Last year after watching The Sound of Music, I decided to investigate the real life of Maria Von Trapp. Of course, I started out looking things up on the internet discovering that there were some discrepancies between her life and the movie.
In looking at her life, I found that she wrote several books. One that I purchased and read was Maria, My Own Story. This is her own autobiography. She says she wrote the book because those who bought her story, twisted it and she wanted people to know the truth. One main truth she wanted people to know was that her husband was not the person the movie industry portrayed him out to be but instead he was a loving and kind father and husband. The whistles were only used because the house was so large, they were needed to call the children, not march them around.
My own father was a very good whistler and when he wanted us home, he would whistle, no big deal.
Some interesting things I discovered were, that she was raised by her aunt and her angry socialist uncle after her parents passed away when she was a child, she was a rebellious teen who, when she was finally of age, left home, got a job, made money and went on to college. Her mother, father and aunt were Catholic, so she did learn some Catholicism but not much. When she went on to college she became, as would be expected even then, a liberal atheist.
Fortunately because of her father's love of music when she was a child, she also had a love of music. In order to hear the beautiful music of her day she would go to Mass on Sundays, sit in the back and listen to the music, though ignoring everything else.
Once at Mass when there wasn't any music, she was forced to hear the Mass and the homily. Afterward she spoke with the priest and challenged him on what she heard during his homily, asking him if he truly believed all that he had said about Christ, forgiveness of sin, heaven and hell. He could not speak with her at that moment but encouraged her to come back the next day. She did and for three hours he answered all her questions.
She became a devoted Catholic, and joined an extremely strict convent, where, yes, she still had some mischievousness' in her. She would slide down banisters, jump over bushes and accidentally break many dishes.
Different than what the movie showed was that she was only asked to tutor one child, she did not love the Captain when they married, though grew to love him more than she could ever imagine and they did not go over the mountains but just got on the train and left Austria.
The family traveled through Europe singing but could not stay in many countries long because people feared they were spies. Eventually of course they ended up in America.
She was a very devout Catholic and did her best to teach all the children in the family the faith.
Her true story is so very interesting, I highly recommend the book.
