Austrians Protest Von Trapp Hotel Plan

AOL/AP ^ | 2008-05-19 | WILLIAM J. KOLE

[fishhound]

VIENNA, Austria (May 19) -- The hills are alive ... with the sound of protest.

Plans to run a hotel out of a former home of the von Trapp family immortalized in the movie "The Sound of Music" have triggered fierce resistance from neighbors who fear tourists will tie up traffic and make a nuisance of themselves. "We will fight this with all means at our disposal," said Andreas Braunbruck, who lives near the Villa Trapp in a neighborhood of Salzburg already teeming with "Sound of Music" tourists seeking a glimpse of the house.

"Buses and cars are constantly in the street in front of our homes as it is," he told Austrian television on Sunday.

The 125-year-old, pale yellow villa trimmed in white and black is perched on the outskirts of Salzburg, where the 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer was made.

The original Broadway musical and the film tell the story of a World War II-era Austrian nun-turned-nanny who cared for a widower's seven children, taught them how to sing and eventually fell in love with him. It altered some details of the family's history.

Baron Georg Ludwig von Trapp, the real-life widower, lived in the villa with his family from 1923 to 1938. After the Nazis confiscated the property in 1939, SS chief Heinrich Himmler moved in and stayed until 1945.

[fishhound]

Great Film... Climb every mountain...follow your dreams...

[gov_bean_ counter]

The Sound of Liberal Music...
Doe, pay, me.

[fishhound]

The Sound of Liberal Music...
Doe, pay, me.

I don’t get that?

[fishhound]

I think i get it.

[freema]

Austrian ambivalence about the project is understandable.

Ah, yes. I think the time to protest is a tad overdue. 1939 would have been prime protest time.

[fishhound]

They were too busy with welcoming arrangements and bowing to Hitler back then.

[iowamark]

The Real Story of the von Trapp Family

Maria Augusta Kutschera was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1905. She was orphaned as a young child and was raised as an atheist and socialist by an abusive relative. While attending the State Teachers' College of Progressive Education in Vienna, she accidentally attended a Palm Sunday service, believing it to be a concert of Bach music, where a priest was speaking. Years later she recalled in her autobiography Maria, "Now I had heard from my uncle that all of these Bible stories were inventions and old legends, and that there wasn't a word of truth in them. But the way this man talked just swept me off my feet. I was completely overwhelmed." Soon after, Maria graduated from college, and as a result of her religious awakening, she entered the Benedictine Abbey of Nonnberg in Salzburg as a novice. While she struggled with the unaccustomed rules and discipline, she considered that "These . . . two years were really necessary to get my twisted character and my overgrown self-will cut down to size."

[BBell]

Lavender suits for all!

[Navy Patriot]

How about we agree not to send tourists if they agree to take Schwarzenegger back?

[silverleaf]

I wonder if the Austrian government ever compensated the Von Trapps for all that they lost when they fled to Italy? Maria Von Trapp has written abut the tribulations the family faced as penniless refugees who were forced to move from European country to country every 30 days because no one dared to give them sanctuary, and how the ten of them (she was pregnant when they walked over the mountains to escape) had to start over and make a living from singing.

[pissant]

They don’t want a tourist Trapp?

[Gamecock]

You win.

[Gamecock]

A while back we watched a black and white German (or was it Austrian?) made movie on the Van Trapps. Looks to have been made in the ‘60s.

It was very dark, what with the persecution and all.

We found it to be a fascinating contrast to the American made version.

[M1911A1]

You owe me one keyboard.

I have to stop drinking while reading FR.

[Deklane]

The article goes on to say the von Trapp house doesn’t actually appear in the movie, but a “lakeside castle” was used for the back garden scenes. But it runs in my mind that there’s an establishing shot of the front of the house that looks like the one in the picture.

I spent a college year in Salzburg 1971/1972, and American Express was running Sound of Music tours even then, bussing tourists to various locations where scenes had been shot. I remember a local joke to the effect that the von Trapps had the biggest house in Salzburg because the front door was several kilometers away from the back (because a different house had been used for the lakeside scene in what was supposedly its back yard). It played a little fast and loose with local geography in other ways, as I noticed when I finally saw the movie after my year in Salzburg though I no longer recall the details.

Lovely city, spent a great year there... need to go back sometime...

[americanophile]

That’s good.

[GOPrincess]

“how the ten of them...”

Not to be nitpicky, but if you count the parents, there were actually 12 of them! Besides the Captain’s original 7 children, Georg and Maria had 2 girls while still living in Austria, in addition to the boy Maria was pregnant with when they fled. It’s quite a remarkable story.

[americanophile]

I admit to being one of those tourists that have tied up the road. The movie does use two different houses. The one that’s being converted into a hotel is used in the arrival and courtyard scenes...and the scene where they push the car out to try and evade the NAZIs (yes, I have a photo mock-pushing my car as well). The other house is a big baroque style mansion about 1/2 a mile away on the lake that they used for the back yard scenes. Quite pretty.

[fieldmarshaldj]

The story might not have been quite as heartwarming as the film if they tried to film it literally, or if they had done so about their time after they left for the United States. One noteworthy difference between Maria and Georg von Trapp vs. their film counterparts was that the personalities were polar opposites. From what I understand, Maria was the martinet (indeed, she once locked up one of the eldest daughters to keep her away from a boyfriend, and it was crueler than it sounds) and Georg was warmer and fun-loving.

When the film was privately screened for the von Trapp family by the studio back in 1965, the members watching it derisively laughed at the portrayals and were apparently rolling in the aisles. The film von Trapps were nothing like the real ones.

A former internet acquaintance of mine from about a decade ago went to school with one of the von Trapp grandchildren, and he said they were anything but humble, and that they let the film go to their heads, so you can imagine the size of their ego.

As an aside, 14 years ago, I attended a film seminar with Robert Wise, the Academy Award winning director of the film (he also won for “West Side Story”), but I had to bite my tongue offering to pitch him my script idea for a sequel to the story of the von Trapps, set in 1960s Vermont. I’m sure he’d heard about a gazillion pitches for such an idea, both from 20th Century Fox and fans and screenwriters alike. Unfortunately, with Oscar Hammerstein’s death prior to the completion of the stage play (and Richard Rodgers later on), there was no way you could recreate the music that was so integral to the story, and I’m certainly no musician. ;-)

[fishhound]

Thank you for that informative post.