Maria von Trapp, the last surviving member of the von Trapp family singers who were immortalised in the stage musical and film The Sound of Music, has died at the age of 99.
It was due to Maria’s ill health that Captain Georg von Trapp arranged for a governess to be seconded from a nearby convent in order to tutor the children.
Maria Augusta Kutschera, played by Julie Andrews in the film, arrived and she and the Captain soon fell in love and later married.
The third eldest of seven children, Maria’s name was changed to Louisa in the stage musical and film versions of the Trapp family’s story, probably to avoid confusion with the governess.
The fictitious von Trapps. Photo Getty Images
She outlived all of her brothers and sisters from her father’s first marriage, remarkable according to a family friend who runs the von Trapp Villa Hotel in Salzburg. Marianne Dorfer told the Austrian Times, “It was a surprise that she was the one in the family to live the longest, because ever since she was a child, she suffered from a weak heart.
“It was the fact that she suffered from this that her father decided to hire Maria … to teach her and her brothers and sisters. That of course then led to one of the most remarkable musical partnerships of the last century.”
The real von Trapps in 1937.
Maria von Trapp the daughter had written similarly on her family’s website: “As a result of scarlet fever, I was too sickly to walk the three miles to school every day, and the doctor advised that I stay home. This condition brought Maria Augusta Kutschera to teach me first grade gymnasium, the equivalent of middle school. She came to us as my teacher and after three years became our second mother.”
Unlike the film, which ends when the family flee Salzburg in 1938 after the Nazi invasion of Austria, the real von Trapps were already outside of Austria when they elected not to return and instead began a new life touring Europe as a family singing group. They settled in Vermont, USA, in 1942 and eventually opened a ski resort.
Captain von Trapp and Maria Augusta married and had three children of their own.
Maria’s half-brother, Johannes von Trapp, referred to his sister as a “lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people.”
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