The names, ages, and sexes of the children were changed.There were 10, not 7 von Trapp children.However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children. . . y and by I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after." When he asked her to marry him, she was not sure if she should abandon her religious calling but was advised by the nuns to do God's will and marry Georg. As she said in her autobiography Maria, she fell in love with the children at first sight, not their father. Maria did not marry Georg von Trapp because she was in love with him.Maria and Georg married in 1927, 11 years before the family left Austria, not right before the Nazi takeover of Austria.Maria came to the von Trapp family in 1926 as a tutor for one of the children, Maria, who was recovering from scarlet fever, not as governess to all the children.While The Sound of Music was generally based on the first section of Maria's book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (published in 1949), there were many alterations and omissions. Their entry into the United States and their subsequent applications for citizenship are documented in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration. When they fled the Nazi regime in Austria, the von Trapps traveled to America. Part of the story of the real von Trapp family can be found in the records of the National Archives. In thinking about the fictionalized movie version of Maria von Trapp as compared to this very real Maria von Trapp, I came to realize that the story of the von Trapp family was probably something closer to human, and therefore much more interesting, than the movie led me to believe. In the early 1970s I saw Maria von Trapp herself on Dinah Shore's television show, and boy, was she not like the Julie Andrews version of Maria! She didn't look like Julie, and she came across as a true force of nature. "It's not historically accurate!" I'd protest, a small archivist in the making. I liked the singing, and Maria was so pretty and kind! As I grew older, more aware of world history, and saturated by viewing the movie at least once yearly, I was struck and annoyed by the somewhat sanitized story of the von Trapp family it told, as well as the bad 1960s hairdos and costumes.
I first saw the movie The Sound of Music as a young child, probably in the late 1960s. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21) Maria von Trapp, photograph from her Declaration of Intention, dated January 21, 1944.