The von Trapp family was immortalized in the classic 1965 film The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film won five Academy Awards, including best picture.
The youngest of the original seven von Trapp family singers, Maria emigrated with the rest of the family to the US to escape the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938. She was portrayed as Louisa in the film and its preceding Broadway musical.
The third child of Austrian Naval Capt. Georg von Trapp, Maria suffered from scarlet fever as a child, leading Georg to hire a nanny to tutor and care for the children at home. This nanny would later become his second wife, also named Maria, who is depicted by Julie Andrews in the film.
After fleeing the Nazis in Austria, the von Trapp family toured throughout Europe and the United States performing in concerts before eventually purchasing a ski lodge in Stowe, Vermont in the early 1940s. The lodge is still operated by descendants of the von Trapp family today.
On her website, Maria wrote in an autobiography that her life was always filled with music. “Father played the violin, accordion and mandolin. Mother played piano and violin,” she wrote. “I have fond memories of our grandmother playing the piano for us after meals.”
“Sometimes our house must have sounded like a musical conservatory. You could hear us practice piano, violin, guitar, cello, clarinet, accordion, and later, recorders. We would gather in the evenings to play Viennese folk songs on our instruments with Father leading us on the violin,” she wrote.
According to her website, Maria served as a lay missionary in Papua New Guinea in her later years.
Rest in peace, Maria.
