To date, the United States has had only three presidents of Germanic heritage. Besides Donald J. Trump, perhaps the best known was Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower (1890-1969, originally Eisenhauer), the 34th president of the United States (“I like Ike”). Before Ike there was the 31st president, Herbert Hoover (1874-1964, originally Huber).

Until fairly recently, Donald Trump, the 45th US president, claimed he was Swedish, not German. In his ghostwritten Art of the Deal (1987) he made the false claim that the Trumps were originally from Sweden. In fact Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s. Rather ironic, considering his anti-immigrant stance as president. His German grandfather, Friedrich Trump, left Kallstadt, a small wine-growing town in the Palatinate, in what is now the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, to avoid the draft. (Like grandfather, like grandson.)

Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz at a Democratic presidential campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords is on the left. PHOTO: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

However, if the current 41st governor of Minnesota, Timothy James Walz, wins the 2024 election as Kamala Harris’s vice president, he would become the first German American US vice president[1], and it is possible he could later become the fourth US president of German heritage.

Tim Walz’s German Roots
Governor Walz, who was born in West Point, Nebraska (pop. 3,504) on 6 April 1964, has fairly recent German ancestors. His paternal great-great-grandfather came to the US from what is now Germany. Sebastian Waltz (1843-1915), was born in Kuppenheim, Amt Rastatt, Grand Duchy of Baden. In Sebastian’s Catholic birth and christening records his family name appears as Waltz, ending with tz. At some point after Sebastian’s arrival in America, the t in the Waltz name disappeared.

The Walz/Waltz Surname
The German family name Walz or Waltz is derived from a nickname for the male given-name Walther (VAHL-ter). Other variations of this surname are Waltke, Walzel, and Walzer. The German pronunciation of Walz/Waltz is VAHLTS, but the American pronunciation is WALLS.
SOURCE: Duden | Familiennamen: Herkunft und Bedeutung (2005), bearbeitet von Rosa und Volker Kohlheim

In 1871 Sebastian Waltz married Mary Anna Berger (1850-1926), who was born in Montréal, Québec, Canada, to Prussian parents. Soon after their marriage, Sebastian and Mary moved to Illinois, where they resided until 1876. Following some time in Iowa, the growing Walz family moved to Nebraska in 1883, finally settling in Lawrence. Their son, John Friederich Walz (1874-1961), Tim Walz’s great-grandfather, had been born in Freeport, Illinois.

John F. Walz, as John Friederich was known most of his life (and on his gravestone), married Laura Ella Sullivan. Their son, Tim’s paternal grandfather, was Raymond Anthony Walz (1904-1988), born in Nebraska. Raymond Anthony Walz married Myrtle Viola Samuelson/Samelson (1897-1987). She was of Swedish ancestry. Their son, James Frederick Walz (1929-1984), Tim Walz’s father, was born in Cedar County, Nebraska.

Tim Walz in 2013, when he was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota’s 1st congressional district. In 2005 Walz won his first-term election to Congress against his Republican fellow German American opponent Gil Gutknecht with 53% of the vote. In January 2019 Tim Walz became Minnesota’s 41st governor. PHOTO: United States Congress

James Walz married Darlene Rose Reiman (b. 1935) at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic church, in Butte, Nebraska, on 9 August 1955. Darlene Rose is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Reiman of Butte, both of whom have German or Luxembourgish ancestry.

Their son, Timothy James Walz, was born in 1964. He grew up in the towns of Valentine and Butte, Nebraska. Tim Walz married Gwen Whipple (b. 1966) on 4 June 1994, with whom he has two children, Gus (17) and Hope (23). Unlike his Catholic Walz ancestors, Tim and his wife are Lutherans. Although descended from a long line of Catholics, and raised in that faith, Tim Walz adopted his wife’s Lutheran faith. They moved to Minnesota in 1996. Walz often touts his “Minnesota Lutheran” faith. About 20 percent of Minnesotans are Lutheran, owing to a past influx of German and Scandinavian immigrants who were mostly Lutheran.

Tim Walz’s Ethnicity
The bottom line summary of Tim Walz’s ancestry: 50 percent German, 25 percent Swedish, 12.5 percent Luxembourgish[2], and 12.5 percent Irish.

Tim Walz: Personal
Tim Walz had two brothers (Jeff and Craig) and a sister (Sandy), but Craig Walz, a teacher, died in 2016 as the result of a serious accident during a strong storm while on a family camping trip in Minnesota. Craig’s son Jacob was also injured, but he recovered. Tim Walz’s father, James, died of lung cancer when Tim was 19.

1989 was a significant year for Tim Walz. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Chadron State College in Nebraska, and later traveled to China. He spent a year in Guangdong, China teaching English and American history. Over the years he has returned to China some 30 times as part of a student travel program that was inspired by his first trip (and his first international flight).

Although his China connection has led to false accusations from some Republicans (being a “pro-China Marxist” is just one of the stupidest), more reasonable people view his China experience as positive, providing an international perspective for a possible future vice president.

Walz has clarified past misleading statements about him being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989, saying that he was in the country later that year. He witnessed the political turmoil that followed the massacre. The student-led demonstrations in Hong Kong left an “enduring influence” on him, as he described it in a 2014 congressional hearing. More recently, he also criticized China for not opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine. He has no illusions, but insists that it is important to separate China’s government from its people.

For eleven years Walz and his wife ran Educational Travel Adventures, offering high-school students summer field trips to China from 1994 to 2005. His mission was to bring his geography lessons to life for his students, visiting historic sites such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, but also playing soccer with Chinese students and sharing train compartments with Chinese passengers – while traveling from Hong Kong to Beijing.

Walz was so influenced by China that he and his wife were married in 1994 on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, on June 4th. That summer’s China field trip with students doubled as their honeymoon.

Tim Walz’s Career
Before going into politics, Tim Walz worked in manufacturing, and as a teacher and football coach. Only a day after he turned 17, in 1981, Walz had joined the Army National Guard. He served 24 years in the Guard before resigning in May 2005 with the rank of master sergeant. In February 2005, Walz had submitted official documents to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota’s 1st congressional district.

Walz ran unopposed as a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) in the 2006 primary election. In the general election, in a district that was mostly Republican-leaning independents, he faced six-term incumbent Republican Gil Gutknecht. The main focus of Walz’s campaign was opposition to the Iraq War, as the war’s popularity was declining that year. Walz won the election with 53 percent of the vote, and began his first congressional term in 2007. When he ran for a second term in 2008, he got 62 percent of the vote, becoming only the second non-Republican to win a second full term in the district. He would serve a total of six terms in Congress until 2019, when he decided to run for the office of Minnesota’s governor.

Governor Tim Walz
In March 2017 Walz had announced he would run for governor after Mark Dayton, the Democratic governor, decided not to seek a third term. Walz ended up facing two opponents in the Democratic primary: state representative Erin Murphy and state Attorney General Lori Swanson. But he managed to defeat Murphy and Swanson in the August primary election. On 6 November 2018 Walz was elected governor, defeating the Republican candidate, Hennepin County commissioner Jeff Johnson, with a 53.84 percent share of the vote. Tim Walz was sworn in as Minnesota’s 41st governor on 7 January 2019.

Tim Walz (right) and JD Vance during the Vice Presidential Debate hosted by CBS News on 1 October 2024. PHOTO: CBS News

In his inauguration speech, the former teacher highlighted education and healthcare reform. During his time as governor, Walz had to deal with the impact of the 25 May 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan demanded justice and called the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck “disturbing”. Walz added, “The lack of humanity in this disturbing video is sickening. We will get answers and seek justice”.

Governor Walz had to order two special sessions of the Minnesota legislature in June and July 2020 before finally being able to sign new laws regarding police reform and accountability. As governor, Walz also supported and signed into law legislation that legalized abortion and promoted women’s healthcare, as well as recreational cannabis use by adults, medical debt relief, paid family leave, a ban on noncompete agreements, increased spending on infrastructure and environmental issues, tax modifications, universal free school meals, and universal gun background checks.

In 2023 Walz was named chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a high-profile position that involves supporting other governors in tight races. He stepped down after being selected as Kamala Harris’s running mate on 6 August 2024. The 60-year-old Walz was initially viewed as a long shot in a field of vice presidential contenders. Harris chose a governing partner who has leaned in at times to a folksy, Midwestern reputation while also proving to be a reliable attack dog against Trump. Harris and Walz also have a certain chemistry. One observer close to the process explained Harris’s thinking this way: “Is this someone who you would want to have lunch with every week for four years?”

FOOTNOTES
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president Harry S. Truman (34th VP) was primarily of English heritage, but he did have at least two German ancestors (Jacob Young/Jung; Rachel Goodnight/Gutknecht), as well as some French and Scottish ancestry. John F. Kennedy’s vice president Lyndon B. Johnson (37th VP) was primarily English-Irish, with some German and Ulster Scots ancestry. Both men became President of the United States following the death of the president they served under.

2. The native language of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch), a Rhinelandic form of German. It is one of the small nation’s three “constitutional” (administrative) languages, along with French and German – by law since 1984. Most Luxembourgers are also bilingual in German and French, with many also able to speak English. Bilingualism in the Grand Duchy dates back at least to the 12th century, when the territory of the Duchy of Luxembourg spread over the traditional Germano-Romance language border. German and French are the primary languages for public service information. German is the main language of the written press and for recording police case files. French is the legislative language. The country’s largest newspaper, the Luxemburger Wort (“Luxembourg word”), founded in 1848, is published online and in print in standard German, with small sections in Luxembourgish and French. There is also a separate English edition, the Luxembourg Times, as well as other editions in Portuguese, French and Italian. About half of the Grand Duchy’s 672,000 residents are foreigners.

Related Pages

AT THE GERMAN WAY

• German Americans – Famous and not-so-famous Americans of German, Austrian, or German-Swiss Ancestry
• Featured Bios: Notable German, Austrian, Swiss, and German American people – Detailed biographies of notable German-speaking people and/or Americans of Germanic heritage
• German-American Day – October 6 | About this special American holiday, its origins and historical background
• Notable Germans, Austrians, Swiss | Brief biographical sketches
• Mini Bios A-Z – Brief biographies of people from the German-speaking world
• Notable Women from Austria, Germany, Switzerland

ON THE WEB

• Harry Truman’s Genealogy – trumanlibrary.gov
• Gwen Walz, Minnesota First Lady – npr.org

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