Maria von Trapp

"The Sound of Music" is one of the most classic musicals and popular movies of all time. The story of Maria, the Baron and their singing children has become part of everyone's family memories. The story was inspired by the experiences of Maria von Trapp and her book, "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers", published in 1949.

Maria Agusta Kutschera was born on January 26, 1905, on a train en route to Vienna. Raised as a Socialist and an atheist, her beliefs were changed after a meeting with a Jesuit priest visiting her college. After entering a convent with the intention of becoming a nun, she was sent to the home of retired naval captain Georg von Trapp to care for his daughter, who was bedridden with rheumatic fever. On November 26, 1927, she married the Captain and became stepmother to his nine children.

The Trapp family was forced to leave their home in 1938 to escape Hitler's regime. Maria, then pregnant with the Baron's 10th child, Johannes, climbed over the Austrian Alps and into Italy with the whole family.

She has written: "Overnight we had become really poor; we had become refugees. A refugee not only has no country, he also has no rights. He is a displaced person. At times he feels like a parcel which has been mailed and is moved from place to place."

The story was turned into a successful Broadway musical with music by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The movie, "The Sound of Music", directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, was released in 1965.
The Trapp family made its new living by singing and touring. They settled in Stowe, Vermont in 1939. The family purchased an old farmhouse on 600 acres in Stowe, and continued touring the world for another 15 years. They established the Trapp Family Music Camp in 1947, and later the Trapp Family Lodge.

After performing and touring with the Trapp Family Singers, Maria and three of her children, Maria, Rosemarie and Johannes, went to the South Pacific to do missionary work. They went to New Guinea and traveled through the islands. Maria returned to the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont, and wrote her personal memoir, "Maria: My Own Story", in 1972. She continued to be part of the Trapp Family Lodge's operations until her death in 1987. The youngest of her sons, Johannes, is currently the president of the Trapp Family Lodge.