[8][9] She says she was delivered on a train on the night of the 25th, during her mother's return from her homeland of Tyrol to their family residence in Vienna, Austria.

[11] Her father was a hotel commissionaire,[8] born in Vienna,[12] the son of Josef Kučera from a Moravian village, Vídeň.

This changed Maria from a shy child into the teenage "class cut-up", figuring she may as well have fun if she was going to get in trouble either way.

From this job, she saved enough money to enter the State Teachers College for Progressive Education in Vienna, where she also received a scholarship.

[23] Eventually, Maria began to look after the other children: Rupert, Agathe, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina.

Frightened, she fled back to Nonnberg Abbey to seek guidance from the mother abbess, Virgilia Lütz, who advised her it was God's will that she should marry him.

Austria was experiencing economic difficulties during a worldwide depression because of the Crash of 1929, and Lammer's bank failed.

[26] To survive, the Trapps dismissed most of their servants, moved into the top floor of their house, and rented out the other rooms.

The Archbishop of Salzburg, Sigismund Waitz, sent Father Franz Wasner to stay with them as their chaplain and this began their singing career.

[28] Maria's doctor also encouraged her to abort a fetus considered unviable due to her physical condition, the child later being born and named Johannes von Trapp.

They visited Munich in the summer of 1938 and encountered Hitler at a restaurant, Maria later recounting that "For … forty minutes we had a first-class opportunity to look at the Messiah of the Third Reich … One couldn't stand it too long, however.

[6][27][29][30] The New York Times wrote: There was something unusually lovable and appealing about the modest, serious singers of this little family aggregation as they formed a close semicircle about their self-effacing director for their initial offering, the handsome Mme.

After the war, they founded the Trapp Family Austrian Relief fund, which sent food and clothing to the impoverished in Austria.

In 1965, Maria moved back to Vermont to manage the Trapp Family Lodge, which had been named Cor Unum.

Maria von Trapp died of heart failure on 28 March 1987, aged 82, in Morrisville, Vermont, three days following surgery.

The film version set US box office records, and Maria von Trapp received about $500,000 ($5.28 million today) in royalties.

[6] Maria von Trapp made a cameo appearance in the movie version of The Sound of Music (1965).

In 1991, a 40 episode anime series, titled Trapp Family Story aired in Japan, her character referred to by her maiden name (Maria Kutschera), voiced by Masako Katsuki.