When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met with President Donald Trump at the White House on June 5, 2025, he presented him with his grandfather’s “birth certificate.”

He told Trump that his grandfather was born in Kallstadt, near Bad Dürkheim, in Rheinland-Pfalz in 1869. The gold-framed document was published in German and a copy of it was produced in English.

As the media widely reported on this, I was struck by the fact, they kept reporting it as an official birth certificate. No doubt, it was simplified for the president to spare him of the technicalities. But as a genealogist, with roots in this very same region the Rheinland-Pfalz, I’m well aware that official birth certificates were not a thing in Germany until civil registration began in the 1870s, after Germany itself was formed in 1871.

So what was this really? At that time, German church records served as official documentation for vital records. This was in fact, a baptism record of Friedrich TRUMP, son of Johannes TRUMP and Katharina KOBER, that was likely reproduced in this form. (Here’s the actual baptism record.)

My Kallstadt connection

Because it’s such a small world, my own family has a link to Kallstadt, the village Trump’s grandfather was born in. There’s no *direct* relationship to Trump as far as I can tell, but there are fascinating connections.

My direct ancestor Anna Eva HÜBNER, born about 1681, who married Johann Georg RIEDL, had a sister Eleonora HÜBNER who married a man from Kallstadt.

Anna Eva and Eleonora were from a nearby village called Ellerstadt. In fact, their father Johannes HÜBNER served as a Lutheran Pastor in Ellerstadt.

Eleonora married Heinrich Lorentz SAUER in Dürkheim. His own father, Elias SAUER, served as Lutheran Pastor of Kallstadt, so it was a marriage between two pastors’ children.

Heinrich Lorenz SAUER was a bricklayer. Some of his children’s godparents (so cousins of mine) were members of the MÜNCH and OTT families, and his daughter married a NEU — all 3 of these families are ancestral families for Trump. Another relative of mine, a HÜBNER, married an ANTHON in Kallstadt, another ancestral family for Trump.

So in a roundabout way, there you go. My ancestors and Trump’s ancestors likely knew each other at least in these tiny villages in the Rheinland-Pfalz. It’s a small world after all.