Maria Augusta von Trapp , also known as Baroness Maria von Trapp, was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. Her story served as the inspiration for a 1956 German film that in turn inspired the Broadway musical The Sound of Music. Maria was born on 26 January 1905 aboard a train heading from her parents' village in Tyrol to a hospital in Vienna, Austria. She was an orphan by her seventh birthday and graduated from the State Teachers College for Progressive Education in Vienna at age 18, in 1923. She entered Nonnberg Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg, as a postulant... intending to become a nun. While still a school teacher there, she was asked to teach one of the seven children of widowed naval commander Georg Ludwig von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp. Agathe had died from scarlet fever. Maria and Georg married on 26 November 1927. Their children were Rosmarie , Eleonore and Johannes . A discrepancy exists for the birth date of their oldest child Rosmarie.
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| Birthdate: | January 26, 1905 |
| Birthplace: | Vienna |
| Date of death: | March 28, 1987 |
| Height: | 5' 8" |
| Weight: | 160 lbs. |
| Education: | Hyannis State Teachers College |
| Also known as: | Maria Augusta von Trapp, Baroness Maria Augusta von Trapp, Maria Augusta Kutschera |