Mistake at the Mozart House

6.6.09

While we were at the Mozart house, I stopped in the gift shop to do some browsing and stumbled upon a book about the real Van Trapp family and how the movie The Sound of Music compared to the real story. I was surprised to notice that after just a quick glance, I had already spotted grammatical mistakes. One section was discussing the life of Maria Augusta von Kutschera and referred to her as "it". The pronouns were incorrect. My guess is that the book was originally written in German and this was a mistake made in the English version. But it seemed like such an obvious mistake. It jumped right out at me. So many people visit the Mozart house that I would think having high quality texts for sale would be important. Apparently the editors didn't stress over the mistake too much because a person, a very important and well-known person, was referred to as "it".