Maria von Trapp dies, aged 99
By Nick Levine
Maria von Trapp has died at the age of 99.
She was the last surviving member of the Trapp Family Singers, the family performing group whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria inspired the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and subsequent 1965 film starring Julie Andrews.
In the musical and film, she was portrayed as Louisa von Trapp, the second eldest daughter of the family.
Maria’s brother Johannes von Trapp told the Associated Press that his sister passed away on Tuesday (February 18) at her home in Vermont. “She was a lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people,” he said. “There wasn’t a mean or miserable bone in her body. I think everyone who knew her would agree with that.”
After fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, the von Trapp family embarked on a series of concert tours throughout Europe and the US, before settling in Vermont in the early 1940s, where they opened a ski lodge. Once there, Maria von Trapp played accordion and taught Austrian dance with her sister.
The second wife of Maria von Trapp’s father wrote about the family in a 1939 book, which tells the story of an Austrian woman who marries a widower and teaches his seven children to love and perform music. This book was used by Rodgers and Hammerstein as the basis for their classic musical.