Nelly Walter

In his book The World of the Trapp Family, William Anderson describes the important role that Nelly Walter played in the discovery of the Trapp Family by American audiences. He quotes Walter herself:

It was I who discovered the Trapp Family when I was in Vienna before Hitler marched in. I asked the great Mr. [Francis] Coppicus [agent for Lotte Lehmann] who came regularly to Europe  . . . to do me the favor and listen to the Trapps. I even took a special hall for this audition. His reaction was "How can you imagine that I can bring them to New York with that kind of attire?" I was very disappointed since the Trapps had come to Vienna at their own expense and money was very tight with them.

Walter then turned to Charles Wagner. Agathe takes up the story:

Mr. Wagner, a prominent concert manager in New York City, arrived at our door, asking to hear us sing. We gave Mr. Wagner a little recital, and when we finished, he asked if we could sing the Brahms "Lullaby" for him. Of course, we could, and by the time we sang the last note, there were tears in this distinguished man's eyes.

Despite Georg's misgivings, the family were signed by Wagner for a fourteen concert tour running from the fall of 1938 through March 1939.  Agathe places the signing during the 1937 Salzburg festival. Walter says she softened Wagner up with a carriage horse ride through Salzburg.

Walter's life was perhaps even more full of incident than the Trapps'.

 In 1933 she had to leave Germany for her own safety, because she was Jewish. She went to Vienna and continued her work. While she was there, Miss Walter arranged the first recital tour of Alice Tully. When Hitler invaded Austria, she went to Prague where her friend, famed conductor George Szell was music director of the opera. When the Nazi tide swept over Czechoslovakia, Nelly managed to get to Paris. There she met Francis Poulenc, American composer Virgil Thomson and other prominent musical figures. When the Germans marched into Paris, she and her mother escaped and went into hiding in Marseilles where she was among those captured and transported to a concentration camp. Many difficult years passed before the Americans landed in Marseilles, when she escaped into the hands of the U.S. Army. Nelly worked for them as a purchasing agent in the Quartermaster Corps—the only foreigner and the only female. Her efficiency was rewarded with a visa to America.

Nelly Walter arrived in New York June 11, 1946. Her former boss in Europe, Andre Mertens, (then the vice president of Columbia Artists) gave her a job after she had been in the country only a few days. Her extensive background and experience in classical music made her an enormous asset to the company, and she was given several artists to manage: Munch, Neveu, Kapell, and Leonard Bernstein.