The Trapp Household And The Sound Of Music: An Immigrant Success Story
Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer flanked by their kids, all members of the singing Von … [+]
The Trapp household’s historical past is an immigrant success story full of overcoming hardship and adapting to the realities of a brand new land and tradition. Whereas the outlines of the Trapp household’s real-life story matched The Sound of Music, the film ended when the household’s immigration journey to America started.
Maria von Trapp, performed by Julie Andrews within the movie, labored with and fell in love with the kids, married the captain and the household left Austria. Nonetheless, Hollywood motion pictures and actual life should not the identical. The household didn’t just like the portrayal of Georg, the daddy/captain, who, in accordance with Maria and the kids, was loving and outgoing, not stern and reclusive as portrayed within the film.
Maria was spiritual, because the film confirmed. “The one vital factor on earth for us is to seek out out what’s the will of God and to do it,” she wrote in her memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Maria recalled saying these phrases to the Reverend Mom shortly earlier than being assigned as a tutor for Baron von Trapp, who would develop into her future husband. Opposite to the depiction within the film, Maria was not the governess to all the kids, and he or she married Georg greater than a decade earlier than World Conflict II. She writes in her memoir that her love of the kids impressed her to marry Georg. There have been 10 kids, fairly than the seven portrayed within the film.
The household turned singers and toured Paris, London, Brussels and elsewhere, even as soon as singing for the Pope. The warfare interrupted their musical ambitions in Austria.
On March 11, 1938, the household celebrated daughter Agatha’s birthday. Over the radio, they heard Austria’s chancellor say, “I’m yielding to pressure. My Austria—God bless you!” The subsequent morning, Maria noticed German troopers “on each avenue nook.”
The Trapp kids felt the influence of the Nazi takeover of Austria. Kids have been forbidden to sing songs at school with the phrase Christ or Christmas within the title. Quickly after the takeover, daughter Lorli advised Maria her first-grade trainer wished to talk together with her. The trainer advised Maria: “Once we discovered our new anthem yesterday Lorli didn’t open her mouth. Once I requested her why she didn’t sing with us, she introduced in entrance of the entire class that her father had mentioned he’d put floor glass in his tea or end his life on a dung heap earlier than he would ever sing that music. Subsequent time I should report this.” Lorli additionally refused to lift her hand in a “Heil Hitler” salute. Maria feared the household could be positioned in a focus camp.
Austria’s Navy Division requested Georg to come back out of retirement and command a submarine. Quickly after, the Trapp household was requested to sing at a celebration for Adolf Hitler’s birthday. In each instances, Georg’s reply was “No.”
After these refusals, Georg gathered the household collectively for a pivotal second of their lives. “Kids, we have now the selection now: Will we wish to maintain the fabric items we nonetheless have, our residence with the traditional furnishings, our pals, and all of the issues we’re keen on?—Then we will have to surrender the religious items: Our religion and our honor. We will’t have each anymore. We may all make some huge cash now, however I doubt very a lot whether or not it might make us completely satisfied. I’d fairly see you poor however trustworthy. If we select this, then we have now to go away. Do you agree?”
The kids answered, “Sure, father.”
“Then, let’s get out of right here quickly,” mentioned Georg. “You possibly can’t say no 3 times to Hitler.”
Actual life diverged from the movie The Sound of Music. “The household didn’t secretly escape over the Alps to freedom in Switzerland, carrying their suitcases and musical devices,” writes Joan Gearin, an archivist on the Nationwide Archives and Data Administration. “As daughter Maria mentioned in a 2003 interview printed in Opera Information, ‘We did inform people who we have been going to America to sing. And we didn’t climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and devices. We left by practice, pretending nothing.’”
Gearin notes the household traveled to Italy, not Switzerland. Georg, Maria’s husband, was an Italian citizen by start. “The household had a contract with an American reserving agent after they left Austria,” writes Gearin. “They contacted the agent from Italy and requested fare to America.”
Maria describes their first impressions of America. “Bewildered—utterly bewildered—that’s what all of us have been when three taxis spilled us out on Seventh Avenue at 55th Road . . . All of the devices of their instances . . . the large trunks with the live performance costumes and our personal belongings . . . the tallest homes in Vienna have 5 or 6 tales. When the elevator took us to the 19th ground, we merely couldn’t consider it.”
The household started a sequence of live shows, however their agent, Mr. Wagner, canceled the remaining tour occasions when he came upon Maria was eight months pregnant. “What a blow! Fewer live shows meant much less cash, and we would have liked each cent,” writes Maria. She gave start to a son, Johannes, round Christmas.
Cash turned a difficulty since what the household earned principally went to repaying Mr. Wagner the price of the boat tickets, which he had superior. Their customer visa expired in March. The visa stipulated they might solely earn cash by performing live shows. Thankfully, the household’s agent had lined up extra live performance dates. Nonetheless, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) thwarted these plans.
“One morning got here the deadly letter,” writes Maria. “The Immigration and Naturalization Service knowledgeable us that our utility for an extension of momentary keep was not granted, and we needed to depart the US on the newest March 4. This was a merciless blow. We had burned all our bridges behind us, and would by no means dare return residence once more, and now America wouldn’t enable us to remain right here. . . . One factor was sure: We needed to depart.”
The household traveled by boat to Europe and carried out small live shows in Sweden and elsewhere. Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 lower brief their live performance plans.
Their agent, Mr. Wagner, supplied one other advance for tickets to the US, which meant the household was headed as soon as extra to America. After arriving on the dock in Brooklyn, Maria made a mistake that nearly value the household their sanctuary. When an immigration officer requested Maria how lengthy she meant to remain in America, as a substitute of claiming “six months,” Maria mentioned, “I’m so glad to be right here—I wish to by no means to go away once more!”
This error landed the household in an immigration detention facility. Reporters and photographers got here to Ellis Island and revealed articles concerning the Trapp household being held in detention. After the fourth day, the household was questioned at an immigration courtroom listening to, specializing in whether or not they deliberate to go away. Given the choose’s tone, Maria was pessimistic after the listening to. Maybe solely as a result of outdoors stress and publicity, the household was launched from detention.
Throughout their second tour in America, the household discovered the onerous details of present enterprise. Their agent, Mr. Wagner, scheduled them in massive live performance halls however did a poor job publicizing the occasions. Wagner advised the household he didn’t assume they’d enough enchantment to American audiences and determined to not renew his contract to characterize them. With out illustration, the Trapp household had no likelihood of success and no method to stay in America. The household had reached one other second of disaster.
With a lot effort, they discovered one other potential agent. Nonetheless, he mentioned his illustration was contingent on altering the household’s act to enchantment to a wider American viewers, not simply these primarily curious about choral or classical music. He advised them he would wish $5,000 prematurely for publicity and promoting. On the time, the household had solely $250 of their checking account. The entrepreneurial household set to work. They met with a rich couple who, after listening to their story and listening to them sing, promised to lend them half the cash. The Trapp household discovered one other sponsor for the opposite $2,500. They have been again in enterprise.
Their new agent modified the title from the Trapp Household Choir, which he thought-about sounded “too churchy,” to the Trapp Household Singers. To earn cash earlier than the brand new tour would begin, the household made handicrafts, similar to kids’s furnishings, picket bowls and leather-based works.
The household’s entrepreneurial streak continued after they purchased a farm in Vermont and added a music camp on the grounds. Throughout World Conflict II, the household ran afoul of presidency regulators on the Conflict Manufacturing Board, who mentioned the household had used “new” fairly than “second-hand” lumber in violation of the regulation. Maria thought she could be put in jail till the regulators relented after she confirmed them the lumber had been bought 18 months earlier than. Vermont’s governor attended the camp’s grand opening, which featured the Trapp household singing the Star-Spangled Banner. At the moment, the farm and lodgings remain a tourist attraction.
Two of the Trapp household returned to Europe—preventing as troopers for the U.S. Military throughout World Conflict II. It was an ironic twist. Moderately than their father being pressed into service as a submarine commander for the German warfare effort, the sons fought in opposition to Germany in Western Europe. After the warfare, the household regained possession of their Austrian residence, which had been confiscated to function a headquarters for (SS Reich Chief) Heinrich Himmler. The household bought the house to a church group and raised cash to assist Austrians impoverished by the warfare and Germany’s occupation.
The Trapp household overcame tragedy in America. In 1947, Maria’s husband, Georg, handed away. He died of pneumonia surrounded by his household.
The Trapp household continued to carry out, and finally took on outdoors performers to interchange a number of the kids who had gone on to different careers in America, together with in drugs. The good-grandchildren of Maria and Georg continue to sing in America.
Maria von Trapp’s proudest day in America got here in 1948, when she turned a U.S. citizen. “Then got here the large day in Could once we have been summoned to the courthouse in Montpelier—the 5 years of ready for over,” writes Maria. “What a combined group it was, ready there within the courtroom: Italians, Croatian, Syrians, English, Irish, Polish, and we Austrians. The clerk referred to as the roll. Then the choose entered the room. All of us rose from our seats. Then we have been requested to lift our proper hand and repeat the solemn oath of allegiance to the Structure of the US of America. After we had ended, ‘So assist me God,’ the choose bade us sit down, checked out us all, and mentioned: ‘Fellow residents.’ He meant us—now we have been People.”
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