Donald Trump has long enjoyed presenting himself as a self-made man, claiming the real estate portfolio that brought him wealth and fame is the product of hard graft and vision, nothing more.

“I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of $1m...” he told NBC's Today, without irony, on the campaign trail in 2015.

But The New York Times’s report that the president allegedly participated in “dubious tax schemes” to conceal up to $413m gifted to him and his siblings by their late father Fred Trump has again cast the harsh light of day on the Trump fortune and its backstory.

Frederick Christ Trump (yes, you read that right) built up a huge property empire in the mid-20th century, incorporating 27,000 apartments and row houses in the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, while the young Donald was raised in a 23-room, nine bathroom mansion in the leafy middle-class suburb of Jamaica Estates, making a nonsense of his claim to have sprung from hardship.

Fred was born in 1905, the son of German immigrant Frederick Drumpf (a family name the satirist John Oliver has delighted in), who had arrived in New York on 19 October 1885 from Kallstadt via Bremen, a 16-year-old seeking to evade military conscription.

Drumpf initially settled in the Big Apple before relocating to Seattle and then moving on to the Yukon Territory to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush, where he operated restaurants serving horse meat and a string of brothels catering to itinerant miners venturing in from the cold.

A wealthy man, Frederick married Elizabeth Christ in 1902 and returned to New York where he worked as a hotel keeper and where their son Fred was raised in the Bronx.

Fred Trump started his first business venture at 15 in 1920, building garage extensions to existing houses as the automobile’s future at the heart of American life was becoming increasingly clear. Too young to sign the cheques, he became partners with his mother in Elizabeth Trump & Son. He built his first house two years after leaving high school.

Taking advantage of the Great Depression, when Franklin D Roosevelt’s government was doing all it could to bolster the construction and home financing industries, Fred Trump gradually grew his business throughout the 1930s to the 1950s by borrowing from the Federal Housing Authority and making influential friends among the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

His properties were “plain but sturdy brick rental towers, clustered together in immaculately groomed parks”, as his New York Times obituary put it, selling for $3,990 and spread across the low-income neighbourhoods of Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, Flatbush and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn and Flushing and Jamaica Estates in Queens.

He also built apartments for servicemen in the Second World War in Pennsylvania and Virginia and foresaw the advent of supermarkets, building one of America’s first, the Trump Market at Woodhaven, New York, whose slogan was: “Serve yourself and save!”

Known for his thrift, one of Fred’s few luxuries was a Cadillac with a personalised “FTC” vanity plate (his son's is “DJT”). Donald would recall in his ghost-written business manual The Art of the Deal (1987) that his father would roll up at construction sites after the working day was done and collect stray nails from the ground for his carpenters to use again the next morning.

He would also water down paint and manufacture his own disinfectant and cockroach spray to save cash, sending brand samples to labs to determine their ingredients.

“What had cost $2 a bottle, he got mixed for 50 cents,” remembered his son.

Profiled by the trade magazine American Builder and Building Age in 1940, this side of his personality was revealed in depth: “Until last year he never had an office, and carried all his bookkeeping records around in his pocket. The ‘office’ he now has is a little structure of about 90 square feet of space in which the only occupant is a girl to write letters and answer the telephone. He still does most of his office work on the breakfast table at home.”

That office, employee Richard Levy told The Times, was a former dentist’s practice in Beach Haven, Coney Island: “I felt like Custer... There were all these huge wooden Indians all over the place.’’

Donald and Fred Trump (Rex)

Fred Trump’s practices were seldom free of controversy. A hard-bitten and ruthless man, he would lie about his family heritage, saying his ancestors hailed from Sweden so as not to deter potential Jewish tenants and developed a reputation for turning away black applicants, frequently bringing him into conflict with indignant civil rights groups.

Amazingly, this was observed and recorded by folk troubadour Woody Guthrie, a Trump tenant, in his poem “Old Man Trump”: “I suppose/Old Man Trump knows/Just how much/Racial hate/He stirred up/In the bloodpot of human hearts/When he drawed/That colour line.”

This especially unsavoury aspect of his character was revived in 2015 when an old New York Times press clipping from June 1927 was rediscovered, recording the 21-year-old Trump’s arrest – and eventual release without charge – for attending a Ku Klux Klan rally in which 1,000 Klansmen became embroiled in a battle with police.

As a father, Fred had hoped his eldest son, Fred Jr, would follow him into the family business and was disappointed, scorning the boy and turning instead to Donald, the class prankster at school.

In The Art of the Deal, President Trump describes the lessons he absorbed from his old man: “I never threw money around. I learned from my father that every penny counts, because before too long your pennies turn into dollars.”

Perhaps more tellingly, he revealed: “I was never intimidated by my father, the way most people were. I stood up to him, and he respected that.”

Donald Trump’s relationship with Fred has often been characterised as combative and oedipal, with the son closer to his Scottish mother Mary McLeod, the inspiration behind his golf resorts in Ayrshire and Aberdeen.

President Donald Trump life in pictures Show all 16 1 /16 President Donald Trump life in pictures President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump poses in a rocking chair once used by President John F. Kennedy at his New York City residence Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump with his new bride Marla Maples after their wedding at the Plaza hotel in New York Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Celina Midelfart watch the match between Conchita Martinez and Amanda Coetzer during U.S. Open. She was the date whom Donald Trump was with when he met his current wife Melania at a party in 1996 Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas serving as the grand marshal for the Daytona 500, speaks to Donald Trump and Melania Knauss on the starting grid at the Daytona International Speedwa Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump talks with his former wife Ivana Trump during the men's final at the U.S. Open Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and his friend Melania Knauss pose for photographers as they arrive at the New York premiere of Star Wars Episode : 'The Phantom Menace,' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump talks with host Larry King. Trump told King that he was moving toward a possible bid for the United States presidency with the formation of a presidential exploratory committee Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump answers questions as Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura looks on in Brooklyn Park. Trump said on Friday he 'very well might' make a run for president under the Reform Party banner but had not made a final decision Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump makes a face at a friend as he sits next to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso before the start of the 2003 Miss Universe pageant in Panama City Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Entrepreneur Donald Trump is greeted by a Marilyn Monroe character look-a-alike, as he arrives at Universal Studios Hollywood to attend the an open casting call for his NBC television network reality series 'The Apprentice.' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Simon Cowell present an Emmy during the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Megan Mullally perform at the 57th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump, poses with his children, son Donald Trump, Jr., and daughters Tiffany and Ivanka Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump told Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner on Tuesday she would be given a second chance after reported misbehavior Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump holds a replica of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as his wife Melania holds their son Barron in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. property mogul Donald Trump stands next to a bagpiper during a media event on the sand dunes of the Menie estate, the site for Trump's proposed golf resort, near Aberdeen, north east Scotland Reuters

Whereas Trump Sr was largely frugal, although he was vain about his dyed hair in old age, Donald was flashy and flamboyant, vowing to take Manhattan and enter the luxury apartment market, dreaming of building the world’s tallest tower with his name emblazoned on it before turning his eye to the Eastern Seaboard and the gaming tables of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

While Fred may not have shared his boy’s taste for ostentation, he approved of his ambition and did not hestitate to bail him out when his Taj Mahal Casino folly hit the rocks in 1991.

As Sidney Blumenthal recounts in his London Review of Books essay, “A Short History of the Trumps”:

“When the Taj was sinking like Donald’s own private Titanic, Fred Trump rushed to the casino to buy $3.35m in chips to buoy his flailing child, who used the money to avoid default by making an interest payment he wouldn’t otherwise have had the liquid reserves to meet. A straight loan would have put Fred Trump in the lengthy queue of creditors. With his loan in the form of chips he could redeem it as soon as his son had the capital. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission ruled a year later that Fred Trump had engaged in an illegal loan and that Donald should return it, which would have forced him into instant bankruptcy. The Trumps blithely ignored the finding and instead paid a meagre $65,000 fine, though the manoeuvre failed to save the casino.”

When Fred passed away in 1999, The New York Times contacted Donald for comment. His jokey response was extraordinary: “It was good for me. You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself!”

And he kept it up. As Gwenda Blair wrote in her biography The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire (2000): “At his own father’s funeral, he did not stop patting himself on the back and promoting himself... There was to be no sorrow; there was only success... [It was] an astonishing display of self-absorption.’’

President Trump clearly took his father’s example to heart and sought to surpass his achievements in the New York real estate game.