Overview

• Merz presented Trump with a facsimile of his grandfather’s 1869 birth certificate from Kallstadt to underscore shared German-American heritage.
• He also gifted a golf club engraved with the flags of Germany and the USA, which Trump immediately tested in the Oval Office.
• In return, Trump gave Merz a flight jacket and a copy of the Wright brothers’ 1903 flying-machine patent as tokens of mutual respect.
• Historical records show Friedrich Trump emigrated from Germany at 16 and built business ventures that laid the foundation for the family’s later fortune.
• It emerged that Trump had already received an identical copy of the birth certificate in 2017, prompting questions about the gift’s originality.