Von Trapp daughter dies
One of the seven von Trapp children who inspired the film 'The Sound of Music' has died aged 97.
Agathe von Trapp died yesterday at a hospice in Baltimore after suffering heart failure last month.
Ms Von Trapp was the oldest daughter of Austrian naval officer Georg Ritter von Trapp. His seven children by his first wife were the basis for the singing family in the 1965 film in which Julie Andrews starred.
Von Trapp’s long time friend Mary Louise Kane said she suffered congestive heart failure in November. They lived together for five decades and ran a kindergarten at the Sacred Heart Catholic parish in nearby Glyndon until 1993.
Von Trapp’s widowed father had three more children with his second wife, Maria Augusta Kutschera. They performed together as the Trapp Family Singers.
Agathe Von Trapp, a guitarist, was represented in the film by 16-going-on-17 Liesl, played by Charmian Carr, but she was far more reserved than the outgoing Liesl, Kane said.
Although she admired the film, which won an Oscar, she felt it misrepresented her father as too strict and not as the loving, caring parent he was, Kane said.
“She cried when she first saw it because of the way they portrayed him,” Kane said. “She said that if it had been about another family she would have loved it.”
Von Trapp wrote her memoir 'Memories Before and After The Sound of Music' published in September by Harper Paperbacks, to set the record straight, Kane said.
Johannes von Trapp, the youngest of the children, said she was a private person and also a talented sketch artist.
He said she will be buried in the spring at a cemetery at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont.
Her death leaves four surviving members of the Trapp Family Singers: Maria von Trapp, 96; Rosmarie von Trapp, 81; Elenore “Lorli” von Trapp Campbell, 79; and Johannes, 71.
