page_title: Trapp Family
section_title: History of the group
hierarchical_section_title: Trapp Family / Biography / History of the group
caption_attribution_description: Promotional photo of the Trapp Family Singers. The family was preparing to give a concert in the Boston area in 1941.
context_page_description: The Trapp Family were an Austrian singing family of the former naval commander Georg von Trapp. The family achieved fame in their original singing career in their native Austria during the interwar period. They also performed in the United States before emigrating there permanently to escape the deteriorating situation in Austria during World War II. In the United States, they became well known as the "Trapp Family Singers" until they ceased to perform as a unit in 1957. The family's story were later served as the basis for a memoir, two German films, and a Broadway musical. The last surviving of the original seven Trapp children, Maria Franziska, died in 2014 at the age of 99.
context_section_description: Georg von Trapp had seven children at the time of his first wife's Agathe's death and in 1927, he married Maria von Trapp (née Kutschera), 25 years his junior, with whom he had three more children. Both incarnations of the household were musical and by 1935 the family was singing at the local church in Aigen where they made the acquaintance of a young priest, Dr. Franz Wasner, who encouraged their musical progress and taught them sacred music to add to the folk songs, madrigals and ballads they were already singing. While singing at their Salzburg home they were also heard by the German concert singer Lotte Lehmann who persuaded them to take part in the song competition at the 1936 Salzburg Festival, for which they won a prize; after this, accompanied by Dr Wasner, the family toured and performed in Vienna, Salzburg, and undertook a European tour that encompassed France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany and England.
  In 1938, the family performed in the United States for the first time before returning to Austria when their visas expired; however, in the same year, Adolf Hitler annexed Austria, and the family made the decision to leave first for Italy (of which the Zadar-born Georg and thus the family were legally citizens) and from there to the United States, where they applied for immigrant status in 1939. They arrived with very little money, having lost most of the family fortune earlier during a 1935 banking collapse in Austria. Once in the United States they earned money by performing and touring nationally and internationally, first as the "Trapp Family Choir" and then, the "Trapp Family Singers", a change suggested by their booking agent Frederick Christian Schang. After living for a short time in Merion, Pennsylvania, where their youngest child Johannes was born, the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, in 1941. They purchased a 660-acre (270 ha) farm in 1942 and converted it into the Trapp Family Lodge, initially called "Cor Unum".  After World War II, they founded the Trapp Family Austrian Relief fund, which sent food and clothing to people impoverished in Austria. By now based permanently in the United States, the family performed their unique mixture of liturgical music, madrigals, folk music and instrumentals to audiences in over 30 countries for the next 20 years. They made a series of 78-rpm records for RCA Victor in the 1950s, some of which were later issued on RCA Camden LPs. There were also a few later recordings released on LPs, including some stereo sessions. The family singing group disbanded in 1957.
  Maria wrote an account of the singing family The Story of the Trapp Family Singers which was published in 1949 and was the inspiration for the 1956 West German film The Trapp Family, which in turn inspired by Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical The Sound of Music,
  in addition to the highly successful 1965 film of the same name. The original seven Trapp children were: Rupert (1911–1992); Agathe (1913–2010); Maria Franziska (1914–2014); Werner (1915–2007); Hedwig (1917–1972); Johanna (1919–1994); and Martina (1921–1952). The later children were Rosmarie (b.1929), Eleonore (b.1931), and Johannes (b.1939). The eldest daughter, Agathe (called "Liesl" in the film), published her own account of life in the Trapp family in 2003, entitled Memories Before and After The Sound of Music, which was itself turned into a film entitled The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music.
caption: The Trapp Family rehearsing before a concert, near Boston, 27 September 1941.
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