a tiny storefront called “The Arctic.” A sign outside notes the birthplace of the Trump family fortune. Inside, he sells T-shirts, black and white prints, and posters like “The Arctic Under New Management. No Liquor, Whores or Gambling Until Further Notice.” 
 
 While Etches acknowledges that sales fall “a bit short” of covering his C$200 in monthly rent, he still believes the Trump story is a potential boon for the region. 
 
 “We could get every single American tourist on the Alaskan highway pulling over just to see where that fortune was made,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether they support or oppose Trump. They’d still come off the highway and spend money.” 
 
 (Corrects date of opening photograph.) ||||| Friedrich Trump faced a deportation order, fighting it for months in the early years of last century before losing a legal struggle, the mass-circulation newspaper "Bild" reported on Monday, citing a historical document found in Donald Trump's ancestral town of Kallstadt, southwest Germany. 
 
 The grandfather of the future US president left the city at the age of 16, first arriving in New York in 1885 and later moving further west during the Gold Rush era. There, he made his money running taverns and a brothel. 
 
 He returned to Kallstadt as a wealthy man in 1901 and met his future wife Elisabeth Christ. The two married and moved to New York in 1902, but returned to Kallstadt two years later, with Elisabeth complaining of extreme homesickness. 
 
 Kallstadt's current population is around 1,200 inhabitants 
 
 According to Monday's report, the authorities soon discovered that Friedrich Trump had never performed the mandatory military service before leaving Germany. Another problem, according to local historian Roland Paul, was that Trump never officially unregistered from his hometown. 
 
 The German-born businessman was banned from "reclaiming his citizenship in 1905," Paul said. 
 
 Letter to the prince 
 
 Trump was labeled a draft-dodger and officials ordered him to leave the Kingdom of Bavaria, which at the time included Kallstadt. The town is currently part of the Rhineland-Palatinate state. 
 
 "The American citizen and pensioner Friedrich Trump, currently residing in Kallstadt, is hereby informed that he is to depart the state of Bavaria, or face deportation," authorities said in a document dated in February 1905. 
 
 Historian Roland Paul also found a letter that Friedrich Trump sent to the Bavarian prince regent Luitpold a few months later, imploring the "well-loved, noble, wise and just" prince to heed his "most modest plea" and allow him to stay in Germany. The court denied the request. 
 
 The move forced the Trumps to leave Germany for good in July 1905, and return to New York. Elisabeth Trump was pregnant at the time. Three months after their return to the US, she had Fred Trump, who grew up to become a real-estate magnate and the father of the current President-elect Donald Trump. 
 
 Watch video 04:10 Now live 04:10 mins. Share Donald Trump's roots in Kallstadt Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1HnLc Donald Trump's roots in Kallstadt 
 
 dj/kl (AP, dpa) ||||| Royal decree ordered Friedrich Trump to leave Bavaria and never come back after he failed to do military service 
 
 A historian has discovered a royal decree issued to Donald Trump’s grandfather ordering him to leave Germany and never come back. 
 
 Friedrich Trump, a German, was issued with the document in February 1905, and ordered to leave the kingdom of Bavaria within eight weeks as punishment for having failed to do mandatory military service and failing to give authorities notice of his departure to the US when he first emigrated in 1885. 
 
 Kallstadt, Germany: on the trail of 'the Donald' in the Trump ancestral home Read more 
 
 Roland Paul, a historian from Rhineland-Palatinate who found the document in local archives, told the tabloid Bild: “Friedrich Trump emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1885. However, he failed to de-register from his homeland and had not carried out his military service, which is why the authorities rejected his attempt at repatriation.” 
 
 The decree orders the “American citizen and pensioner Friedrich Trump” to leave the area “at the very latest on 1 May ... or else expect to be deported”. Bild called the archive find an “unspectacular piece of paper”, that had nevertheless “changed world history”. 
 
 Trump was born in Kallstadt, now in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in 1869. He emigrated to the US aged 16 initially to escape poverty, attracted by the gold rush. 
 
 
 
 
 
 He quickly turned his attention to catering for the masses of other gold hunters in Alaska, later allegedly running a brothel for them, and there made his fortune. He habitually sent the gold nuggets with which his customers regularly paid for their food to his sisters who had already emigrated to New York and had started trading in property. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump in the 1987 with his father, Fred, son of Friedrich. Photograph: NY Daily News via Getty Images 
 
 Returning on a visit to Kallstadt in 1901, Trump fell in love with Elisabeth Christ, whom he married a year later, returning with her to the US. But when she became homesick and wanted to return to Germany, the authorities blocked his attempts to settle there. 
 
 Trump transition goes on after weekend meeting potential appointees – live Read more 
 
 In an effort to overturn the royal decree dated 27 February 1905, Trump wrote an obsequious letter appealing to Prince Regent Luitpold, addressing him as “the much-loved, noble, wise and righteous sovereign and sublime ruler”. 
 
 But the prince rejected the appeal and the Trumps left Germany for New York with their daughter on the Hapag steamship Pennsylvania on 1 July 1905. Elisabeth was three months pregnant with Donald Trump’s father, Fred. 
 
 Residents of Kallstadt, a small wine-growing town of about 1,200 people in south-west Germany, joke that the blame for Trump becoming US president-elect lies with the German authorities who threw his grandfather out. They have so far shown little enthusiasm for claiming the businessman turned politician as their own.
– It's being called a document that "changed world history," at least as of Nov. 8. Germany's Bild reports historian Roland Paul has uncovered the 1905 decree that banished Donald Trump's grandfather from Germany. The Guardian has the timeline: In 1885, a then 16-year-old Friedrich Trump left Germany for the US and ended up finding a fortune among the Alaska gold rush (as Bloomberg explains, it wasn't gold, but a restaurant/brothel that brought him riches). He returned to his hometown of Kallstadt in 1901, where he a year later married Elisabeth Christ. The couple's subsequent time in New York City was short-lived: Elisabeth pined for Germany, but Trump found himself unable to return permanently, done in by his having not performed mandatory military service or alerted officials to his 1885 emigration. The February 1905 decree gave Trump eight weeks to leave the Kingdom of Bavaria or else face deportation. On the 27th of that month, Trump appealed to Prince Regent Luitpold, sending the "much-loved, noble, wise and righteous sovereign and sublime ruler" a "most modest plea," reports Deutsche Welle, to no avail. In the letter, Trump explained he originally left for America after being unable to find work as a barber in his homeland. The Wall Street Journal, which obtained a copy of the letter, reports that Trump should have in 1885 left a security deposit behind; such deposits were meant to ensure people would return for their mandatory military service, and he would have had it returned upon doing his military duty. On July 1, 1905, a three-months-pregnant Elisabeth, Trump, and their daughter sailed for New York. That unborn child would be Fred, Donald Trump's father.