Maria von Trapp, last surviving member of the famous Trapp Family Singers made famous by The Sound of Music has died

THE last surviving member of the famous Trapp Family Singers made famous in The Sound of Music has died.

Maria von Trapp was 99 when she passed away at her home in Vermont in the US.

Von Trapp’s brother, Johannes von Trapp, says that she died on Tuesday.

He called her a “lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people.”

The family won acclaim throughout Europe for their singing and escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938.

Their story was tued into the film and Broadway musical.

Retu: Maria, who was bo in Zell am See, Salzburg, in 1914, passed away in her sleep aged 99 at home in Vermont, America. Above, Maria is pictured at her old family home in 2008, which has been tued into a hotel

Inspiration: The von Trapp family fled their home in Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, before performing together around the U.S. Their story later inspired the 1965 film The Sound of Music (pictured), which won five Oscars

They moved to Vermont in 1942 after visiting during a singing tour and vacationing in Stowe. The family opened and still operates a lodge there.

“It was a surprise that she was the one in the family to live the longest because ever since she was a child she suffered a weak heart,” family friend Marianne Dorfer, who runs the von Trapp Villa Hotel in Salzburg, Austria, told the Austrian Times.

Dorfer said that it was because of Maria’s health issue that her father, Baron von Trapp, decided to bring in a goveess to teach her and her siblings.

As fans of the film will remember, the widowed baron ended up falling in love and marrying that goveess, an aspiring nun whose name was Maria Augusta Kutschera. They went on to have three children, Rosmarie, Eleanore and Johannes.

The Trapp Family Singers ... whose story inspired The Sound of Music, are shown rehearsing. Picture: AP Source: AP