Background of the real Trapps

Must find time to watch the rest!

I've never heard the speculation about Johannes being Waszner's son, but wow, that's quite a resemblance.
But I have heard that Maria was the polar opposite of how she was portrayed, and that the children were always upset about how the fictional Georg was so cold and strict when he really was a kind and gentle man.

Oookaaay. I was gonna do something else, but now I watched the documentary again, taking notes. (Which I should have done differently, but hindsight and 20/20 and so on.)

It’s sort of chronological.

Werner (75)
- lives close to Maria
- “It’s not the movie of the Trapp family, but it’s a good movie. It doesn’t have violence, profanity and brings people entertainment without being insulted.”
- “We usually had two ladies for the children” (one for the little ones, one for the older ones) “sometimes also a housekeeper” “it was more of an emergency situation and we always hoped it would change” “and then my step-mother appeared because of her (points to Maria) because she was sick and couldn’t go to school” “and next to teaching Maria, she brought live into our home with her guitar and her songs”
- “Had to get money from somewhere so we started singing in 1937. We went to Italy and sing, hoping we would find our footing in the music world and earn money singing.”
- Laughing about “ladies jumping around on stage in clothing that is t ours.”
- “I knew it couldn’t continue like this. Before we went to Australia, I told (the) mother and Dr Waldner I’m done. It’s my lazy trip.”

Maria (77)
- “we had always been singing before Maria arrived, she brought different kinds of music but music had been there already”
- There was a family visiting them when they had just lost their money and the kids were jumping around happily “we lost our money, we lost our money. We didn’t have a a clue what it meant. But we were happy we could do dishes and laundry and clean by ourselves. We had to move upstairs (due to the heating) but it didn’t hurt us. It must have hit father hard, though. With 9 kids.”
- “Wanted us to wear more make-up because we looked to simple to be on stage.”

Rosemarie
- lives an hour away from the the other two
- Has nothing lives in at the old lady’s house
- “How all of a sudden he was very important after his death; no one holding the family together anymore; i never realized it when he was till alive.” (Ran away 2 weeks after his death) “Wasner came and picked me up, I was very angry with him. They didn’t know what to do with me so they send me to a doctor in Boston.” (Electroshock) “The mother always wanted to send me to an abbey when I had a question or a nervous breakdown or didn’t know what to do with me.”

Agathe (80)
- lives 2hrs away, close to Washington DC
- Was crying after watching the movie for the first time (too distorted from her memory)
- “We never doubted Maria’s religion or that she was doing everything in the name of god.” “But I do believe that she not always put god’s will first. There was a big battle happing inside her and that’s why she had these eruptions. All of a sudden she would be able to beat the living sunlight out of you with lots of wrong accusations, before you knew what was happening.”
- “Father hated that we were singing in public. It was not done.”
- “We got to Ellis Island and reporters asked my step-mother. Do you like America, would you like to stay? [...] We were inspected to make sure everything was legal.”

Johannes
- aren’t rich but can manage (the banks still own a lot)
- Albuquerque: Georg bought him a lasso, since then he wanted to become a rancher
- he doesn’t want to talk about his family’s history (the cowboys won’t make him)
- “Mother (after watching the musical) thought they hadn’t gotten father right, so she tried to get in contact with Robert Wise so he could present him (Georg) closer to his true nature. But Wise said, we don’t want to deal with reality, we want to fictualize.”
- “traveling years weren’t easy and pretty tough on us but especially in my older siblings”

Johanna (73)
- lives in Vienna with her husband
- only the name bonds her with her siblings
- saw the musical on Broadway first and was crying because she was so mad at it “they presented father totally wrong”
- “He (Georg) didn’t have a job. He had money, which he inherited from my mother.”
- “Didn’t like Wasner. He was intruding. But none of us really liked him. He was her (Maria’s) voice.”
- “She (Maria) was super religious.”
- “He sat in the wings by himself and waited for his sign to have to go on stage. Then he left.”
- Starts crying when retelling what Georg said on March 12, 1938 “...Were standing at the open grave of Austria, Austria is gone. If we want to survive as a family we have to emigrate, are you joining us?” “We all yelled, of course! But it was a horrible experience. We were only allowed to take one suitcase each.”
- Laughing how they were usually late getting onto the bus (when traveling cross country) and annoying Maria in doing so, apparently Hedwig would wash her hair at the last moment “and then we were sitting on the bus for hours with nothing to do”
- “She (Maria) had a Mission for this family and we were all supposed to help her with it and give up everything. I said, I won’t do it. I have my own life, i want to live it and become a mother and a wife but not sing for the rest of my life. It cannot last forever. [...] I put on my ski coat my ski pants and left the house at 2 in the morning. Walked down to the bus stop for 4 hours but I made it and we married.”

Eleanore
- explains how Maria had to go live with a cruel guardian and ran away from him when she was 15/ 16 and lived on her own ever since
- She thinks it explains why Maria turned into the hard and headstrong Maria the children got to know

Hermann Jedina
- Captain Trapp was a prime example for his profession and his class/ upbringing
- Trapp’ character was a no nonsense, non-musically inclined (open to music) because that was not what naval officers would concern themselves with

Jonny Whitehead (Agathe’s nephew)
- retells why Agathe and Georg met in Fiume

Wasner:
- “They sounded nice, but I had some pointers. Just don’t remember what it was anymore.”
- “We brought totally different world of music to America and a lot of Americans were interested.”

Johanna’s husband
- “I saw he wasn’t the leader (“Führer”) of the Trapp family choir. He was the father of the Trapp family.” “I felt sorry for him, but he carried it and himself very well.”




- The siblings were supposed to run the lodge together (according to Maria) but all kids declined
- shareholders aren’t happy how Johannes is running the hotel at this point (Eleanore declines being rich)
- Salzburg wouldn’t be Salzburg if they hadn’t figured out how to make money with the American movie (including a SoM dinner show)
- most visitors are American who know everything about the movie but almost nothing of the real family and think Edelweiss is the Austrian anthem (STILL applicable!!! ChezLui)
- the commentator calls the (movie) story a “fairly tale”
- Kids’ problem with the movie was the role reversal of Maria (strong one) and Georg (“downgraded to a boring father”)
- Agathe moved into her mother’s summer house (“Erlenhof”) at Zellersee in Salzburg
- because Whitehead’s were so rich, they also had a different house/ castle “Martinschloss” (in Klosterneuburg) where Agathe died
- Georg lost his job due to the end of the monarchy
- 1923 Georg bought the villa in Aigen
- Maria Dolores remembers Maria on her first day (“Maria had lots of imagination, as one can read because not everything in her (Maria’s) book is true” “she was charming but also put people off with her behavior” “one couldn’t rely on her completely”
- Maria was never a novice, just a employee at Nonnberg
- she also wasn’t born on a train but 1905 in Vienna (mother died a few days later, father when she was 3; lived with her grandmother until she passed away when Maria was 12)
- not much to say between their wedding 1927 and 1935 (they sang more and better at the villa, 2 more kids joined)
- 1935: Frans Wasner showed up at the family chapel and was put in charge of the family choir
- the friendship between Maria and Wasner was strong until the end (Religion and music)
- 1935: all money was lost due to the woman running the bank in Salzburg
- 1938: Anschluss and the I vote to sing for Hitler’s birthday was declined
- A job offer to work for the Germans was declined as well, and they decided to leave as quickly as possible
- (At the villa) Where the family chapel used to be, Himmler had his SS people eat while Himmler himself used to live upstairs when in Salzburg : -> That’s the last Musical and movie stop telling the story of the von Trapp
- twice they went to the US, once for a tour and an invite; once without invite via Ellis Island
- Archbishop (of New York?) put a word in for the von Trapp and after 3 days of detaining they were allowed to enter the US
- Maria managed to get a contract for the choir and their career in the US started
- the siblings were lonely traveling and in Stowe; no friends; no school to go to; only Rupert married
- the underlying tension between Maria and the children, the feeling of being unable to change the system or getting out of the family from the children, the communication problems, Georg’s death lead to Rosemary’s break down
- Johanna was the only one strong enough to stand up to her step-mother and leave the family
- more than 2000 records and concerts later, the Trapp Family Singers stopped in 1956
- today (35 years after the end of the choir) the children of the children are singing again for guests at the lodge
- What the trapps did for Austria is enormous; but sadly, only Baroness Maria von Trapp gets most of the recognition the rest of her family sacrificed so much for

It was Wasner.
Once they stopped going on tour, he apparently went back to Austria.

Hey, it’s the least I can do.
After all, you guys spend way more time and effort at jutting down all these stories I’ve come to enjoy!