Maria Augusta Kutschera: our heroine. In this and following pictures, she displays two of her favorite hobbies: climbing mountains and the sound of music.
The dignity of Nonnberg Abbey has been legendary in Salzburg for more than 1,300 years; in addition to its spiritual leadership, the Abbey has also been a force in education for the children of Salzburg.
One day after graduation, Maria went on a hiking excursion in the Alps. She was an expert climber, so the guide allowed her to bring up the rear. Standing alone on a glacier, Maria observed the kind of sunset that God creates in His best moments. Some months earlier, a Jesuit priest had kindled in Maria a small spark of religious devotion, and that sunset fanned it into a flame. Maria Kutschera had her own epiphany. As she put it in her 1972 memoir, Maria:
Suddenly, I had to spread my arms wide and shout, “Thank You, God, for this great wonderful creation of Yours. What could I give you back for it?”
At that moment it crossed my mind that the greatest thing I could give to Him was the very thing I was so greatly enjoying. In other words, give up mountain climbing . . . give up living out in nature, and bury myself in a convent which, to my recollection, was a dark place of medieval character . . . I walked straight down the slope and said good-bye to my colleagues.
That Maria would give up, of all things, climbing mountains to begin the next great journey of her life is yet another delicious irony in her saga.
Maria boarded another train, this time going west to Salzburg. If there is any destination, other than Rome, for a spiritual conversion, it is Salzburg—called by some “The Rome of the North.” Its two main Catholic institutions were founded as far back as AD 700. St. Rupert, considered the patron saint of Salzburg, formed a cathedral monastery among the ruins of some Roman buildings on the southern side of the Salzach River and named it after St. Peter; his niece, Avendrid, founded a convent high above a hill overlooking St. Peter’s and called it Nonnberg Abbey.
It was Nonnberg Abbey that a local policeman recommended to the young lady with the rucksack and the milk-chocolate-brown suntan when she asked him which was the strictest convent in town. Maria marched up the 144 steps to the glorious baroque abbey, the red-onion dome of which is still one of Salzburg’s architectural jewels. She called at the huge wooden front door and asked to see “the boss.” Unbelievably, she was ushered straight in to see the Reverend Mother Abbess; she planted her feet and announced that she was there to stay.
Such forthright innocence must have been bewildering to the Mother Abbess. To march into one of the strictest and most respected convents in Europe and demand a spot on God’s team is akin to a window washer climbing through a thirty-second-story office window and demanding to become the CEO of General Motors. One does not simply sign up to become a nun. There is a long and careful process. First, one may be accepted as a postulant for a trial period of probation and education; depending on the religious order, this may go on for weeks or months. Next, one is entered into the novitiate, a period lasting a year or more, where the candidate lives with other novices, under the watchful eye of the Mistress of Novices, to see how the she fits in to the disciplined and arduous work of giving oneself to Christ. As the founder of the Benedictine Order, St. Benedictus wrote: “Let not the newly arrived candidate be admitted too easily, but let care be taken, as the Apostle St. John advises, to try the spirits if they be of God.”
If any spirits were tried at Nonnberg Abbey, they were those of the Mistress of Novices. Maria, by her own admission, had little discipline growing up and she was more than a bit of a tomboy. She was bursting at the seams with the desire to gossip, or simply talk, to her fellow novices; she constantly broke things; and she loved to whistle and sing. These were not the characteristics of a young lady destined to become a bride of Christ. Yet, Maria had an intuitive intelligence and became an excellent teacher to the fifth-graders who were brought to Nonnberg Abbey for their lessons. Eventually, after months and months at Nonnberg, it seemed that Maria had finally turned a corner and was ready to graduate from her novitiate.
“SUDDENLY, I HAD TO SPREAD MY ARMS WIDE AND SHOUT, ‘THANK YOU, GOD, FOR THIS GREAT WONDERFUL CREATION OF YOURS. WHAT COULD I GIVE YOU BACK FOR IT?’ ” MARIA AUGUSTA VON TRAPP
And then came a summons from the Mother Abbess. Maria wondered what she had done now. The Reverend Mother asked her what was the most important thing in life and Maria responded that it was “to find out what was the will of God and then go and do it.” Then the Reverend Mother explained what, in her mind, was the will of God for Maria: there was a widowed naval captain named Baron von Trapp living near Salzburg, in a small suburb called Aigen, and he had been left with seven motherless children. One of them had contracted scarlet fever and was no longer able to walk the four miles back and forth to school each day. The little girl would require a private tutor and Maria would be loaned out from the Abbey for ten months to tutor her. A captain with seven children! It seemed the most fear-some thing in the world to Maria, but the Reverend Mother gently reminded her that it was God’s will.
So it was that, in the fall of 1926, Maria Kutschera, wearing a second-hand brown dress surrendered by the most recent postulant, and armed with only a guitar and a satchel full of books, left the sanctuary of Nonnberg Abbey for the bus station to Aigen. She was starting yet another journey, this time into the unknown world of family and responsibility.
It would require all the confidence she could muster.
When location filming began for The Sound of Music, the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey gave permission for exterior shooting only. Here, in front of the gates to the actual abbey, Julie Andrews as Maria embarks on her journey to the von Trapp villa. Of all the sequences in the movie, this shot may be the one that most closely approximates the historical reality.
MARIA
She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee,
Her dress has got a tear.
She waltzes on her way to Mass
And whistles on the stair.
And underneath her wimple
She has curlers in her hair—
I’ve even heard her singing in the Abbey!
She’s always late for chapel—
But her penitence is real.
She’s always late for everything
Except for every meal.
I hate to have to say it
But I very firmly feel
Maria’s not an asset to the Abbey.
I’d like to say a word in her behalf:
Maria . . . makes me . . . laugh!
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
A flibertijibbet!
A will-o’-the-wisp!
A clown!
Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her,
Many a thing she ought to understand,
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say?
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
When I’m with her I’m confused,
Out of focus and bemused,
And I never know exactly where I am.
Unpredictable as weather,
She’s as flighty as a feather—
She’s a darling!
She’s a demon!
She’s a lamb!
She’ll outpester any pest,
Drive a hornet from his nest,
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.
She is gentle,
She is wild,
She’s a riddle,
She’s a child.
She’s a headache!
She’s an angel—
She’s a girl . . .
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
A flibertijibbet!
A will-o’-the-wisp!
A clown!
Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her,
Many a thing she ought to understand,
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say?
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
The nuns at Nonnberg are thoroughly bewildered by Maria—Boris Leven’s Hollywood set captures the Gothic gravity of the situation.
Always late for everything: among the nuns waiting for Maria are (from the left) Peggy Wood as the Mother Abbess, Portia Nelson, Anna Lee, and Marni Nixon (far right).
Every well-written musical sets up its leading characters quickly, efficiently, and theatrically. The Sound of Music is unique in that it has not one, but two, songs to set up its heroine. The song “The Sound of Music” is Maria’s opening number; it tells us who she is, what makes her tick, what she yearns for. The second number, “Maria” (perhaps better known, but incorrectly so, as “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”), supplies a healthy corrective for the audience. Perhaps the Maria we saw in the opening number isn’t such an admirable, carefree character after all. Perhaps she needs maturity and discipline. Perhaps she is, in fact, a problem.
The nuns’ responses to her high jinks also reveal a good deal about them: one is tolerant, one is censorious, one is amused, but all are mystified. When Oscar Hammerstein read the first draft of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s treatment of Maria’s story, he was taken with a detail in the opening scene at the Abbey: Maria wore curlers under her wimple. He asked Lindsay and Crouse if he might steal that conceit for a lyric: “Would you kill me if I used it for a song?” asked Hammerstein. As a perfect example of their respect for their collaborators, Lindsay and Crouse graciously assented and Hammerstein used several of their ideas for this song.
In the movie version, the casting of the Mother Superior and the nuns was particularly effective in high-lighting their contrasting personalities. Peggy Wood, the Mother Abbess (tolerant), had come from a successful operetta and television career. Sister Berthe (censorious) was played by Portia Nelson, a sophisticated actress, singer, and songwriter. Sister Margaretta (amused) was Anna Lee, a former British movie star and married to the director of Mary Poppins. Sister Sophia (undecided) was played by Marni Nixon, making her on-screen movie debut. Nixon was Hollywood’s reigning queen of vocal dubbing, having sung for, among others, Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in My Fair Lady. Julie Andrews had originated that role, so The Sound of Music would be the first meeting between the Broadway Eliza and the Hollywood voice of Eliza, but Andrews and Nixon became good chums on the set.
Oscar Hammerstein’s small fixes (in red) for “Maria”; written during the end of the Boston tryout, they were the last lyrics he wrote in his stage career.
Some critics have suggested that it is a bit unfair when “Maria” is reprised as choral counterpoint to the Wedding Processional in Act Two—why continue to criticize her behavior? But that is exactly the point—the nuns have finally discovered how to solve a problem like Maria: have her fall in love and live happily ever after.
Getting to be a habit with me. It must have been awfully hot on the Fox lot for these poor actresses, all clad in black in the California sun.
CHAPTER TWO
SALZBURG TO AMERICA
Captain Georg von Trapp in his navy regalia.
There was a time when warfare was practiced by gentlemen as gentlemen. Robert Whitehead was a gifted British inventor who, in 1866, invented a way to deliver an explosive device underwater without detection: he called it a torpedo. The British naval authorities listened to Whitehead’s pitch for his new device, but politely declined to take him up on his offer. A weapon the enemy could not see coming was just not sporting.
In 1856, Whitehead had moved his family to Fiume (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to take a job as manager of a metal foundry. It is here that he developed the torpedo, and subsequently became a celebrity. In 1909, Whitehead’s granddaughter Agathe was playing the violin at a society ball attended by the cream of Fiume’s society, which included many dashing young naval officers stationed there. She caught the immediate attention of a dark, thoughtful, twenty-nine-year-old captain, Georg Ritter von Trapp.
Von Trapp himself inherited the legacy of a fine naval tradition. His father had received the honorific “von” from Emperor Franz Joseph for valor while commanding his own ship. The navy captain, with his long, gold-buttoned tunic and striped cuffs, made an impression on Agathe, and by 1911, they were married. In 1914 the von Trapps’ domestic security was upended by World War I. A heroic and canny sea commander, Georg von Trapp was called immediately into the service of his country. Over the next four years, he distinguished himself as a submarine commander in the Imperial Navy and, for his conduct, was awarded both the Maria Theresa Cross and the title of Baron.
When Georg returned to his wife in 1919 after the end of the war, much had changed. For one thing, he had fought on the losing side. The victorious Allies drew up the Treaty of Versailles, which would go far to dismantle the world that Georg von Trapp knew and defended. Austria lost all of its seaports on the Adriatic, and the Imperial Navy was stripped to its roots; only a handful of battleships remained and all submarines were taken out of active service. Nothing is harder on a naval officer than to lose command of his ship, and now there were not even ships left for Georg von Trapp to command.
After the final curtain came down disappointingly on the theater of war, Baron von Trapp would have to devote himself to developments on his own personal home front.
The von Trapp estate in Aigen: not the Hollywood version, but, with 22 rooms, perfectly comfortable.
Before the war, and during his occasional leave, Georg and Agathe had started a family. There were his eldest son, Rupert (b. 1911), followed by Agathe (b. 1913), Maria (b. 1914), Werner (b. 1915), and Hedwig (b. 1917). The family had been forced to move several times during the war and, between von Trapp’s lack of office and postwar economics, finances were tight. They resettled in a relative’s house outside of Vienna and had two more children: Johanna (b. 1919), and Martina (b. 1922). The situation was often stressful, but the family relied on one another, on relatives, and on the structure and deference that aristocracy carries with it.
And then an epidemic of scarlet fever struck. In September 1922, only months after the birth of Martina, Agathe died and left the Baron with an even greater challenge—being the widowed father of seven young children. Thankfully, his children were, by all accounts, self-sufficient, optimistic, and supportive of their father and one another. In 1925, Baron von Trapp relocated to a villa in Aigen, outside of Salzburg, with his children and a small domestic staff. A charming yellow structure with green shutters and a slight mansard roof, the villa Trapp was an elegant, but by no means palatial, estate. It was a brisk walk from the railway station at Aigen, accessible through a gate at the rear of the property. The gate ran along a large garden to the front of the house. There was a bell in the front, and it was this bell that the family retainer, Hans, answered when Maria Kutschera reported for duty in 1926.
The Baron was away on business and so Maria was introduced to her pupil by the housekeeper. It was love at first sight—and second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, as she met all the von Trapp children. Maria’s very lack of experience served her in good stead, and she relied on keeping the children—who were far closer to her own age than their father was—busy by doing the things she loved best: hiking, bike riding, and singing. Especially singing. “Music was always in the family,” recalled her pupil, Maria, in a 1999 Vanity Fair interview. “My real mother was very musical. She played violin and piano and we all sang before we met Maria. We had at least a hundred songs before she came. What she did was teach us madrigals, and of course this is very hard to do, but we found
it was no problem for us.”
Georg and Agathe von Trapp. Her untimely death from scarlet fever in 1922 left a vacancy for a maternal figure in the family.
The Baron seemed pleased but kept his distance, joining them only for the occasional bicycling trek or hike through the hills. His was a sweet presence, some-what muted by the death of his wife and the loss of his career, but he was by no means a stern martinet. There was, however, one constant reminder of his navy days: “My father did use a bosun’s whistle,” recounted Johannes, the youngest von Trapp child, in a 2005 documentary. “There were signals for all the different kids. It was very effective, but the kids didn’t show up marching formally. They just responded to their signal.” Maria gave the Baron a wide berth and was overjoyed to hear that he was planning to remarry, to a Princess Yvonne, a distant cousin of his first wife. The Baron was indeed planning to remarry, but he tacked in a different direction: before Maria’s ten-month sojourn at the villa Trapp had ended, he asked her to become the mother of his children.
“If he had only asked me to marry him I might have not said yes, because at that time I really and truly was not in love,” wrote Maria in her memoirs. “I liked him but I didn’t love him. However, I loved the children, and so in a way I really married the children.” But first she had to resolve her temporal crisis—after all, she was pledged to be the bride of Christ. She ran back to Nonnberg for the Reverend Mother’s advice. In the stage musical, the situation is depicted this way:
MOTHER ABBESS:…you have a great capacity for love. What you must find out is—how does God want you to spend your love?
MARIA: I’ve pledged my life to God’s service. I’ve pledged my life to God.
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