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    The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

    The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

    4.1 27

    by Mapendo


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      ISBN-13: 9780062091970
    • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
    • Publication date: 03/22/2011
    • Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
    • Format: eBook
    • Pages: 320
    • Sales rank: 17,587
    • File size: 787 KB

    Maria Augusta Kutschera was born on a train en route to Vienna just before midnight on January 26, 1905. Her mother died when she was only two years old and her father left her with an elderly cousin so that he could be free to travel. She experienced a lonely and very strict upbringing without any siblings or other children in the household. She was raised a socialist and an atheist and was actively cynical towards all religions. It was during a visit to a church to hear a Bach concert that her mind was changed when she heard the words of a well-known priest, Father Kronseder. Her meeting with him led to her entering a convent to become a nun. While she was devoted to the convent life, she was taken away from the outdoor activities she once thrived on. Her doctor, concerned that her health was failing, helped the nuns to decide to send Maria to the home of retied naval captain Georg Von Trapp, to be governess to his bedridden daughter. On November 26, 1927, Maria and Georg were married. The rest is history.

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    Chapter One

    Just Loaned

    Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up from the workbooks of my fifth graders, which I was just correcting, into the lined, old face of a little lay sister, every wrinkle radiating kindliness.

    "Reverend Mother Abbess expects you in her private parlor," she whispered.

    Before I could close my mouth, which had opened in astonishment, the door shut behind the small figure. Lay sisters were not supposed to converse with candidates for the novitiate.

    I could hardly believe my ears. We candidates saw Reverend Mother Abbess only from afar in choir. We were the lowest of the low, living on the outskirts of the novitiate, wearing our black mantillas, waiting with eager anticipation for our reception into the sacred walls of the novitiate. I had just finished the State Teachers' College for Progressive Education in Vienna and had to get my Master of Education degree before the heavy doors of the enclosure would shut behind me -- forever.

    It was unheard of that Reverend Mother Abbess should call for a candidate. What might this mean? Her private parlor was far at the other end of the old Abbey, and I chose the longest detour to go there, in order to gain time for examining my conscience. I was the black sheep of the community; there was no doubt about that. I never meant anything bad, but my upbringing had been more that of a wild boy than that of a young lady. Time and again I had been warned by the Mistress of Novices that I could not race over the staircase like that, taking two and threesteps at a time, that I definitely could not slide down the banister; that whistling, even the whistling of sacred tunes, had never been heard in these venerable rooms before; that jumping over the chimneys on the flat roof of the school wing was not fitting for an aspirant to the novitiate of the holy Order of Saint Benedict. I agreed wholeheartedly each time, but the trouble was, there were so many new trespasses occurring every day.

    What was the matter now, I thought, slowly winding my way down the two flights of old, worn steps, through the ancient cobblestoned kitchen yard, where the huge Crucifix greets one from the wall, and where the statue of Saint Erentrudis, founder of our dear old Abbey, rises above a fountain. Slowly I entered the cloister walk on the other side of the kitchen court.

    Troubled as I was, searching through my laden conscience, I still felt again the magic of the supernatural beauty of this most beautiful place on earth. Twelve hundred years had worked and helped to make Nonnberg, the first Abbey of Benedictine Nuns north of the Alps, a place of unearthly beauty. For a moment I had to pause and glance again over the gray, eighth-century cloister wall before I ascended the spiral stairway leading to the quarters of Reverend Mother Abbess.

    Shyly I knocked on the heavy oaken door, which was so thick that I could hear only faintly the "Ave," Benedictine equivalent of the American, "Hello, come in."

    It was the first time I had been in this part of the Abbey. The massive door opened into a big room with an arched ceiling; the one column in the middle had beautifully simple lines. Almost all the rooms in this wonderful Abbey were arched, the ceilings carried by columns; the windows were made of stained glass, even in the school wing. Near this window there was a large desk, from which rose a delicate, small figure, wearing a golden cross on a golden chain around her neck.

    "Maria dear, how are you, darling?"

    Oh this kind, kind voice! Not only stones, but big rocks fell from my heart when I heard that tone. How could I ever have worried? No, Reverend Mother was not like that -- making a fuss about little things like whistling -- and so a faint hope rose in my heart that she might perhaps talk to me now about the definite date of my reception.

    "Sit down, my child. No, right here near me."

    After a minute's pause she took both my hands in hers, looked inquiringly into my eyes, and said: "Tell me, Maria, which is the most important lesson our old Nonnberg has taught you?"

    Without a moment's hesitation I answered, looking fully into the beautiful, dark eyes: "The only important thing on earth for us is to find out what is the Will of God and to do it."

    "Even if it is not pleasant, or if it is hard, perhaps very hard?" The hands tightened on mine.

    Well now, she means leaving the world and giving up everything and all that, I thought to myself.

    "Yes, Reverend Mother, even then, and wholeheartedly, too."

    Releasing my hands, Reverend Mother sat back in her chair.

    "All right then, Maria, it seems to be the Will of God that you leave us -- for a while only," she continued hastily when she saw my speechless horror.

    "L-l-leave Nonnberg," I stuttered, and tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn't help it. The motherly woman was very near now, her arms around my shoulders, which were shaking with sobs.

    "Your headaches, you know, growing worse from week to week. The doctor feels that you have made too quick a change from mountain climbing to our cloistered life, and be suggests we send you away, for less than one short year, to some place where you can have normal exercise. Then it will all settle down, and next June you will come back, never to leave again."

    Next June -- my goodness, now it was only October!

    "It just so happened that a certain Baron von Trapp, retired Captain in the Austrian Navy, called on us today. He needs a teacher for his little daughter, who is of delicate health. You will go to his house this afternoon. And now..."

    The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Copyright © by Maria Trapp. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

    Table of Contents

    Part 1The Chapter Before the First7
    IJust Loaned9
    IIGlories of the Past23
    III"The Baron Doesn't Want It ..."28
    IVAn Austrian Christmas36
    V"God's Will Hath No Why"48
    VIFeasts in a Family62
    VIIA Festival Summer and a Baby76
    VIIIUncle Peter and His Handbook83
    IXAn Operation, a Turtle, and a Long Distance Call92
    XAren't We Luckyl98
    XI"Never Again"103
    XIIFrom Hobby to Profession107
    XIIIAnd the Lord Said. to Abram ...113
    Part 2
    IOn the "American Farmer"127
    IIThe First Ten Years Are the Hardest132
    IIIGetting Settled141
    IVBarbara152
    VWhat Next?158
    VIIn Sight of the Statue of Liberty164
    VIILearning New Ways171
    VIIIThe Miracle178
    IXMerion185
    XThe Fly196
    XIStowe in Vermont203
    XIIA New Chapter214
    XIIIThe End of a Perfect Stay222
    XIVThe New House228
    XVConcerts in Wartime246
    XVITrapp Family Music Camp253
    XVIISnapshots of the Camp271
    XVIIITrapp Family Austrian Relief, Inc.278
    XIXA Letter288
    XXThe Memorable Year303
    XXICor Unum307

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    With nearly 1,500 Broadway performances, six Tony Awards, more than three million albums sold, and five Academy Awards, The Sound of Music, based on the lives of Maria, the baron, and their singing children, is as familiar to most of us as our own family history. But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.

    Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.

    Now with photographs from the original edition.

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