Chapter One: The Captain, Our Father
1. Ritter means “knight” and von, which is placed before one’s last name, is an aristocratic title that is bestowed upon a person who has done an extraordinary service for his country or fellowman. Only the emperor can give this title, which is accompanied by an elaborate document.
2. Pola was the most important harbor in the Austrian monarchy and would become part of Italy after World War I. The city is now part of Croatia, and the spelling has changed to Pula.
3. Fiume was an industrial city on the Adriatic Sea; it is now Rijeka, Croatia.
4. This was the beginning of what would later be known as the Boxer Rebellion (1900–1901). The Chinese people involved were called Boxers because they practiced martial arts.
5. The Chinese government officially supported the rebellion.
6. Edwyn Gray, The Devil’s Device: The Story of Robert Whitehead (London: Seeley, Service & Co., Ltd., 1975).
7. Today this home still exists, but our family no longer owns it.
8. This book, written in German, is currently out of print: Bis zum Letzten Flaggenschuss (Until the Last Salute).
Chapter Two: Mamá, Our Sunshine
1. The English equivalent of her name is Agatha, and that is how people in English-speaking countries pronounce it.
2. A seaside town near Trieste, which at that time belonged to Austria.
3. The Bosnian soldiers were sent to help at my widowed grandmother’s farm by the Austrian government. This was in gratitude of my grandfather’s contribution to the war effort.
Chapter Three: Life with Gromi
1. This castle remains in existence today and is now a cultural center in lower Austria, owned by Gromi’s great-nephew.
Chapter Five: The Postwar Era
1. The word Dragoner comes from a certain Hungarian regiment that was known to be ruthless and was called “Die Dragoner.” This name seemed to fit her personality!
Chapter Six: Years of Change
1. Mamá died during the late evening of September 2, 1922.
Chapter Seven: Our New Home Near Salzburg
1. The park and the Ferris wheel remain in existence today. Even the Nazis left everything intact.
Chapter Ten: Adventures with Papá
1. Boats with a wooden frame covered with rubberized canvas; all could be dismantled, folded, and stored in a bag.
Chapter Twelve: The Invasion
1. An aunt of Maria’s classmate who lived near St. Georgen.
2. A shrine in the vicinity of Salzburg.
3. Private taxis in Aigen.
4. A priest at the Boromaeum.
Chapter Fifteen: Our Green Mountain Home
1. Dr. Hermann Ritter von Jedina became an attorney for the government of the State of Salzburg.
2. Every twenty-five years, the Vatican declares a Holy Year to emphasize the Christian way of life. Many people make pilgrimages to pray in Rome at that time.
Chapter Seventeen: Oh! The Sound of Music
1. Artistic license won out over historical accuracy as both the play and the movie The Sound of Music were developed. Both are interesting stories, basically true to the spirit of the family, but the fact remains that the story lines depart from the actual events. Briefly stated, here is the evolution of the play and the movie:
Maria von Trapp published The Story of the Trapp Family Singers in 1949. Hollywood showed interest—but only in the title! And Maria wasn’t interested in an offer only for the title; clearly the whole story was important to her. The German film company to whom Maria sold the rights in 1956, for the paltry sum of nine thousand dollars, made Die Trapp Familie and eventually Die Trapp Familie in Amerika, which were successful in Germany and later in other European countries and South America.
An American director, Vincent Donahue, saw the first German film and pursued the idea of turning it into a musical for Mary Martin, who then, with her husband, Richard Halliday, and producer Leland Hayward worked out a rights deal with the German producers. They chose Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay to write the play. They wanted to use primarily music sung by the Trapp Family with one new song written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. But Rodgers and Hammerstein envisioned a completely new score, and Hayward and Martin agreed. It was, in fact, the final collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, opening on Broadway in 1959, and became the second-longest-running Broadway musical of the 1950s.
The 1965 movie was a Robert Wise production for Twentieth Century Fox; Fox bought the movie rights to The Sound of Music from the German film company (according to www.germanway.com/cinema/som_main.html). Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay. Maria von Trapp met with Lehman to discuss the script because she was not pleased with her husband’s portrayal in the play and hoped that the movie would be more realistic and true to him. The script remained as Lehman wanted to write it, however. The movie featured Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as the Captain.