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June 9th, 2016 
Awake Goy No movie has been as successful as The Sound of Music. A good-against-evil tear-jerker with a happy ending, the 1965 released film is now standard Christmas fare. The film was adapted from a 1959 Broadway musical of the same name. The lyrics are the penmanship of the artful Oscar Hammerstein II and irresponsibility for the imaginative script is alleged against Ernest Lehman; no surprises there then. The Sound of Music became the highest grossing film in the history of film making. Julie Andrews plays Maria Von Trapp and Christopher Plummer takes the part of Baron Von Trapp. Touted as a true story the movie’s ballads are warbled over the Christmas turkey.
Only loosely based on actual events, so much make-believe was woven into the story that it bears little relationship to the true account. They did get the name right. Maria’s family name was Maria Augusta Kutschera. As a small child Maria ended up in a foster home as a consequence of her father’s neglect.
As the waif matured she paid her way by carrying out menial tasks. Eventually, the youngster made her way to Salzburg where the Benedictine nuns of Nonnberg Abbey took her in. Upon reaching maturity Maria Kutschera was sent to the estate of the Baron Von Trapp. The widower, 20 years her senior, interviewed Maria for a job as tutor for his seven children.
Romance between the two blossomed and the deliriously happy couple were married on November 27 1927. In the years following Maria added two daughters to the baron’s brood. One child was born in 1929 and the other in 1931. In 1932, before Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP was elected, the Von Trapp family fell on hard times through financial negligence, not through ‘Nazi skulduggery’.
The distressed family were soon reduced to street and event singing and passing the hat around. They were singing for their supper when a priest heard their melodic refrains. The kindly clergyman invited them to perform in churches and so the Von Trapp Choir was formed.
In 1938, the choir performed at the now internationally celebrated Salzburg Festival. This international event continues to host the great stars of the classical music world. The acclaimed Salzburg Festival was formed on the initiative of Hitler’s National Socialists but this is airbrushed out of the history books.
At the 1938 festival the Von Trapp family performed in theatres, squares and along the banks of the River Inn. The beautiful Alpine city, birthplace of Amadeus Mozart was then a carnival of NSDAP regalia; swastikas were festooned everywhere. On this occasion the medieval city was the favoured watering hole of the Reich’s great musical and political figures. Many of these illustrious figures lived at Konigsee and Berchtesgaden situated nearby.
Not once were the von Trapp family harassed by the Brownshirts or anyone else. The family were well respected despite the toffee-nosed aristocratic baron refusing to respect the then national flag of the united Reich.
There was much to celebrate; in March of the same year the Austrian people were invited to vote in a referendum. The unambiguous choice was their acceptance or rejection of unity with Hitler’s Reich. In an election conceded as being beyond reproach 44,803,096 (99.02%) Austrians cast their votes in favour of unification.
Why did the von Trapp family leave their homeland? Were they, as the movie suggests, exiles from a hostile regime? Well, not quite. When seeking work the baron, being a Swiss citizen, was finding his ambitions thwarted by the newly introduced Germans First policy. He was, in effect, an economic not a political refugee.
There was no escape over the mountains as depicted in the movie. The family had no experience of hiking and they departed Austria by conventional means. If the account given in the movie was correct the family would have ended up at Eagle’s Nest, the Fuhrer’s mountain retreat at Obersalzberg and so an epic fail.
Strapped for cash, fate was soon to smile on the not so happy wanderers when one of the sons was introduced to a New York producer. It was agreed that the Von Trapp Family Choir would take a tour through Europe and then on to the United States. The Von Trapp family tried to win over American audiences with their religious music but were unsuccessful.
Down to just $50 the Von Trapp family added yodelling to their singing repertoire. The brood also adapted American folk songs and by 1941 had achieved some popularity. By the war’s end the Von Trapp family had become so wealthy that they were able to purchase a 7,000-acre ranch in Stowe, Vermont. There the baron passed away peacefully in 1947. None of the von Trapp family ever saw their homeland again.
Source Article from http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-sound-of-codswallop/
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