Maria von Trapp: The last of ‘The Sound of Music’ family
1914-2014
MARIA von Trapp, who has died at the age of 99, was the last of the original Trapp Family Singers, whose story of musical success and subsequent flight from Austria during the Nazi regime in the late 1930s was the inspiration for the Broadway show and hugely successful 1965 film, The Sound of Music.
The Von Trapps were an aristocratic Austrian family headed by the decorated naval officer Baron Georg von Trapp and his wife, Agathe. In the wake of Baroness von Trapp’s death in 1922, the family moved to Salzburg and Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young postulant — a woman preparing for a nun’s life — from the nearby Nonnberg Abbey was appointed as tutor to the seven children. She was to become the Baron’s second wife.
In the mid-1930s, the family’s finances were made precarious by the Baron’s investment in a bank that would later fail. Their circumstances caused the Von Trapps to stage paid choral concerts (previously a family hobby) with Maria singing second soprano in the choir.
With the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, Von Trapp was offered a commission in the German navy. An ardent anti-Nazi, he refused and decided to flee the country with his family. Not, as Hollywood immortalised their journey, overnight across the Alps to Switzerland, but by train to Italy in broad daylight before taking a passage to the US.
Maria Franziska Gobertina von Trapp was born on September 14 1914. Since personal telegrams were not permitted to be sent to those serving in the military, her father learned of the birth by a message from his wife in prearranged code: “SMS Maria arrived”.
Music was an integral part of her family’s life. “My father played the violin and the accordion, and I adored him — I wanted to learn all the instruments that he played,” recalled Maria late in life.
In The Sound of Music, Maria was portrayed as the character Louisa. Maria and her siblings were surprised by the level of dramatic licence taken in bringing their story to the screen. “We were all pretty shocked at how they portrayed our father. He was so completely different. He always looked after us a lot, especially after our mother died,” said Maria.
On settling in the US, the family continued to perform choral concerts and opened a ski lodge in Vermont. Here Maria was to play the accordion and teach Austrian dance. Maria became a US citizen in 1948 and in the mid-1950s worked alongside her stepmother as a lay missionary in Papua New Guinea.
Maria never married. She is survived by three half siblings. —