JOHANNA VON TRAPPJohanna von Trapp, who died on Christmas Day 1994 at the age of 75 was one of the singing von Trapp Family, immortalised in the stage musical and film The Sound of Music.Her parents, Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, set up home in Pola, Austria where Baron von Trapp was stationed as a U-boat commander. Johanna's older brother and sister, Rupert and Agathe, were born here.Without the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Pola became a war zone, so the family moved to Zell Am See, in the Austrian Alps. Three more children were born - Maria, Werner and Hedwig - before Johanna's birth in 1919.Three years after the war, in 1921, the family moved again to Klosterneuburg, near Vienna, where youngest sister Martina was born.In 1922, Johanna's mother died of scarlet fever, and the devastated Baron von Trapp - now retired from the navy - was faced with caring for his motherless brood helped by a succession of governesses.The family moved again in 1926 to a place called Aigen, near Salzburg, and when Johanna's sister, Maria,was weakened by rheumatic fever alocal convent sent young noviceMaria Augusta Kutschera to tutor her.Maria never returned to the convent and in 1927 she married Johanna's father. They went on to have three more children.The von Trapps were all blessed with both musical and artistic talents and had regularly sung Viennese folksongs and played a variety of musical instruments with the encouragement and blessing of their father - himself a talented musician.The childrens' new stepmother furthered their musical education introducing them all to four-part harmony singing of Austrian folk songs, madrigalsand classical compositions.Johanna sang first soprano along with her older sister Agathe.She becamea naturalised United States citizen in 1948 after the family left Austria following the rise to power of the Nazi party and turned their singing hobby into a profession.Johanna married Ernst Florian Winter on Easter Monday in 1948 and had seven children - four daughters and three sons , one of whom was stillborn.In the film The Sound of Music - loosely based on memoirs written by Johanna's stepmother - Johanna is represented by a character called Martha.Johanna died in Vienna after suffering a stroke.
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