Maria von Trapp’s granddaughter on The Sound of Music’s real story – and leading cruisers along the Danube

Words by Harriet Mallinson

When the film The Sound of Music was released in 1965, one 10-year-old girl discovered everything was about to change. “Overnight I had friends I didn’t know I had; there was instant excitement,” she tells Sailawaze.

I’m talking to Elisabeth von Trapp – the granddaughter of Captain von Trapp and his first wife, whose family inspired the hit movie – shortly after she’s wrapped up an Amadeus river cruise along the Danube. Now 70, the musician and guide [top image] led cruise guests on a walking tour of Salzburg [below, left], sharing her stories. “So many of the guests had their own treasured memories of The Sound of Music,” she says over Zoom from Austria. “It was a very beautiful experience.”

What did the Von Trapp family think of The Sound of Music?

The talented singer remembers how her own famous family [above, right] (on her dad’s side) responded to their big-screen debut back in the sixties. “My father, Werner, was stunned and my mother burst into tears when she saw the opening scene,” von Trapp recalls. However, there was annoyance that the seven children’s names has been adapted for an American audience. “What happened to all of our beautiful names?” her father cried when Werner became “Kurt”.

Was Captain Von Trapp very strict in real life?

Captain Georg von Trapp [below, left] (who died in 1947) might also have been irked by his portrayal in the largely fictionalised Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. “My grandfather wasn’t stern,” clarifies von Trapp as we reflect on actor Christopher Plummer’s strict playing of the military man. However, he did have a whistle to call the children, complete with different signals for each kid: “He had it as a fun, playful thing because they had a huge backyard and he had to call them.”

How did the Von Trapp family react when Maria arrived?

Nor was there a series of pranks on Maria when she arrived. Indeed, there was much more to Julie Andrews’ [top image] real-life equivalent’s upbringing than the “spectacularly cheerful” film suggests.

Where did Maria Von Trapp come from?

“Maria came from a very tumultuous background,” says von Trapp of her step-grandmother: her mother died when she was 10 months old, her father abandoned her, and her guardian uncle maltreated her.

Maria ran away from home as a teenager and trained to be a teacher before joining Nonberg Abbey in Salzburg [below]. She really did want to be a nun and was consequently “very cross” when she was sent away by the abbess to tutor the von Trapp family, I learn.

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What did the Von Trapp children think of Maria in real life?

Memories of Maria’s first impressions on the children [below, right] were lasting, though: “When Maria arrived she had a huge hat on,” details von Trapp, “and the story I heard was that when she bent down to greet the youngest girl Martina (“Gretel” in the film), she bent down so far that the hat fell off and everybody laughed – it broke the ice.”

According to Maria’s book (The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, published 1949), “when Maria dropped the hat and little Martina came over to hug her and kissed her on the cheek, she’d never felt that type of affection. I think they all surrounded her with love and helped her heal. That part of the story has yet to be really told.”

What was Maria Von Trapp really like?

The performer went on: “I think the children and Maria bonded very quickly, because she was very playful, creative and imaginative at storytelling.” Elizabeth Von Trapp [below, left] herself remembers being “mesmerised” during her childhood in Vermont (where the family had fled to from Austria in 1938) by her step-grandmother’s “fantastic tales of her adventures,”

The bond lasted into adulthood and the two got on well, with Maria speaking at her graduation; “She was honoured when I asked her,” reminisces von Trapp. “She was so proud because I received a teacher’s certificate, which she had. I think she found a kindred spirit in one of her grandchildren. I always felt that there was so much to learn from her.”

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What did The Sound of Music film mean to the real Von Trapp family?

Further familial insight followed the release of The Sound of Music, which helped the von Trapps [below, right] become more candid about their past. “The way my relatives related to The Sound of Music created dialogue,” von Trapp tells me. “My father opened up to us after seeing the movie. He started to share some of the real experiences of how they left and how they felt; how dire it was at that point, and how everything was an unknown.”

Von Trapp believes the family’s courage during the war has been passed down through the generations. “Would I have had the same stamina or tenacity to look for meaning in life and stay positive had I been born into another family dynamic?” she ponders. “This is a really powerful question.”

The Arts, too, have been inherited. “My family taught me how to think creatively. It’s almost like a prerequisite to life: you must be creative, you must work on your imagination. I knew from very early on that I love to sing – it has opened my life to many beautiful adventures.”

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What do the Von Trapp family do now?

Music has taken von Trapp all over the world. She and her husband, Ed Hall, “have been touring together for 25 years all over the United States,” and they split their time between Vermont and Salzburg. “We’ve travelled around the world in different ways,” she says.

But of course there’s no escaping The Sound of Music – although von Trapp is clearly happy to embrace the connection. The film famously opens with Julie Andrews as Maria scampering and twirling through the Austrian Alps singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music…” and von Trapp once replicated that very scene.

“I was with a dear friend who had done a lot of research about exactly where that hilltop they filmed on is,” she tell me. “Her husband has these old film projectors, and he took us up that hill. We had our computer playing Julie Andrews, and I was singing and dancing while Julie Andrews was singing and dancing. It was marvellous.”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the film, so interest in the musical clan has once again ramped up. As von Trapp brings our interview to an end she explains she’s off to a function at Palace Leopold [above] – the facade of which doubled as the von Trapp mansion when the children fall into the lake while boating with Maria. “Tonight they are celebrating The Sound of Music and they’re having a picnic,” she says. “I’ve been invited and Ed and I have to tandem bike out to this place.”

There’s something gloriously Maria-esque about the pair cycling in sync around Salzburg – and I have to stop myself from asking if it’ll be in clothes made from curtains. Instead, it’s so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.

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