Maria von Trapp, 1914–2014

last updated 8 January 2015

Without Maria von Trapp, The Sound of Music would never have been made. The Broadway musical and film were based on the real-life romance between her father, Austrian naval Capt. Georg von Trapp, and her governess, and she was the reason the two met and fell in love. A childhood case of scarlet fever had left her unable to walk, so her widower father hired a trainee nun as her tutor. That tutor was Maria Kutschera—played by Julie Andrews in the film—who became the captain’s second wife in 1927.

The guitar-playing governess taught her seven stepchildren to sing four-part harmonies and started the family musical group, the Trapp Family Singers. When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, the anti-fascist Capt. von Trapp turned down a German navy commission “and decided to flee the country with his entire family,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). The von Trapps headed to America, playing concert tours and attracting Hollywood’s attention. But when The Sound of Music debuted in 1965, Maria—renamed Louisa in the film to distinguish her from Andrews’s character—was shocked at her father’s portrayal “as strict and obsessed with discipline,” said The New York Times. In fact, she said, he “always looked after us a lot, especially after our mother died.”