Dwight Schrute - Character Information - Family and Childhood

Family and Childhood

In "Lecture Circuit", Dwight claims to remember his own birth, including his Father delivering him from the womb, and his Mother biting off the umbilical cord. In "Grief Counseling", Dwight states that he was a twin, but he "resorbed" his twin while still in his Mother's womb (this occurrence is called twin embolisation syndrome), causing him to believe that he now has "The strength of a grown man and a little baby". He also claims to have been born weighing 13 lb 5 oz (6.0 kg), rendering his mother incapable of walking for three months and two days, and in "Baby Shower", he claims to have performed his own circumcision. In "Viewing Party", he informs Jim and Pam Halpert that, in the Schrute family, the youngest child raises the other children, thus Dwight has been "Raising children since was a baby".

Little is known about Dwight's parents, except that his Father used to take him hunting, cheated in games, and that he battled obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. In the Season Two DVD bloopers, it is revealed that, when Dwight was a child, his father would take him and his brothers to a swimming hole on hot summer days until 10:00 AM, then they would work in the beet fields until well after midnight. In "Costume Contest", when Dwight sees that Pam has dressed up as Olive Oyl for Halloween, he erroneously believes that she dressed up as his Mother, and tells Pam that she is "Only one third as beautiful and only half her height". In "Fun Run", Dwight offers to bury Angela Martin's deceased cat, Sprinkles, "At the east field, by Mother", implying that his Mother is, too, deceased. However, in "The Lover", after learning that Michael has been dating Pam's Mother, Helene, Dwight informs Michael that if he knew that he was "Into dating Mothers", he would have introduced Michael to his own. While this appears to be a continuity error, it is possible that the woman Dwight is referring to could be his stepmother. It is also plausible that the context of the offer was past tense, which means it may have not been an error.

Dwight's maternal Grandfather, whose surname is Manheim (according to Dwight's web log on NBC.com) fought in the second World War. He had killed twenty men, before being imprisoned in an Allied prison camp, implying that he was a soldier in the German army. In "Dunder Mifflin Infinity", Dwight tells the Documentary film crew that his Grandfather is (at the time of the episode) 103 years-old, and is still "puttering around down in Argentina", implying that his Grandfather was one of the members of the SS who fled into South America. Dwight attempted to visit him once, but his travel visa was protested by the Shoah Foundation. In "Take Your Daughter to Work Day", Michael refers to Dwight's Grandmother as a "Nazi war criminal". Dwight's Father and Grandfather are also named Dwight Schrute; however, his Amish great-grandfather was named Dweide Schrude. In "Casino Night", Dwight reveals that the tuxedo he is wearing is the one that his Grandfather was buried in. It is possible that this is the same Grandfather that was reburied in an "old oil drum" ("Grief Counseling"). In a deleted scene of "The Duel", Dwight reveals that his great-uncle Helmuth was locally renowned for building a makeshift flying machine in four years; but he was promptly killed when said machine landed on a small girl. In a deleted scene from "The Surplus", Dwight tells Angela that his family came to the United States on a U-Boat, after she informs him that Andy's ancestors came to the U.S. on the Mayflower. It is revealed in "Money", that the Schrute family has a tradition, where when a male has intercourse with a woman, he is rewarded with a bag of wild oats that are left on his doorstep, by his parents. It appears that, like his great-grandfather, other members of Dwight's family have been Mennonite or Amish, as well, as Mose dresses similarly to that of a practising member. Dwight also speaks German, but his knowledge of it is "Pre-industrial and mostly religious", as might be expected if the language was learned exclusively in a Mennonite or Amish church or context.

Dwight was shunned by his family from the age of four until his sixth birthday, for forgetting to save the excess oil from a can of tuna. He lost a Grade School spelling bee to Raj Patel by misspelling the word "Failure", in front of the entire school. In seventh grade, Dwight played the invented role of "Mutey the Mailman" in a production of Oklahoma! He explains that there were not enough roles for all of the children, so they made up roles.

Dwight lives in a nine-bedroom, one-bathroom (which is located under the porch, as revealed in "Office Olympics"), farmhouse on his family's 60-acre (240,000 m2) beet farm, alongside Mose, selling beets to local stores, restaurants and roadside beet stands. It is also revealed that Dwight uses part of his farm to grow hemp; in "Launch Party", he claims that teenagers keep stealing it, although a pizza delivery boy, under the impression that it is marijuana, as opposed to hemp, claims that it is "crappy". Dwight and Mose have also turned Schrute Farms into a ramshackle bed and breakfast, that was visited by Jim and Pam, during "Money". The bed and breakfast had three theme rooms, "America, Irrigation, and Nighttime". Schrute Farms was also to be the site of Andy and Angela's wedding, before the two broke off their engagement after Andy discovered she was cheating on him, with Dwight. In "Garden Party", Andy throws a garden party at Schrute Farms, in order to impress new CEO Robert California, and, at the end of the episode, Robert also discusses the possibility of holding his birthday party at the farm.

According to one of Dwight's web logs on NBC.com's "Schrute-Space", he had an Uncle, named Gunther, a goat farmer, who fled the Allied invasion of Germany and married a Finnish woman, with whom he had 17 children. He also had an Uncle Girt, who revealed that the Schrute family has an ongoing hatred of Harry S. Truman, because they were staunch supporters of Thomas Dewey. In another blog, he mentions a cousin named Heindl, who received numerous injuries and infections from an attack by a small dog.