Letter shows Trump grandfather's plea to stay in Germany
President-elect Donald Trump's grandfather unsuccessfully fought his expulsion from Germany for failing to perform mandatory military service, a handwritten letter found in a German archive shows.
Bild newspaper printed the 1905 letter located by an historian, in which Friedrich Trump wrote to Bavarian Prince Luitpold begging the "well-loved, noble, wise and just" leader not to deport him.
Luitpold rejected the "most subservient request".
Mr Trump's grandfather was born in Kallstadt, then part of Bavaria, and emigrated to the US as a teenager without performing his military service.
It was after he had made his fortune there and tried to resettle in Germany that he was ordered expelled, and returned to the US.
Rhineland-Palatinate state archive spokeswoman Isabell Weisbrod said Friedrich Trump's birth certificate is also in the archive.