The photograph on the left shows an Austro-Hungarian Naval Officer, Georg
Ritter von
Trapp. He wears the dark blue double breasted frock coat with parade epaulettes.
Note his impressive medal display.
Photograph originally from
WikiCommons
The
photograph on the right shows the Austro-Hungarian armoured cruiser
SMS
Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia which served during the Boxer Rebellion.
Photograph originally from
WikiCommons
Georg Ritter von Trapp (1880-1947) was born in Zadar (in modern
Croatia) and in 1894 joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy, as his father had before him. He was decorated for his service during the Boxer Rebellion aboard the SMS
Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia. In 1908 he transferred to the newly formed
submarine department of the Austro-Hungarian navy, gaining command of his own submarine, the U-6 in
1910. During the First World War he sunk over 45,000 tons of Entente merchant
shipping in the Aegean and Mediterranean as well as the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta and the Italian submarine Nereide. He ended
the war as
a Korvettenkapitän, holder of the the Knight's Cross of the
Military Order of Maria Theresa, and commander of the submarine base in
the Gulf of Kotor. When the Central Powers lost the war however, von Trapp found
himself unemployed in the new landlocked Austrian Republic. His wife Agathe Whitehead
(incidentally, the granddaughter of
Robert Whitehead, the inventor of the torpedo) died
of Scarlet Fever in 1922, leaving him to look after their seven children. He
married his children's hired tutor,
Maria Kutschera in 1927, with whom he had another three children and shortly afterwards lost his inherited wealth
in an Austrian banking crash. It was then that Maria suggested
the family sing for money. Although he was at first reluctant, the family did
very well as a singing group and embarked on several international tours. It was
while on their way to America for a series of concerts that the Second World War
broke out in Europe. The family settled in Vermont and later gained fame as the
basis for the film "The Sound of Music", where Christopher Plummer
played the part of Georg Ritter von Trapp. |