Georg von Trapp

Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (4 April 1880 – 30 May 1947) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy who became the patriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. After their naturalisation as US citizens, the family name was changed to 'Trapp' without the 'von'.

Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of World War I, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 GRT and two Allied warships displacing 12,641 tons. Trapp's accomplishments during World War I earned him numerous decorations, including the Military Order of Maria Theresa.

His first wife Agathe Whitehead died of scarlet fever in 1922, leaving behind seven children. Trapp hired Maria Augusta Kutschera to tutor one of his daughters and married her in 1927. He lost most of his wealth in the Great Depression, so the family turned to singing as a way of earning a livelihood. Trapp declined a commission in the German Navy after the Anschluss and emigrated with his family to the United States.

After his death in 1947, the family home in Stowe, Vermont, became the Trapp Family Lodge. Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers was adapted into the West German film The Trapp Family (1956), which served as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music (1959) and the 1965 film adaptation directed by Robert Wise.

Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp was born in Zara in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, then a crown land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Croatia. His father, Fregattenkapitän August Johann Trapp (1836-1884), was a naval officer, and his mother, Hedwig Wepler (1855-1911) had immigrated to the Adriatic Coast from the Grand Duchy of Hesse. His father had been raised to the Austrian nobility with the hereditary title of Ritter, upon being made a member of the Order of the Iron Crown; he died of typhoid fever in 1884 (aged forty-eight), when Georg was four. Trapp’s older sister was the Austrian artist Hede von Trapp, and his brother Werner died in 1915 during World War I.

In 1894, aged fourteen, Trapp followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy, entering the Imperial and Royal Naval Academy at Fiume. As part of their required education, all naval cadets were taught to play a musical instrument; Georg von Trapp selected the violin. He graduated four years later and completed two years of follow-on training voyages, including one to Australia, as a cadet aboard the sail training corvette SMS Saida II. On the voyage home, he visited the Holy Land, where he met a Franciscan friar who took him on a tour of all the Biblical sites he wanted to see. Among other things, Trapp bought seven bottles of water from the Jordan River which were later used to baptize his first seven children.

In 1900, he was assigned to the protected cruiser SMS Zenta and was decorated for his performance during the Boxer Rebellion in China, in which he participated in the assault on the Taku Forts. In 1902, he passed the final officer's examination, and was commissioned a Fregattenleutnant (frigate lieutenant, equivalent to sub-lieutenant) in May 1903. He was fascinated by submarines, and in 1908 seized the opportunity to transfer to the navy's newly formed submarine arm, or U-boot-Waffe, receiving promotion to Linienschiffsleutnant (ship-of-the-line lieutenant, or lieutenant) that November. In 1910 he was given command of the newly constructed SM U-6. He commanded U-6 until 1913.

On 17 April 1915, Trapp took command of SM U-5. He conducted nine combat patrols in U-5, and sank two enemy warships. One was the French armored cruiser Léon Gambetta, sunk at 39°30′N 18°15′E / 39.500°N 18.250°E / 39.500; 18.250 on 27 April 1915, 25 kilometres (13 nautical miles; 16 miles) south of Cape Santa Maria di Leuca. In hunting and sinking Gambetta, Trapp achieved a notable success as commander of the first-ever underwater nighttime (and only the second) submarine attack on a vessel in the Adriatic. Just over three months later, he sank the Italian submarine Nereide at 42°23′N 16°16′E / 42.383°N 16.267°E / 42.383; 16.267 on 5 August 1915, 250 metres (270 yd) off Pelagosa (Palagruža) Island. He also captured the Greek steamer Cefalonia off Durazzo on 29 August 1915. Some sources incorrectly credit Trapp with sinking the Italian troop transport and armed merchant cruiser Principe Umberto, which resulted in the greatest loss of life in any submarine attack in World War I, but the ship was actually sunk by U-5 under its later commander, Friedrich Schlosser.