The hills were alive for her 93 years on this earth. The last surviving daughter of the famous Baron and his former nanny died at 93 in a nursing home in Morrisville, as was announced by the Trapp Family Lodge, her family’s business in Stowe, Vermont.
She was the last remaining female member of the famed musical family, daughter of the family patriarch Baron Georg Johannes von Trapp and Maria Augusta von Trapp née Kutschera. Rosmarie Agathe Erentrudis von Trapp was born on Feb. 8, 1929, in Aigen outside of Salzburg, Austria
Rosmarie Trapp, who dropped the aristocratic ‘von’ from her name early on was never a character in the 1959 Broadway musical by Rogers & Hammerstein or the subsequent film adaptation by Robert Wise. The movie centers around a young novitiate who foregoes nun-hood after falling in love with the widowed naval officer whose seven children by his first wife she governs in 1930s Austria. The 1965 musical starring Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews may have won two Golden Globes and five Oscars, but it played fast and loose with history in many ways. There have always been questions about the cinematic heroism of the Baron who, in the film, flees Austria’s new Nazi rule in 1938. His real-life politics were apparently not so black and white. Hollywood took many liberties with the story, prompting Plummer to tell the HFPA: “It’s a funny thing with the film – the whole world loves it. Except for the Austrians. It was the only country that didn’t really like it, and I kind of half agreed with them because we were not even wearing the correct dress. I just wish that the Baron had been a more interesting character. I met [his nephew]. I said what was your uncle like. He said he was the most boring man I’ve ever met. When I go to Austria, I always apologize.”
One of the most glaring mistakes is the timeline. Georg and Maria married in 1927, not ten years later, which makes Rosmarie and her two siblings, a younger sister and brother, very much alive during the period the musical depicts. Yet they were non-existent in the story. The whole family – including the Baron’s three children with Maria – took a train to Italy to leave the country. The entire action-adventure-packed escape through the Alps is very much fiction.
Their first concert took place in New York that same year. They first bought a mansion in Pennsylvania before moving to Vermont. Georg von Trapp died in 1947, Maria survived him by 40 years.
Rosmarie like all her siblings, went on performing with the Trapp Family Singers, worked as a missionary in Papua, New Guinea and a s volunteer in Israel.
In 1997 she told the Chicago Tribune: “I used to think I was a museum, but I can’t escape it. Now I’m using it as a tool,” she added. “I’m not a victim of it anymore.”
As for her own take on The Sound of Music, she said: “It was a nice movie. But it wasn’t like my life.” An Instagram post by her brother Johannes von Trapp and nephews and nieces reads: “Her kindness, generosity, and colorful spirit were legendary, and she had a positive impact on countless lives.”