Memories Before and After the Sound of Music

by Agathe von Trapp

  Papá looked for some work outside the house. I believe he could not endure the void that Mamá’s passing had left. He had to do something to occupy his mind. He tried to find a job at the only marine establishment left to Austria, the Danube Steamship Company (Donaudampfshiffartsgeselschaft). But soon he quit when he found out “there was too much corruption in this company,” as I remember him saying.

  Uncle Bobby invited him back to Hungary for the boar and pheasant hunts. There he met his friends Karl Auersperg and Franky Whitehead, Mamá’s second brother. He also visited Tante Nesti, Gromi’s sister, and sought advice from her.

  Every time he came back home from Hungary, we greeted him with great enthusiasm. We rushed down the big winding staircase and jumped right into his arms. He did not have enough arms for all of his seven children, but he kissed us all one by one.

  After Mamá’s death, Papá wanted to introduce us to the outside world. One evening Papá and Tante Connie took the four oldest children, Rupert, Maria, Werner, and me, to Vienna to see the opera Hansel and Gretel. At one point in the opera, the stepmother put a pan of eggs on the stove and stepped aside to sing her aria. To Werner, age six, who was watching the stove in rapt attention, the aria seemed too long. Standing up at his seat in our box, he shouted down to the stage, “The scrambled eggs are burning!” Papá was embarrassed, but Tante Connie just smiled and told him to be quiet and explained that the eggs were not real. I think she secretly enjoyed what he did because she had a very good sense of humor.

  Papá also took us to a circus in Vienna where the elephants did tricks and the lions and tigers appeared in the ring. I didn’t enjoy the circus, however. I felt sorry for the animals because they were in captivity and kept restrained. Another time he took us into the world-famous amusement park of Vienna, the Prater, where we rode the giant Ferris wheel.1 The ride from beginning to end took a whole hour. From the highest point I could see all over the city into the countryside along the Danube.

  A big change occurred when Papá saw the necessity of sending all of his school-age children to the local schools. Rupert and I had to take the usual tests to be admitted to high school. It was a school for boys and girls, ages twelve to eighteen. The classes for the boys were upstairs, and the classes for the girls, downstairs. We both passed the test, but I was informed that I had to go through another year of elementary school before I could go to the high school because I was too young. Another year of elementary school with Fräulein Freckmann! I was disappointed, but there was nothing I could do. The year went by, and I passed a second test. From then on, Rupert and I went to school together. Hedwig attended a nearby elementary school.

  Werner and Maria were sent to the Stiftschule, a Catholic elementary school. Werner had not played with boys his age before; at home he had only one older brother and all those sisters. He did not know how to make friends with the other little boys, so he made up a friend, Severin. He talked to him and about him, but we never saw Severin. I believe Papá would have invited one of the boys from school to play with Werner if he had known of Werner’s longing for a friend. It wasn’t until much later that we realized this friend was imaginary.

  Fräulein Freckmann prepared us well with regard to various academic subjects. She could not, however, prepare us for the transition from a one-on-one learning situation to a classroom with thirty-five pupils and teachers who assumed that Rupert and I had gone through the usual elementary education. We had to make a very difficult adjustment.

  When I was twelve years old, Fräulein Freckmann prepared Rupert and me for our first Holy Communion. It was the last thing she did for us before she went home to Germany; her services as governess would no longer be needed when we went to school. A special Mass in the crypt of the church was arranged for the occasion. An Augustinian priest said the Mass, and all the family was present. It was a beautiful celebration during which I was lost in the love of Jesus.

  Tante Connie tended to the three little ones—Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina—until soon after the death of Mamá. Then she went to Vienna to be with Gromi, who had been so good to her during World War I. Being up in years, Gromi needed a companion and someone to take care of her apartment. Connie Baby accompanied her mother. Papá then hired a housekeeper by the name of Frau von Klimbacher and a nanny for the little ones.

  One day Papá called Rupert and me into the dining room for a conference. He told us that he knew of some beautiful islands from the time he sailed around the world on the Saida II. Coconuts and bananas grew in abundance on these Pacific islands, and it was always summer there. Painting a lovely picture for us of these wonderful islands, he said that he would buy a sailboat big enough for the whole family and take us there if we wanted to go. Rupert and I looked at each other, and then Rupert said, “No, we do not want to go there.” I agreed, and the matter was closed. Papá did not insist. Later I asked Rupert why he told Papá that we did not want to go there, and he said, “Because there is no Catholic Church there, and we have to go to church on Sunday.”

  Soon Papá came up with another plan. “Would you like to move to Salzburg? There, two of my officers from the navy are living with their families: Hugo Seiffertitz and Uncle Erwin Wallner.” (As you will recall, Erwin had married Tante Lorlein Auersperg.) The plan was met with enthusiasm, not so much because Papá’s friends lived there, but because we remembered going to this city with Mamá she had taken us from the Erlhof to the dentist in Salzburg. On that occasion we had stayed in the hotel Oesterreichischer Hof. We had a room with a balcony from which we could look over the little square in front of the hotel and see what was going on in the street below. A red taxi stood right in the middle of the square. Rupert had been glued to the railing of the balcony, reporting every move the taxi made.

  Now, three years after Mamá’s passing, Papá intended to move to this wonderful place called Salzburg. We were delighted and ready to move immediately. But we had to wait until a house could be found and the money was available to buy it. Only recently I found out that Tante Nesti bought some of Mamá’s property in Fiume so that Papá could afford the house in Salzburg. How Papá found this house that was large enough to hold the family, the staff, and the Stieglers I do not know, but he found one and had it rebuilt for our needs. It was located in Aigen, a beautiful residential area in the country outside Salzburg.

  The situation of our new home was not accidental. I believe the Lord had a hand in finding its location. When we had to leave Austria in 1938, after the invasion of the country, all we had to do was to leave by a little gate at the far end of the garden, cross the railroad tracks, and enter the station in order to board the train that would take us south across the border into Italy.

  This time it was not winter but summer when we moved, and Papá again arranged for us children to spend the time of the move in Goldegg with our friends and relatives, the Auerspergs. There we had a wonderful time playing croquet and other games. When we left Goldegg, we came into a fully furnished beautiful home, which this time belonged to us. We loved it!

  The house was surrounded by a very large garden with big trees, many bushes, and small meadows. When we did not have homework to do, we played in the garden, sometimes far away from the house. We would not have heard anyone calling us. The boatswain’s whistle was the answer.

  In the movie The Sound of Music, the Captain (our father) summons his children with a boatswain’s whistle. When we moved to Aigen, Papá began using a whistle to summon his children, and there was a very good reason to do so. The house was large, and our rooms were on the second floor. Papá’s study was downstairs. We lived with our doors closed, and Papá never came to our rooms. The sound of the whistle penetrated the wooden doors, whereas his voice would not have reached us. Each one of us had a certain signal, and Papá had a special signal when he called us all together. We loved our signals. Perhaps some of us even imagined that we were sailors on Papá’s ship. He did not, however, use the whistle to summon the staff or to place us into formation
as shown in the movie.

  At the edge of the woods in a meadow, Papá had a little log playhouse built especially for us. It had a door and a bench outside. Again, as in the Martinschlössl, there were small buildings on the premises: a laundry house where two hired women washed all our laundry, a stable, and a little building for garden tools. Again, Franz Stiegler was in charge of the barnyard, and Papá bought two cows for milk. Directly behind our grounds was the railroad station, Aigen bei Salzburg. Though it was a small station, the fast trains stopped there.

  In the fall, Papá placed us in the local schools: the girls in the Ursuline Convent school, and the boys in the public school. Since we had no transportation, we walked to and from school, rain or shine. It was three-quarters of an hour each way. Walking was good exercise, yet sometimes the distance seemed awfully long. Later we got bicycles to ride to school—a welcome improvement!

  Papá always tried to find something special that would interest us. One day he brought home a dog. It was not just any dog, but a big black Newfoundland of gentle temperament, strong enough to pull a little cart. In Austria the little cart was called Leiterwagen (ladder wagon) because all four sides were made of sections like little ladders. Papá showed us how to hitch the dog to our Leiterwagen so that one of us could sit in it, usually Martina, being the baby and the lightest one. Our dog was named Gombo.

  A neighbor came to Papá one day and told him that our big black dog had been seen chasing deer in the woods. I don’t think Papá believed him. But there were more reports, and one of them was that Gombo had killed a deer in the woods. The people who lived in the vicinity insisted that the dog had to be destroyed because he was dangerous. That was the end of Gombo.

  One day in the fall, Papá brought two American beehives and had them set up in the garden at the edge of a group of large spruce trees. They were a present from our neighbor, Dachie Preuschen. The hives stood all winter by the spruce trees, and I believe that everyone thought the bees would get along by themselves and produce a lot of honey in the spring and summer.

  In the early spring when the snow was melting on the grounds, I wandered over to the beehives. There seemed to be no traffic at the entrance, just a few tired bees, and I looked into the back of the hives. I found dead and moldy bees and watery combs. It did not look as if there was much going on inside the hive.

  I told Papá what I had found and asked him whether I could take care of the bees. So Papá went to the headmaster of the local elementary school who was a professional beekeeper. He asked him to come and look over our two beehives and perhaps tell me how to take care of them. Der Herr Oberlehrer brought me a bee hood, gloves, and a smoker. Then he opened the hives, cleaned them out, and found a nucleus of bees and the queen bee intact. He told me how to take care of them by putting a starter comb into the frames. Then he came often to show me other things, such as how to catch a swarm and how to extract honey. That same fall I harvested twelve pounds of dark spruce honey, had a new swarm, and started another hive to house the swarm.

  The next year I had three swarms and needed even more space. So Papá asked Hans Schweiger, our butler and handyman, to build a Bienenhaus (bee house) for the hives. He had him place it by the fence along the railroad tracks, away from the general traffic of the family. Eventually I had seven large bee colonies.

  Another one of Papá’s ideas involved chickens: Why not have a chicken farm on the part of our property that was not used for anything? His good friend Dachie Preuschen brought him plans, showing how to set up an efficient American chicken farm, and Papá and Hans started building the chicken coops according to the plans. Soon the little chicks arrived in boxes by mail, along with feeding troughs and drinking bells. Martina asked, “Where are the little chicks going to grow up until they are big enough to live in the coops?” Papá decided on a large empty room on the third floor that was just the right size.

  The Stieglers’ living quarters were on the same floor, and Mrs. Stiegler was called upon to help unpack the chicks. It was a great event for all of us when the little yellow peeping feather balls emerged. Mrs. Stiegler was also placed in charge of feeding the chicks and cleaning the area. While they grew quickly under her care upstairs, Papá and Hans were putting the finishing touches on the chicken coops outside, and it wasn’t long before the teenage chicks were taken to their new, permanent housing. There were even electric lights in their new home. We gave them special feed to help them produce large eggs with strong shells, and Papá made laying boxes with trap doors so we could identify which hens had laid which eggs. Papá sold the eggs to hotels in Salzburg.

  About that time Papá brought home a baby goat. It was pure white, like the chickens, and it was a birthday present for Hedwig. The kid was deposited in the area that had been fenced off for the chickens, so it could not run away. The whole family loved the chickens and the kid.

  I remember helping collect the eggs, a job I enjoyed. One day when Papá opened a trap door, he had a surprise. There was the little white kid, struggling to get out of its prison. The goat had seen the hens going into the laying boxes and must have thought it was a hen, too, and could do whatever the hens did. That was the story of the day!

  Now that Papá had made a home for his children, he started to sing songs for us that he remembered from his time in the navy. Some of them were the ones his crew made up in order to learn certain commands or the numbers in the German language. Some songs had humorous stanzas. Papá also remembered several funny ballads and other songs from his younger years. He always accompanied these songs with the guitar. Of course, we learned them quickly, just as we had all the other songs we heard.

  Papá taught Rupert and Maria the accordion. He taught Johanna the violin, which she eventually played very well. Maria also played the violin. He gave me a small guitar and showed me the chords I needed for accompaniment. We practiced these instruments feverishly until we were able to play marches and folk dances together. Musical evenings became a daily occurrence, and we enjoyed them greatly. Our father played the first violin, Rupert or Maria played the accordion, and I played the accompaniment on the guitar. Later, Johanna joined us playing the second violin. Our little ensemble was now in Viennese terms Ein Schrammel Quartet. The Schrammel Quartet is a Viennese specialty, not of food, but of folk music. It usually consists of one or two violins, an accordion, and one or two guitars. Sometimes a bass fiddle is added. One can hear this music in little restaurants in Grinzing, a suburb of Vienna, during the time of harvest when the new wine is served. This music creates a happy and festive mood. Our Schrammel Quartet, however, was not accompanied by a glass of wine. It was for us, in itself, a wonderful entertainment.

  The fact that we children were exposed to music early in our lives and enjoyed and cultivated our musical talents is in direct contrast to the story presented in The Sound of Music. In the play and film, it appears that our second mother was solely responsible for teaching us the joys of music. In reality, not only did we play instruments and sing with Papá in the house in Salzburg before we had even met our second mother, but we also sang very early in our lives at the Erlhof during World War I, when Mamá, Gromi, and the aunts sang and played the piano.

  I remember one of our first musical adventures away from home. In the summer of 1926, Uncle Karl Auersperg arranged a camping trip for all members of his family who lived in Goldegg, including some members of their staff. He also invited Papá and any of us who might enjoy this venture. The campsite was to be on the floor of a glacier, which had receded and was surrounded by the higher peaks of the mountain range known as Die Niederen Tauern. It was the highest point of the road that ran over this mountain pass, well above the timberline. There the air was cool and clear, incredibly light and clean. The glacier water running through this valley was like crystal, and the morning dew sparkled on the sparse grasses and mountain flora. The atmosphere in those high regions was indescribably beautiful.

  There must have been preparations of which we children had no
idea. But not long before this expedition started, Papá came home driving a car. He introduced it as “our new car.” It was a red Daimler, an open touring car. It had a roof made of canvas, which could be pulled up for protection against rainy weather and folded back for seeing the countryside. It had a rack in back for the luggage. It had to be cranked up in front with a handle to start it. This car was another one of Papá’s surprises. From then on, we could drive to Salzburg in five minutes; on a bicycle it still took about a half hour, and on foot, three-quarters of an hour. Soon, however, the Daimler was found to have faulty brakes and had to go back to the factory. As it could not be repaired, the car was exchanged for another one. This car was a beautiful shade of blue and seemed to be in good working order.

  It happened that Mamá’s brother Franky also lived in our vicinity with his wife, Gretl, and their only son, Johnny. They also joined the camping party. Uncle Franky owned a Tatra, a four-cylinder car with a folding roof like ours.

  On the appointed day our new car was packed with luggage, sleeping bags, and provisions. Rupert, Werner, Maria, and I were selected to go along on the trip. We all met at the place chosen for the camp. The men put up the tents, and the ladies made the meals.

  Music was the highlight of the trip. Uncle Karl played the accordion—a very complicated instrument with many buttons for both hands, which sounded like a small organ. Papá played the violin, and so did First Lieutenant Pokiser, the tutor of the Auersperg children. I think they traded off playing the first and second violin parts in different pieces. Herr Mastalier, the music teacher of the Auersperg children, played the guitar. A Schrammel Quartet was in session! They played mornings and afternoons. In the evenings when the children and the ladies had retired to their tents, the quartet would walk from tent to tent serenading us. They started to play at quite a distance, and as they came closer to the tents, we had a wonderful feeling as we were surrounded by this lovely music.