Captain Georg von Trapp in his navy regalia.
There was a time when warfare was practiced by gentlemen as gentlemen. Robert Whitehead was a gifted British inventor who, in 1866, invented a way to deliver an explosive device underwater without detection: he called it a torpedo. The British naval authorities listened to Whitehead’s pitch for his new device, but politely declined to take him up on his offer. A weapon the enemy could not see coming was just not sporting.
In 1856, Whitehead had moved his family to Fiume (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to take a job as manager of a metal foundry. It is here that he developed the torpedo, and subsequently became a celebrity. In 1909, Whitehead’s granddaughter Agathe was playing the violin at a society ball attended by the cream of Fiume’s society, which included many dashing young naval officers stationed there. She caught the immediate attention of a dark, thoughtful, twenty-nine-year-old captain, Georg Ritter von Trapp.
Von Trapp himself inherited the legacy of a fine naval tradition. His father had received the honorific “von” from Emperor Franz Joseph for valor while commanding his own ship. The navy captain, with his long, gold-buttoned tunic and striped cuffs, made an impression on Agathe, and by 1911, they were married. In 1914 the von Trapps’ domestic security was upended by World War I. A heroic and canny sea commander, Georg von Trapp was called immediately into the service of his country. Over the next four years, he distinguished himself as a submarine commander in the Imperial Navy and, for his conduct, was awarded both the Maria Theresa Cross and the title of Baron.
When Georg returned to his wife in 1919 after the end of the war, much had changed. For one thing, he had fought on the losing side. The victorious Allies drew up the Treaty of Versailles, which would go far to dismantle the world that Georg von Trapp knew and defended. Austria lost all of its seaports on the Adriatic, and the Imperial Navy was stripped to its roots; only a handful of battleships remained and all submarines were taken out of active service. Nothing is harder on a naval officer than to lose command of his ship, and now there were not even ships left for Georg von Trapp to command.
After the final curtain came down disappointingly on the theater of war, Baron von Trapp would have to devote himself to developments on his own personal home front.
The von Trapp estate in Aigen: not the Hollywood version, but, with 22 rooms, perfectly comfortable.
Before the war, and during his occasional leave, Georg and Agathe had started a family. There were his eldest son, Rupert (b. 1911), followed by Agathe (b. 1913), Maria (b. 1914), Werner (b. 1915), and Hedwig (b. 1917). The family had been forced to move several times during the war and, between von Trapp’s lack of office and postwar economics, finances were tight. They resettled in a relative’s house outside of Vienna and had two more children: Johanna (b. 1919), and Martina (b. 1922). The situation was often stressful, but the family relied on one another, on relatives, and on the structure and deference that aristocracy carries with it.
And then an epidemic of scarlet fever struck. In September 1922, only months after the birth of Martina, Agathe died and left the Baron with an even greater challenge—being the widowed father of seven young children. Thankfully, his children were, by all accounts, self-sufficient, optimistic, and supportive of their father and one another. In 1925, Baron von Trapp relocated to a villa in Aigen, outside of Salzburg, with his children and a small domestic staff. A charming yellow structure with green shutters and a slight mansard roof, the villa Trapp was an elegant, but by no means palatial, estate. It was a brisk walk from the railway station at Aigen, accessible through a gate at the rear of the property. The gate ran along a large garden to the front of the house. There was a bell in the front, and it was this bell that the family retainer, Hans, answered when Maria Kutschera reported for duty in 1926.
The Baron was away on business and so Maria was introduced to her pupil by the housekeeper. It was love at first sight—and second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, as she met all the von Trapp children. Maria’s very lack of experience served her in good stead, and she relied on keeping the children—who were far closer to her own age than their father was—busy by doing the things she loved best: hiking, bike riding, and singing. Especially singing. “Music was always in the family,” recalled her pupil, Maria, in a 1999 Vanity Fair interview. “My real mother was very musical. She played violin and piano and we all sang before we met Maria. We had at least a hundred songs before she came. What she did was teach us madrigals, and of course this is very hard to do, but we found it was no problem for us.”
Georg and Agathe von Trapp. Her untimely death from scarlet fever in 1922 left a vacancy for a maternal figure in the family.
The Baron seemed pleased but kept his distance, joining them only for the occasional bicycling trek or hike through the hills. His was a sweet presence, some-what muted by the death of his wife and the loss of his career, but he was by no means a stern martinet. There was, however, one constant reminder of his navy days: “My father did use a bosun’s whistle,” recounted Johannes, the youngest von Trapp child, in a 2005 documentary. “There were signals for all the different kids. It was very effective, but the kids didn’t show up marching formally. They just responded to their signal.” Maria gave the Baron a wide berth and was overjoyed to hear that he was planning to remarry, to a Princess Yvonne, a distant cousin of his first wife. The Baron was indeed planning to remarry, but he tacked in a different direction: before Maria’s ten-month sojourn at the villa Trapp had ended, he asked her to become the mother of his children.
“If he had only asked me to marry him I might have not said yes, because at that time I really and truly was not in love,” wrote Maria in her memoirs. “I liked him but I didn’t love him. However, I loved the children, and so in a way I really married the children.” But first she had to resolve her temporal crisis—after all, she was pledged to be the bride of Christ. She ran back to Nonnberg for the Reverend Mother’s advice. In the stage musical, the situation is depicted this way:
MOTHER ABBESS:…you have a great capacity for love. What you must find out is—how does God want you to spend your love?
MARIA: I’ve pledged my life to God’s service. I’ve pledged my life to God.
MOTHER ABBESS: My daughter, if you love this man, it doesn’t mean that you love God less. You must find out. You must go back.
Maria listened attentively and eventually returned to Nonnberg Abbey—but not as a novice. It was at the convent church at Nonnberg that, on November 26, 1927, she became the second wife of Georg von Trapp. In the course of Maria’s twenty-two-year life, there were not too many people who had made her happy, but they were all in attendance that day: the nuns of the Abbey, the Baron, and most of all, the seven children, whose lives were now irrevocably intertwined with hers.
Life continued much as before at the villa, but now the von Trapp family activities included more sophisticated musicales. The Baron often accompanied his family on violin, the eldest children learned the accordion, and Agathe picked up the guitar; the musical selection included some of the basic chamber music by Haydn, Corelli, and Handel. There was a slight diminution in the outdoor activity, however, as Maria became pregnant with two additions to the clan: Rosmarie in 1929, followed by Eleonore in 1931. The challenge of managing nearly a dozen children was met with energy and equanimity by Maria, now fully embraced as Mother by all of them. However, the worldwide economic depression of the early 1930s reached into the green hills of Aigen as well—the von Trapp family fortune, largely the result of Agathe’s family, had kept them going since the end of World War I but it vanished nearly overnight. The von Trapps, like so many other families, large or small, noble or common, simply had to make do with less.
Maria proved to be an expert in tightening the family purse strings. She let out extra rooms in the villa in exchange for rent from boarders, and turned one of the rooms into a chapel. In 1935, the local bishopric sent a young priest named Father Franz Wasner to conduct Easter Mass at the villa. When he heard the family sing their prayers in four-part harmony, Wasner, an accomplished musician himself, knew he was in the midst of something remarkable. He thought the family had the makings of a first-rate choir and, out of the sheer joy of it, began teaching the family more complicated arrangements and material suitable for an a cappella choir. About a year later, the von Trapp family choir caught the attention of Lotte Lehmann, the favorite muse of composer Richard Strauss and Vienna’s premier operatic soprano. She thought the family singers had “gold in their throats” and set about convincing Georg to let his family sing in public.
When contemplating the von Trapp story, it is important to remember that the Baron came from Austrian aristocracy and that there are certain things that the upper classes—no matter how impoverished they are in actuality—simply do not do. Performing on stage would be undignified. But Lehmann was a persuasive force. That summer she was to sing Wagner at Salzburg’s acclaimed music festival and she insisted that the von Trapp family sing in one of the festival’s small complementary competitions. Georg acquiesced—“for this one time.”
The Salzburg Music Festival had grown from its 1920 inception into one of the foremost concert venues in Europe, with a variety of operas, concerts, and competitions performed every summer by the finest names in classical music. For their stage debut, the Trapp Chamber Choir, as they were initially known, won a prize at the festival; this was no small achievement. Soon, their popularity spread and they received invitations first from all over Austria and then, after performing in the main venue at the 1937 Salzburg Festival, from all over Europe. By the fall of 1937, the Trapp Chamber Choir was even engaged by a professional manager for an official European concert tour. Poor Georg von Trapp could do nothing but submit to the inevitable, and soon became the Choir’s first roadie, helping his wife and children to stage manage the tour, keep the scrapbooks, and keep the faith.
Maria’s wedding day: Maria von Trapp at Nonnberg Abbey, November 26, 1927.
The von Trapp children, about a year before Maria Kutschera arrived at the villa.
Martina (1922–51) Retired from the Trapp Family Singers to get married and raise a family; she died in childbirth while the family was on tour in California.
Johanna (1919–94) Joined her mother and sister to do missionary work in New Guinea, and eventually returned to Austria, where she married and raised seven children.
Hedwig (1917–72) Became a teacher and moved in 1960 to Honolulu to work for a Catholic youth organization before moving back to Austria.
Werner (1915–2007) Like his elder brother, he served as a ski trooper during World War II. He became a dairy farmer in Vermont, had six children, and retired in 1979. His daughter Elisabeth is an accomplished songwriter and singer who has played Maria in a local Vermont production of the show.
Maria (1914–2014) The “younger” Maria was Maria Kutschera’s first pupil; she eventually became a missionary in Papua New Guinea, along with her stepmother. She retired to live in Vermont.
Agathe (1913–2010) Became a kindergarten teacher in Maryland, until she retired in 1993.
Rupert (1911–92) Rupert was trained as a physician and was the first to leave the singing group. He served as a ski trooper in Vermont’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II and eventually set up a private practice in New England.
An even dozen: After Maria married Baron von Trapp, they had three children of their own: Eleonore (b. 1931), also known as “Lorli” (upper left); Johannes (b. 1939), (on his mother’s knee); and Rosmarie (b. 1929), (left of Johannes).
All three children followed in their siblings’ musical footsteps and all settled in Vermont, where Johannes runs the Trapp Family Lodge.
What allowed the Trapp Chamber Choir to transcend being a mere novelty act was the musical genius of Father Wasner. One thinks of him as a master chef with an abundance of ingredients at his disposal: the variety of voices, the possibilities of instrumentation and the genuine conviction that his performers had in their material. The group also hit upon an immensely satisfying mode of presentation. In the first half of their concerts, they would sing some of the great classical pieces of devotional music by composers such as Mozart, Lassus, and Palestrina; then, during the intermission, they would change into their native Austrian garb and sing a variety of local and international folk songs. The combination of sophistication and simplicity proved to be irresistible. The von Trapps also provided something else that few other groups could: a love for one another, a love for their customs, and a love for their land. The last of these affections would be sorely tested by events in the months ahead.
It is somewhat challenging, at the remove of seven decades, to portray the complicated tensions between Germany and Austria during the 1930s. George Bernard Shaw once said that England and America are two countries separated by a common language; in a more profound way, the same was true of Germany and Austria. By the end of World War I, this was a moot point: the Allies had decided that the two German-speaking neighbors and wartime allies would be officially separated and Austria would be constituted as its own Republic. But drawing up treaties and redrawing maps can do only so much to separate cultures. The idea of a coming-together—Anschluss—of the two German-speaking nations was always a tantalizing one, for both Berlin and Vienna. In the words of one British historian, Gordon Brooke-Shepherd, “[Anschluss] became a doubly respectable idea precisely because the war victors had forbidden it.”
The dream—or nightmare—of a pan-German state was resurrected by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler was born in Austria, and his early years there were nothing but a series of humiliations and rejections. Still, after he had moved to Germany and begun his tyrannical ascension there, he always entertained dreams of bringing the two countries together. After becoming führer of the Third Reich in 1934, he was more vocal about his plans, proclaiming that Austria, because of its racial commonality with Germany, should be part of the Reich. In Vienna they were not so sure. Some Austrians were chauvinistically pro-Austria—they despised Hitler as both a Nazi and a German; some thought there could be an accommodation that would create a powerful state where Vienna would share joint rule with Berlin; and, as Hitler’s Nazi Party began to grow in Austria itself, there were those who felt inspired by the new German politics as well as by German culture. But whether the Austrians liked it or not—and most of them did not— they had to deal with Hitler. Hitler’s dream of Anschluss was only the first of his many international campaigns of deceit, blackmail, and aggression, and Austrians were unprepared for how far he would go to achieve his dream. Austria would be the first country to experience the Nazi formula for world domination.
In the late 1930s, Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg tried a tortuous path of negotiations with Hitler in an attempt to maintain Austrian independence from the encroachment of the Reich. This proved increasingly difficult, as Nazi Party membership kept growing in the western part of Austria and, indeed, within Schuschnigg’s own cabinet. On March 9, 1938, in a quixotic attempt to galvanize his countrymen, Schuschnigg decided to hold a national referendum on Austrian independence within the week. Initial support for the idea seemed promising to Austrian patriots and, for a few hours, Schuschnigg was a national hero. But all he did was force Hitler’s hand.
Hitler announced that Germany would refuse to recognize such a vote and, under threat of invasion, he demanded that the referendum be canceled. Several days of fervent negotiations, threats, and betrayals followed. On March 11, the Germans closed the border at Salzburg and withdrew all customs officials; all traffic between the two countries stopped and troops were massing on the German side of the border. Faced with international indifference to his plight, Schuschnigg capitulated in a radio address later that evening, proclaiming that Austria would yield to the force of the Nazis so that “no German blood should be spilled.” At dawn the next day, the Wehrmacht, spearheaded by the 27th Infantry Division, walked across the Austrian border without a single shot of resistance. On that March afternoon, Hitler himself crossed the border at his birthplace of Braunau am Inn, and, two days later, received a hero’s welcome in Vienna, where he proclaimed “the conclusion of the greatest aim in my life: the entry of my homeland into the German Reich.” A referendum was eventually held, nearly a month after the original one was scheduled, and the Anschluss was ratified by 99.73 percent of the voters. Soon after, the round-ups, the arrests and the executions began.
Hitler greeted with a hero’s welcome in Vienna, March 14, 1938.
One ironic footnote: when Chancellor Schuschnigg made his radio broadcast to the nation, to inform them of the fall of Austria, a member of his staff hobbled into the room. Crippled in both legs, he was a firm Austrian patriot, and in the silence that followed the Chancellor’s radio address, he threw down his crutches, grabbed the microphone, and shouted, “Long Live Austria! Today I am ashamed to be a German!” The man’s name was Hammerstein.
For the von Trapp family, the Nazi invasion was an occasion for bewilderment, frustration, and anger. Like every other city in Austria, Salzburg welcomed its conquerors joyfully and signs of the occupation were everywhere, except at the villa. When asked to welcome Hitler by hanging the Nazi flag in front of his home, Georg refused; and when Hans, the family retainer, admitted his own membership of the Nazi Party, the von Trapps knew that the black spider of the swastika would soon engulf them in its web. The incursions into their daily lives, at first nettlesome, soon became intolerable. It began when Georg was offered the command of a submarine in the German navy. Although it was an attractive offer to be in command of a modern submarine, he declined the honor. Then, the von Trapps were asked to sing at a birthday party for Hitler. Again, they politely declined. And, finally, Rupert, the eldest von Trapp son, who had ambitions for a medical career, was offered a post in one of the better Viennese hospitals. This again seemed attractive, until Rupert concluded that the post was available because so many Jewish doctors had been removed from positions of authority in the hospital. There was, indeed, no way to stop it. The Von Trapps had to leave their beloved Austria—or what was left of it. “Exile and persecution would be preferable,” declared Maria in her memoirs.
Celebrating on the streets of Salzburg the day the Nazis marched in: “Georg,” says Max Detweiler in the stage version of The Sound of Music, “You know I have no political convictions. Can I help it if other people have?”
One of the von Trapp Family’s first posters advertising their musical talents—and one of the last before their escape from Austria.
Four months after the Nazi invasion, the Von Trapps worked in earnest to make their discreet plans to emigrate. Georg put the question to each of the nine children: you can have your home and your friends and stay, or you can have your faith and your honor and leave— which do you choose? Of course, they were all in agreement to leave. Although leaving Austria permanently would be difficult, the Von Trapps were blessed, for they had one thing that most refugees can only dream about: a job, or at least a contract. A year earlier, an American impresario named Charles L. Wagner had offered the choir a chance to sing in New York. This offer would now give them a sanctuary in the New World. Their beloved Father Wasner got permission from his superiors to join them. In August 1938, each family member packed one rucksack, pretending that they were going on a family vacation to Italy.
Among the contents of the dozen rucksacks were petticoats, ski boots, a teddy bear named Timmy, and the scrapbook of the Trapp Chamber Choir’s achievements. It was not the most organized way to begin a new life, but they trusted that God would provide.
Indeed, if God had ever provided the right passport, it was now. Georg von Trapp had been born in Trieste, which was once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but since the end of the war was part of Italy, so his passport allowed him and his family to travel freely across the border. The family and Father Wasner calmly boarded a train, which took them into the south Tyrol, part of Italy. The next day, the border was closed. Their timing, as befits a close-harmony group, was again impeccable.
The family stayed in the small town of St. Georgen, waiting to confirm their travel arrangements to America. It was here that Maria and Georg were informed that a tenth von Trapp was on the way; on top of all their troubles, Maria was pregnant. Eventually, Wagner wired them their money and, on October 7, 1938, they traveled to London to board the SS American Farmer, sailing to New York. All eleven—now nearly twelve of them—had made it. The von Trapp family motto was never more appropriate or inspirational: nec aspera terrent or “let not adversity terrify you.” It is a creed that, a decade later, would be memorably lyricized by Oscar Hammerstein in his own way for The King and I:
Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune,
So no one will suspect
I’m afraid.
Climb ev’ry mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every byway,
Every path you know.
Climb ev’ry mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream.
A dream that will need all the love you can give
Every day of your life for as long as you live.
Climb ev’ry mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream.
Patricia Neway as the Mother Abbess and Mary Martin as Maria in the original cast of The Sound of Music, photographed for Life magazine by Philippe Halsman.
Julie Andrews and Peggy Wood in the same moment from the movie.
Oscar Hammerstein’s first draft of lyrics eventually moved to Act Two; his thoughts about “facing life.”
When Oscar Hammerstein first grappled with this number, he knew it had to express the critical moment when Maria had to face life—in fact, that was its original title: “Face Life.” It would make a superb musical number on which to end Act One and provided an opportunity for a musical confrontation between the Mother Abbess and Maria. In addition, the song had the potential to be the kind of inspirational anthem that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote so well (“You’ll Never Walk Alone”).
Initially, Hammerstein was most intrigued by the concept of sacrifice, and in the notion that even though a young woman has given herself to God, the greater sacrifice might, ironically, be for her to return to the world. An early quatrain ran:
A song is no song till you sing it,
A bell is no bell till you ring it,
And love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay—
Love isn’t love till you give it away.
Hammerstein removed that lyric, flipped the first two lines, and inserted it later in the show, during a reprise of “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” (although it was cut for the movie). The song evolved into Maria’s quest to find a spiritual compass for her life. In an early draft of “Face Life,” one can see Hammerstein working through the metaphors for her struggle: “Ford every stream/ climb every hill.” This itself was an elaboration of a lyric in “There’s a Hill Beyond a Hill,” a song Hammerstein had written with Jerome Kern in 1933 for Music in the Air: “To climb the highest mountain/ To ford the deepest river/ Will make you feel the zest of life.”
Although the initial idea for “Face Life” began with Maria singing the number herself, it evolved to become a duet between her and the Mother Abbess, and then, in the end, simply a solo for the Mother Abbess. When the final lyric was crafted as “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” Rodgers bypassed the traditional verse intro and set the lyrics with strength and fervor. Rodgers and Hammerstein knew early on that, whatever inspirational power the song might have at the end of Act One, it would only grow when reprised at the show’s finale.
The finale from the Broadway stage production, 1959. In this version, Mary Martin leads the von Trapp family to safety.
The other side of the mountain: in reality, the von Trapps would have marched straight into Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountain retreat.
When Ernest Lehman set up the structure for the movie version, he independently went back to Lindsay and Crouse’s original impulse to end the first part of the story at Maria’s silent farewell to the von Trapp family, one scene earlier than “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” When the movie was first shown in movie theaters in 1965, there was an intermission and, as a result, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” became the first major song of the movie’s “second act.” Director Robert Wise felt he had to restage the song to take advantage of the increased intimacy of a movie performance, as opposed to the expansiveness of a theatrical production. “We had to find some way to do it that wasn’t quite so obvious. So we got the idea of shooting it up against the wall [of the Mother Abbess’ office],” he recalled on the audio commentary for a home version of the movie. It is quite unusual for a major number to begin with the singer’s back to the camera, but that is exactly how Wise filmed Peggy Wood as she began “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” (Or, more accurately, as Margery MacKay began the song; although Wood had been an accomplished operetta star early in her career, her singing was dubbed for the movie.) “We just shot her singing and she walked over to the window,” recounted Wise. “We pan with her to this window and she finishes it over there, and I think it worked very well.” In addition to the simplicity of the camera movement, the chiaroscuro lighting—worthy of a Rembrandt— makes the scene both intimate and touching.
When the reprise of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” makes its inevitable appearance in the finale, Hammerstein’s words take on a literal, as well as a figurative, meaning—the von Trapps must indeed journey over mountains and rivers in order to find their freedom. The actual von Trapp family has always been bemused that the show’s creators took them over the Alps to Switzerland for the final escape: “Don’t they know geography in Hollywood? Salzburg does not border on Switzerland!” complained Maria von Trapp to a reporter in 1967, although the dramatic license in topography existed in the original Broadway show.
When shooting the movie, the film crew compounded the problem further. Looking for the proper location for their final shot of Christopher Plummer leading the children and Julie Andrews to sanctuary, they found a mountain called Obersalzberg in Bavaria, Germany. It certainly looked the part. But back in the 1930s, on the other side of that mountain was Hitler’s mountain retreat, in Berchtesgaden. So, if strict geography were being followed in the movie, Baron von Trapp was leading his family straight into the headquarters of the Nazi high command—”not exactly where we wanted to be,” quipped Johannes von Trapp, dryly.
The movie finale: Here, it is Baron von Trapp who leads the way to freedom.
