WAITSFIELD, Vermont. (12/12/2007) -- She reaches her arm to the ceiling, in order to hang the glass ornament on the branch of the 14-foot, home-cut, balsam Christmas tree. Her warm, open living room smells of baking bread and the clock ticks out the minutes loudly in my ear as I steady her while she trims her tree. Her stark-white hair falls into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, contrasting her dark, sun-tanned skin-the result of years of work in her gardens. She wobbles a bit and then she rights herself, as the last European ornament gets placed on a branch. She turns to me and asks what it is that I want her to tell me about this time.
Looking at me with deep, tired eyes, my grandmother slowly lowers herself into her green chair, treating this interview as if it were a task, not an honor. She does not like to talk to me about her life as a von Trapp. She has never liked to dwell on the fact that she is one of the children portrayed in Roger and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. Although, she always manages to convey to me the pride that she has in her heritage, she is not proud of her fame and fortune.
Instead of telling the story of her life as a child star, singing in the Von Trapp Family Choir, she asks if she can tell me about the terror that she felt under the Nazi regime. She wants to describe the struggle that her father, as well as many other Austrians faced, in maintaining their country’s identity. I sigh, because this is not really the story that I want to hear, but I have no choice. Eleanor von Trapp Campbell, known by friends as Lorli, does not adhere to public interest; she does not give the sappy story that people crave. Instead, she gives an alternative story, the one that needs to be told—minus the drama, the romance, and the emotion. She tells it like it is: a didactic tale of hardship and sacrifice that lead to her family’s fame and fortune.
“The Nazis were frightening,” Lorli begins, the lines in her forehead deepening as she reminisces. She is reliving the invasion of her home country, Austria, in the 1930s. “You know, the Germans wanted to send the message that they were too powerful to be defeated. The noise of the German air force was deafening. The planes would fly overhead and drop leaflets in support of the Nazis cause. We (the ten von Trapp children) would be told to run around and collect them and then they would all be burned. My father, Captain Georg von Trapp, could not stand the sight of the Nazis propaganda. He saw through their lies and he refused to fight for their cause.” Lorli shifts her weight from one foot to the other; she folds her hands in her lap. It is as if she is trying to shake off an uncomfortable shiver that has raced up her spine.
It gives me the goose bumps to hear her speak about the large black, spider –like Swastika flag.
“One time,” Lorli leans in closer to me and whispers into my ear, “I announced loudly that the Nazi flag looked like an ugly black spider. We were in a crowded train station and a total stranger leaned down and told me to be careful because there were many ears all around me and I could get myself in trouble saying something like that about the Nazi symbol.”
“Another time,” Lorli continues, “An official from the German National Army came to our house and demanded to see where we were displaying the Swastika flag. My father asked why we needed it. The officer replied, ‘To decorate your house’ and my father answered, ‘Oh, I have oriental rugs for that.’” This bit of humor cracks a slight smile on her lips and lines creep up her faced, originating from the corners of her mouth. She says that it is from this example of strong ethical beliefs that she emerged as the woman of character that she is today. Her father was her ultimate example. She later used this strength to help her survive an abnormal life as a child performer.
Lorli’s vulnerability in speaking about her strange childhood is evident in her face, as she tells her story to me. I can almost picture the period of political turmoil during which she grew up. Born in Austria in 1931, at the brink of World War II, Lorli’s development as a child-star started right around the time when the Nazis invaded Austria. With pressing financial obligations, the family choir’s performances would soon become crucial to its survival.
Lorli began singing with her family for small crowds at mass or at the village church. Yet, as time progressed and the Nazis power grew stronger, Captain Georg von Trapp continued to rebel against the regime, refusing to fight for their cause. A World War One hero and commander of an Austro-Hungarian U-boat, the Captain was wary of the Nazi agenda. As the result of her father’s unwillingness to cooperate, the von Trapp family lost a large percentage of their wealth that was invested in the Austrian banks. With German control over their finances and no way to retrieve their fortune, the family began to sing for a living. Lorli, along with her nine siblings and her mother, began to sing at scheduled performances in front of larger audiences. Touring under the guidance of a former priest, Father Wasner, the family began to create a repertoire of Christian hymns, as well as Mozart and Haydn. In 1936, the Von Trapp Family Singers won the Salzburg Music Festival and soon gathered its own group of enthusiasts.
Yet, life of the stage was new to young Lorli. She comments that she was only five years old at the time of her family’s musical debut on stage. She remembers when she first learned how to play different musical instruments, including the recorder and the oboe, as well as when she began receiving vocal training from Father Wasner, the family agent. As young as she was at age five, Lorli was expected to perform flawlessly within the family ensemble. It did not matter that most of her siblings were twice her age and that she was already working an adult’s portion of the day at age five. “I wasn’t allowed to play as a normal child of five.” Instead, she had to sing, to complete the family picture.
With a deep sigh, Lorli sets down her tea mug and sits up a bit higher in her recliner. She refolds her hands and then her countenance changes. She begins to describe what she calls a turning point in her life, when she realized that her family was not just singing for show. “We were asked to sing in honor of Hitler on a national radio station and my father had declined the offer,” said Lorli. This was a direct defiance of the Nazi party’s authority and Lorli’s father’s actions were not going unnoticed. This stand that he took against the Nazi regime, along with many other moral decisions that the Captain had made, forced his family to eventually leave Austria. Lorli’s voice rises as she quickly explains, “But we did not leave by climbing the Alps.” Referring to the romantic escape of the von Trapp family over the mountains into Italy as is falsely depicted in the film. Lorli chuckles to herself and adds, “The movie’s wrong. If we had escaped over the mountains, we would have ended up smack in the middle of a Nazi encampment!”
Reshaping the public perception of The Sound of Music story, Lorli elaborates on her life after her escape from Austria, the part that not many people get to hear about. As immigrants in the United States, the von Trapp family was faced with the same problems that every typical immigrant family faced—they needed to find a way to provide food for the family to eat and a place for them to create a home. Fortunately, the von Trapps were already equipped with their ready-made family choir, whose name had preceded them. Immediately after landing on Ellis Island in New York City in 1938, the von Trapp family began to pursue the American dream of success and happiness, through music.
Because Lorli and her older sister, Rosemary, were considered too young and too much of a hassle to tour the States with the von Trapp family choir, the girls were shipped off to boarding school while the family sought their fame on the stage. Despite feeling left out of her family unit, Lorli grimaces when she adds that sadly her schooling did not last long. Soon she would be expected to perform regularly with her family and only be able to continue her studies through minimal home-schooling efforts provided by her elder siblings.
Once old enough to perform as a member of The Von Trapp Family Singers, Lorli had a large role to fill. Not only was she expected to perform on stage, but she was also expected to take care of her younger brother and to work on the farm that the family was starting in Stowe, Vermont. She was expected to put all of her energy into her family life, leaving no room for her own dreams and aspirations.
With a blush, Lorli recounts that she was not allowed to attend college upon reaching the appropriate age. Despite the fact that her brothers were allowed to go off to war and to pursue a further education, Lorli and her sisters were expected to stay at the family lodge to run the farm. Even after they stopped singing on tour, the family held summer music camps and concerts, which Lorli was expected to participate in.
This predetermined path that had been set out for Lorli never allowed her to make her own decisions. “We did not have the choice of going to college,” Lorli said, “My sister Rosemary tried to go to university and my parents were furious. They tried to use shock-therapy to end her ‘rebellion.’”
At this point in the conversation, Lorli cannot remain seated any longer. She abruptly stands and straightens her skirt. She moves towards the kitchen, while calling out to me that she is just checking on the bread in the oven. I can hear her putting the tea kettle back on the burner.
The essence of the von Trapp family unit was the fame that surrounded the name in its identity as a whole. If one child left the nest to go off on his or her own, the entire family income would suffer. The family had to stay together; they had no choice. The development of Lorli’s identity as a child-star was forced upon her; it was not of her own doing.
Weeks later, I sit in the same green chair that my grandmother had occupied when I had listened to her tell me the story of her life. My family surrounds me sitting in complete darkness, circling the base of my grandparent’s giant, now perfectly decorated Christmas tree. My grandmother breaks the silence as she sings out the opening line of “Stille Nacht,” and the rest of my family chimes in. Lorli’s face glows as my grandfather lights the first candle on the tree with his long, slender lighter, which reaches all the way to the tip-top of the balsam.
By CATHERINE MOORE
