The BBC (via the Washington Times) reports that efforts to rename a walking path in Salzburg after Maria Von Trapp have failed. Despite the fact that Frau Von Trapp is one of Salzburg’s most famous citizens (along with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), there were concerns regarding her use of corporal punishment with children.
Maria Von Trapp was famously portrayed by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. The movie won five Oscars, including for best picture and best director. Millions of fans have since come to Salzburg to see the set locations and even do The Original Sound of Music Tour.
But as city spokesman Johannes Greifeneder explained to the BBC, "On one hand, there’s no doubts on the merits of Maria von Trapp, especially for Salzburg, but on the other hand if you look into her biography, into her autobiography, you can read how she educated the Trapp children and there was too much violence against children and we can’t accept this today."
Then again, said Salzburg city councilwoman Marlene Woerndl, "Yes, there were horrible things in her biography. But you have to make a difference or think about what was the common habit in the 20th, 19th, 18th century." In other words, a little perspective might be in order.
And besides, Berlin still has a Karl-Marx-Allee, not to mention statues to both Marx and Friedrich Engels. For many years, the street address for the University of Vienna in Austria was Dr. Karl Lueger Ring. Having attended Hauptuni Wien in the early 1990s, I used to see that street sign every day and wonder who the good doctor was—no doubt a profound thinker and scholar like Sigmund Freud or Kurt Gödel, both of whom taught there. Here’s what I learned:
"There was one political leader in Vienna in Hitler’s time who understood [the need for institutional support], as well as the necessity of building a party on the foundation of the masses," writes William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. "This was Dr. Karl Lueger, the burgomaster of Vienna and leader of the Christian Social Party, who more than any other became Hitler’s political mentor, though the two never met. Hitler always regarded him as ‘the greatest German mayor of all times … a statesman greater than all the so-called ‘diplomats’ of the time … If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany he would have been ranked among the greatest minds of our people.’"
In 2012 Dr. Karl Lueger Ring was changed to Universitätsring.
So renaming a trail (not even a street or boulevard!) after Maria Von Trapp can’t be that bad, can it? Now if the city council decided to rename it after Rolfe, Liesl’s love interest who turns into a Nazi, well, that’d be a different story.