The Real Maria von Trapp
The real Maria (born Maria Augusta Kutschera) was indeed a prospective nun (postulant) at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg, and she did serve the von Trapp family before marrying into it. But Hollywood, as always, took a few poetic liberties with her story. The following article shows the primary key differences:
Tutor, Not Governess
Maria originally was hired on as a tutor (not a governess) for only one of the seven von Trapp children, the second-oldest daughter (who was also named Maria). The girl had caught scarlet fever and couldn't walk to school anymore, so the young postulant agreed to help her with lessons temporarily before she took her vows to become a full-fledged nun.
Nurturing More Than Singing
Maria didn't have to teach the kids to sing--they already knew how. What she did do was to nurture them along and care for them, and she grew to love them as her own. When Captain Georg Johannes von Trapp saw how much Maria cared about his children, he fell in love with her and soon proposed to her--he was not nearly as reticent about loving and marrying Maria as he is portrayed in the film. In fact, Maria did flee back to the Abbey as is shown in the film, but it was because of this proposal; his strong feelings for her frightened her a bit! She did, however, come back and marry him after being advised to do so by her Mother Abbess--that part of the film is correct.
Not Married in the Shadow of the Third Reich
Georg and Maria were married in 1927, not in the late 1930s as depicted; the Nazi party as history knows it was not in existence then. And, also unlike the film, Maria was "really and truly not in love" with Georg on her wedding day--she actually married him mainly for the sake of his children, who were already quite devoted to her and she to them. However, in her own words, " learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after."
More Information in Maria's Own Words
In 1949, Maria published a book about her experiences called The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. This book became the basis for two German films, Die Trapp-Familie and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika, as well as the 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music and the 1965 film of the same name, but they vary widely in how well they stick to the source material. This doesn't make The Sound of Music a bad movie, though--it made me curious enough to find out more about the real-life story, and thus led me to discovering a book I might never have read otherwise.