The Hills Are Alive
By: Jo Ann Harris
Tags: War, Love, Travel, Music, History

The Hills Are Alive

A Better Story

It was such a pretty day today I wanted to run outside and swirl around in song, which gave me the idea about checking up and reading about the von Trapp family. My mind works in mysterious ways.

There have been a few family singing groups over the last thirty or forty years. The Jackson Five, The Osmonds, but we are going to go further back in time to more than eighty years to the Trapp Family Singers.

Maria came to the von Trapp family in 1926 as a tutor for one of the children, Maria, who was recovering from scarlet fever, not as governess to all the children. She was actually going to be a nun until she met all the children and fell in love with them. Maria tutored young Maria and developed a caring and loving relationship with all the children. She enjoyed singing with them and getting them involved in outdoor activities.

During this time, George fell in love with Maria and asked her to stay with him and become a second mother to his children. Of his proposal, Maria said, “God must have made him word it that way because if he had only asked me to marry him I might not have said yes.”

Maria and George married in 1927, 11 years before the family left Austria, not right before the Nazi takeover of Austria. They did not carry their heavy instruments and belongings over the mountain pass either. There were 10, not 7, von Trapp children. They had three children together: Rosemarie, 1929– ;Eleanor, 1931– ; and Johannes, 1939–.

Can you imagine?

von Trapp Family

George, far from being the detached, cold-blooded patriarch of the family who disapproved of music, as portrayed in the first half of The Sound of Music, was actually a gentle, warmhearted parent who enjoyed musical activities with his family. While this change in his character might have made for a better story in emphasizing Maria’s healing effect on the von Trapps, it distressed his family greatly.

Though she was a caring and loving person, Maria wasn’t always as sweet as the fictional Maria. She tended to erupt in angry outbursts consisting of yelling, throwing things, and slamming doors. Her feelings would immediately be relieved and good humor restored, while other family members, particularly her husband, found it less easy to recover.

In her 2003 interview, the younger Maria confirmed that her stepmother “had a terrible temper. And from one moment to the next, you didn’t know what would set her off. We were not used to this. But we took it like a thunderstorm that would pass, because the next minute she could be very nice.”

Hmmmm! Sounds like manic-depression to me.

As depicted in The Sound of Music, the family won first place in the Salzburg Music Festival in 1936 and became successful, singing Renaissance and Baroque music, madrigals, and folk songs all across Europe.

When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, the von Trapps realized that they were on thin ice with a regime they abhorred. George not only refused to fly the Nazi flag on their house, but he also declined a naval command and a request to sing at Hitler’s birthday party. They were also becoming aware of the Nazis’ anti-religious propaganda and policies, the pervasive fear that those around them could be acting as spies for the Nazis, and the brainwashing of children against their parents. They decided that they could not compromise their principles and left.

Traveling with their musical conductor, Rev. Franz Wasner, and secretary, Martha Zochbauer, they went by train to Italy in June, later to London, and by September were on a ship to New York to begin a concert tour in Pennsylvania. Son, Johannes was born in January 1939 in Philadelphia.

In the early 1940s the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, where they bought a farm. They ran a music camp on the property when they were not on tour.

In 1944, Maria and her stepdaughters Johanna, Martina, Maria, Hedwig, and Agathe applied for U.S. citizenship by filing declarations of intention at the U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont.

George apparently never filed to become a citizen; Rupert and Werner were naturalized while serving in the U.S. armed forces during World War II; Rosemarie and Eleanor derived citizenship from their mother; and Johannes was born in the United States and was a citizen in his own right.

George died in 1947 and was buried in the family cemetery on the property. Those who had applied for citizenship achieved it in 1948. The Trapp Family Lodge (which is still operating today) opened to guests in 1950. While fame and success continued for the Trapp Family Singers, they decided to stop touring in 1955.

In 1956, Maria, Johannes, Rosemarie, and daughter Maria went to New Guinea to do missionary work. Later, Maria ran the Trapp Family Lodge for many years. Of the children, Rupert was a medical doctor; Agathe was kindergarten teacher in Maryland; Maria was a missionary in New Guinea for 30 years; Werner was a farmer; Hedwig taught music; Johanna married and eventually returned to live in Austria; Martina married and died in childbirth; Rosemarie and Eleanor both settled in Vermont; and Johannes managed the Trapp Family Lodge.

Maria died in 1987 and was buried alongside George and Martina.

The von Trapps never saw any profits from the movie and the rights were sold to German producers, and Maria inadvertently sold her rights along with it. The American rights were bought from the German producers but Maria nor any family members had any input in the development of any characters.

The von Trapps were not very pleased with the movie because they were not shown as they really were only as people that only sang light weight music. They didn’t like the simplification of the story nor how their Dad was portrayed.

They said,”We were about good taste, culture, all these wonderful upper-class standards that people make fun of in movies like ‘Titanic.’ We’re about environmental sensitivity, artistic sensitivity. ‘Sound of Music’ simplifies everything. I think perhaps reality is at the same time less glamorous but more interesting than the myth.”

All of this information was gotten from the credit of Joan Gearin, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, Northeast Region–Boston. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.