Episode 2 - The Shicklegrüber Drumpf Weave all Heil the Psychotic Autocrat
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So it is to Germany, and in particular Bavaria we travel. Both Hitler and Trump’s ancestors hail from that state.
However, considering his origin and his early life, it would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely figure to succeed to the mantle of Führer than Adolf Hitler, and so too, it would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely figure to succeed to the mantle of American President than Donald Trump.
History works in strange ways. Hitler’s could have been lumbered with the surname Shicklegrüber —
In German, Shickelgrüber means a digger of drains and Sewers.
Donald Trump’s real surname is Drumpf which has a Teutonic hillbilly origin.
Both Hitler and Trump emerged from the margins of the established elite, carrying the sting of the demeaned outsider. Despite his desperate efforts to project the image of a blue-blooded aristocrat, Trump is not a product of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment. His Germanic roots placed him outside the closed circle of America’s old money—that world of inherited wealth, equestrian estates, and mink and manure prestige. His mother Mary Anne MacLeod was a domestic worker, more about her in a moment.
By invoking his Scots mother, Trump has tried to overcome this sense of alienation and by purchasing a golf course in Scotland he has tried to reinsert himself as an Anglo-Saxon. He has tried very hard to be a WASP.
Like Hitler, he channeled this exclusion into a powerful, vengeful populism. By framing themselves as the champions of the real people against a corrupt and snobbish center, both men turned their status as social outsiders into a weapon. They didn't just want a seat at the table; they wanted to flip it over. This shared resentment provides the fuel for the Traditionalist fire, where the Warrior rises to strike down the very establishment that once looked down on his bloodline.
Furthermore, both Hitler and Trumps’ names are a sleight of hand, a hidden trick, a false identity and the families of both men dreamed up origin myths to obscure dark little secrets.
The reason why the American President’s family were called Drumpf and not Trumpf, was because that’s how people of the Palatine region of Bavarian Germany pronounced their T which sounded like a D, whereas the more metropolitan Prussian or German would say Trumpf, the backwoods Bavarian’s pronounced it Drumpf.
Hitler’s paternal ancestry was one upheaval after another – the men moving from village to village, from one job to another, avoiding firm ties and following a bohemian lifestyle in relations with women. That in essence, was how Trump’s grandfather had lived his life, shuffling back and forth between continents.
Hitler’s grandfather Johan George Hiedler was a wandering man, a miller from lower Austria. After an early marriage doomed by death, he hitched up with a 47 year-old peasant women from the village of Strones, Maria Anna Shicklegrüber – who already had an illegitimate son named Alois.
Anna died in 1847, and Johan Hiedler vanished from record books for 30 years. Then ha reappeared in the town of Weitra in a court case and had changed the spelling of his name from Hiedler, to Hitler. The word has a sharp biting ending which is a linguistic fluke - luckily for little Adolf.
Johan Hitler testified before a notary that he was the father of Alois Shiklegrüber. The priest scratched out the name Shicklegrüber and wrote Alois Hitler. Had the 84 year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize paternity of his stepson Alois – 30 years after the death of the mother – Adolf Hitler would have been called Adolf Shicklegrüber.
When Hitler returned to civilian life, like many veterans, he couldn’t fit in and began to obsess about Germany’s defeat. He developed a fanatical belief that the Germany Army had not been defeated but that it had been stabbed in the back by the political class at home. And at the top of the list of those to blame, were the Jews. For Trump, it's immigrants.
However, considering his origin and his early life, it would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely figure to succeed to the mantle of Führer than Adolf Hitler, and so too, it would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely figure to succeed to the mantle of American President than Donald Trump.
History works in strange ways. Hitler’s could have been lumbered with the surname Shicklegrüber —
In German, Shickelgrüber means a digger of drains and Sewers.
Donald Trump’s real surname is Drumpf which has a Teutonic hillbilly origin.
Both Hitler and Trump emerged from the margins of the established elite, carrying the sting of the demeaned outsider. Despite his desperate efforts to project the image of a blue-blooded aristocrat, Trump is not a product of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment. His Germanic roots placed him outside the closed circle of America’s old money—that world of inherited wealth, equestrian estates, and mink and manure prestige. His mother Mary Anne MacLeod was a domestic worker, more about her in a moment.
By invoking his Scots mother, Trump has tried to overcome this sense of alienation and by purchasing a golf course in Scotland he has tried to reinsert himself as an Anglo-Saxon. He has tried very hard to be a WASP.
Like Hitler, he channeled this exclusion into a powerful, vengeful populism. By framing themselves as the champions of the real people against a corrupt and snobbish center, both men turned their status as social outsiders into a weapon. They didn't just want a seat at the table; they wanted to flip it over. This shared resentment provides the fuel for the Traditionalist fire, where the Warrior rises to strike down the very establishment that once looked down on his bloodline.
Furthermore, both Hitler and Trumps’ names are a sleight of hand, a hidden trick, a false identity and the families of both men dreamed up origin myths to obscure dark little secrets.
The reason why the American President’s family were called Drumpf and not Trumpf, was because that’s how people of the Palatine region of Bavarian Germany pronounced their T which sounded like a D, whereas the more metropolitan Prussian or German would say Trumpf, the backwoods Bavarian’s pronounced it Drumpf.
Hitler’s paternal ancestry was one upheaval after another – the men moving from village to village, from one job to another, avoiding firm ties and following a bohemian lifestyle in relations with women. That in essence, was how Trump’s grandfather had lived his life, shuffling back and forth between continents.
Hitler’s grandfather Johan George Hiedler was a wandering man, a miller from lower Austria. After an early marriage doomed by death, he hitched up with a 47 year-old peasant women from the village of Strones, Maria Anna Shicklegrüber – who already had an illegitimate son named Alois.
Anna died in 1847, and Johan Hiedler vanished from record books for 30 years. Then ha reappeared in the town of Weitra in a court case and had changed the spelling of his name from Hiedler, to Hitler. The word has a sharp biting ending which is a linguistic fluke - luckily for little Adolf.
Johan Hitler testified before a notary that he was the father of Alois Shiklegrüber. The priest scratched out the name Shicklegrüber and wrote Alois Hitler. Had the 84 year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize paternity of his stepson Alois – 30 years after the death of the mother – Adolf Hitler would have been called Adolf Shicklegrüber.
When Hitler returned to civilian life, like many veterans, he couldn’t fit in and began to obsess about Germany’s defeat. He developed a fanatical belief that the Germany Army had not been defeated but that it had been stabbed in the back by the political class at home. And at the top of the list of those to blame, were the Jews. For Trump, it's immigrants.
