The Trapp Family And The Sound Of Music: An Immigrant Success Story

The Trapp family’s history is an immigrant success story filled with overcoming hardship and adapting to the realities of a new land and culture. While the outlines of the Trapp family’s real-life story matched The Sound of Music, the movie ended when the family’s immigration journey to America began.

Maria von Trapp, played by Julie Andrews in the film, worked with and fell in love with the children, married the captain and the family left Austria. However, Hollywood movies and real life are not the same. The family did not like the portrayal of Georg, the father/captain, who, according to Maria and the children, was loving and outgoing, not stern and reclusive as portrayed in the movie.

Maria was religious, as the movie showed. “The only important thing on earth for us is to find out what is the will of God and to do it,” she wrote in her memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Maria recalled saying those words to the Reverend Mother shortly before being assigned as a tutor for Baron von Trapp, who would become her future husband. Contrary to the depiction in the movie, Maria was not the governess to all the children, and she married Georg more than a decade before World War II. She writes in her memoir that her love of the children inspired her to marry Georg. There were 10 children, rather than the seven portrayed in the movie.

The family became singers and toured Paris, London, Brussels and elsewhere, even once singing for the Pope. The war interrupted their musical ambitions in Austria.

On March 11, 1938, the family celebrated daughter Agatha’s birthday. Over the radio, they heard Austria’s chancellor say, “I am yielding to force. My Austria—God bless you!” The next morning, Maria saw German soldiers “on every street corner.”

The Trapp children felt the impact of the Nazi takeover of Austria. Children were forbidden to sing songs in school with the word Christ or Christmas in the name. Soon after the takeover, daughter Lorli told Maria her first-grade teacher wanted to speak with her. The teacher told Maria: “When we learned our new anthem yesterday Lorli didn’t open her mouth. When I asked her why she didn’t sing with us, she announced in front of the whole class that her father had said he’d put ground glass in his tea or finish his life on a dung heap before he would ever sing that song. Next time I will have to report this.” Lorli also refused to raise her hand in a “Heil Hitler” salute. Maria feared the family would be placed in a concentration camp.

Austria’s Navy Department asked Georg to come out of retirement and command a submarine. Soon after, the Trapp family was asked to sing at a celebration for Adolf Hitler’s birthday. In both cases, Georg’s answer was “No.”

After these refusals, Georg gathered the family together for a pivotal moment in their lives. “Children, we have the choice now: Do we want to keep the material goods we still have, our home with the ancient furniture, our friends, and all the things we’re fond of?—Then we shall have to give up the spiritual goods: Our faith and our honor. We can’t have both anymore. We could all make a lot of money now, but I doubt very much whether it would make us happy. I’d rather see you poor but honest. If we choose this, then we have to leave. Do you agree?”

The children answered, “Yes, father.”

“Then, let’s get out of here soon,” said Georg. “You can’t say no three times to Hitler.”

Real life diverged from the film The Sound of Music. “The family did not secretly escape over the Alps to freedom in Switzerland, carrying their suitcases and musical instruments,” writes Joan Gearin, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration. “As daughter Maria said in a 2003 interview printed in Opera News, ‘We did tell people that we were going to America to sing. And we did not climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and instruments. We left by train, pretending nothing.’”

Gearin notes the family traveled to Italy, not Switzerland. Georg, Maria’s husband, was an Italian citizen by birth. “The family had a contract with an American booking agent when they left Austria,” writes Gearin. “They contacted the agent from Italy and requested fare to America.”

Maria describes their first impressions of America. “Bewildered—completely bewildered—that’s what we all were when three taxis spilled us out on Seventh Avenue at 55^th Street . . . All the instruments in their cases . . . the big trunks with the concert costumes and our private belongings . . . the tallest houses in Vienna have five or six stories. When the elevator took us to the 19^th floor, we simply couldn’t believe it.”

The family began a series of concerts, but their agent, Mr. Wagner, canceled the remaining tour events when he found out Maria was eight months pregnant. “What a blow! Fewer concerts meant less money, and we needed every cent,” writes Maria. She gave birth to a son, Johannes, around Christmas.

Money became an issue since what the family earned mostly went to repaying Mr. Wagner the cost of the boat tickets, which he had advanced. Their visitor visa expired in March. The visa stipulated they could only earn money by performing concerts. Fortunately, the family’s agent had lined up more concert dates. However, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) thwarted those plans.

“One morning came the fatal letter,” writes Maria. “The Immigration and Naturalization Service informed us that our application for an extension of temporary stay was not granted, and we had to leave the United States at the latest March 4. This was a cruel blow. We had burned all our bridges behind us, and would never dare go back home again, and now America would not allow us to stay here. . . . One thing was certain: We had to leave.”

The family traveled by boat to Europe and performed small concerts in Sweden and elsewhere. Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 cut short their concert plans.

Their agent, Mr. Wagner, provided another advance for tickets to the United States, which meant the family was headed once more to America. After arriving at the dock in Brooklyn, Maria made a mistake that almost cost the family their sanctuary. When an immigration officer asked Maria how long she intended to stay in America, instead of saying “six months,” Maria said, “I’m so glad to be here—I want to never to leave again!”

This mistake landed the family in an immigration detention facility. Reporters and photographers came to Ellis Island and published articles about the Trapp family being held in detention. After the fourth day, the family was questioned at an immigration court hearing, focusing on whether they planned to leave. Given the judge’s tone, Maria was pessimistic after the hearing. Perhaps only due to the outside pressure and publicity, the family was released from detention.

During their second tour in America, the family learned the hard facts of show business. Their agent, Mr. Wagner, scheduled them in large concert halls but did a poor job publicizing the events. Wagner told the family he didn’t think they had sufficient appeal to American audiences and decided not to renew his contract to represent them. Without representation, the Trapp family had no chance of success and no way to remain in America. The family had reached another moment of crisis.

With much effort, they found another potential agent. However, he said his representation was contingent on changing the family’s act to appeal to a wider American audience, not just those primarily interested in choral or classical music. He told them he would need $5,000 in advance for publicity and advertising. At the time, the family had only $250 in their bank account. The entrepreneurial family got to work. They met with a wealthy couple who, after hearing their story and listening to them sing, promised to lend them half the money. The Trapp family found another sponsor for the other $2,500. They were back in business.

Their new agent changed the name from the Trapp Family Choir, which he considered sounded “too churchy,” to the Trapp Family Singers. To earn money before the new tour would start, the family made handicrafts, such as children’s furniture, wooden bowls and leather works.

The family’s entrepreneurial streak continued when they bought a farm in Vermont and added a music camp on the grounds. During World War II, the family ran afoul of government regulators at the War Production Board, who said the family had used “new” rather than “second-hand” lumber in violation of the law. Maria thought she would be put in prison until the regulators relented after she showed them the lumber had been purchased 18 months before. Vermont’s governor attended the camp’s grand opening, which featured the Trapp family singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Today, the farm and lodgings remain a tourist attraction.

Two of the Trapp family returned to Europe—fighting as soldiers for the U.S. Army during World War II. It was an ironic twist. Rather than their father being pressed into service as a submarine commander for the German war effort, the sons fought against Germany in Western Europe. After the war, the family regained ownership of their Austrian home, which had been confiscated to serve as a headquarters for (SS Reich Leader) Heinrich Himmler. The family sold the home to a church group and raised money to help Austrians impoverished by the war and Germany’s occupation.

The Trapp family overcame tragedy in America. In 1947, Maria’s husband, Georg, passed away. He died of pneumonia surrounded by his family.

The Trapp family continued to perform, and eventually took on outside performers to replace some of the children who had gone on to other careers in America, including in medicine. The great-grandchildren of Maria and Georg continue to sing in America.

Maria von Trapp’s proudest day in America came in 1948, when she became a U.S. citizen. “Then came the big day in May when we were summoned to the courthouse in Montpelier—the five years of waiting for over,” writes Maria. “What a mixed group it was, waiting there in the courtroom: Italians, Croatian, Syrians, English, Irish, Polish, and we Austrians. The clerk called the roll. Then the judge entered the room. We all rose from our seats. Then we were asked to raise our right hand and repeat the solemn oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America. After we had ended, ‘So help me God,’ the judge bade us sit down, looked at us all, and said: ‘Fellow citizens.’ He meant us—now we were Americans.”