Whatever happened to the six ...
Question: Whatever happened to the six von Trapp children whose family's story inspired The Sound of Music? Two boys and four girls, right? Did any of them go on to do more movies or television shows?
Answer: Though inspired by the true story of the von Trapp family, The Sound of Music (1965) fictionalized certain aspects of their story. The widowed Georg von Trapp actually had seven children from his marriage to his first wife, Agathe, who died of scarlet fever in 1922. The family later expanded to 10 after his 1927 marriage to aspiring nun Maria Augusta Kutschera, who originally came to work for him not as a governess to his entire brood but as a teacher for his ailing youngest daughter. In order, the children were Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, Martina, Rosmarie, Eleonore and Johannes. As in The Sound of Music, the Trapp Family Singers won first place in the Salzburg Music Festival in 1936 and became a successful touring act in Europe. When the Nazi's rise to power forced them to leave Austria, they went to Italy and then to the United States on tourist visas. They toured the U.S. successfully for several years, with frequent European sojourns as they worked out their immigration issues. In the early 1940s they bought a farm in Stowe, Vermont, and ran a music camp between touring engagements. The farm eventually became the Trapp Family Lodge, an "Austrian-style" resort that's still in operation today. Maria, who died in 1987, ran the lodge for many years. The Trapp Family Singers stopped touring in 1955, and in the ensemble's last years, most of the performers weren't actually members of the Trapp family. It appears that none of the von Trapp children pursued careers in entertainment, though Hedwig, who died in 1972, carried on the family's musical tradition as a teacher. Johannes took over managing the lodge from his mother; Rupert, who died in 1992, became a doctor; Agathe taught kindergarten; Maria became a missionary in New Guinea; Werner was a farmer; and Johanna and Martina got married and didn't work outside the home. Johanna moved back to Austria with her husband, where she died in 1994, while Martina died in childbirth in 1952 in the U.S. I don't know what paths Rosmarie and Eleonore pursued.
