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Alviine-Johanna Kalep (26 June 1899 – 15 August 1989), known as Elvy Kalep, was an Estonian aviator and the country's first female pilot, as well as an artist, toy designer and a one-time children's author. Kalep grew up in Estonia and Russia, and subsequently moved to China to escape the Russian Civil War. She worked briefly as an interpreter for military officials in China before settling in Paris to study art with Alexandre Jacovleff. In 1931, she qualified as a pilot in Germany, becoming the first Estonian female pilot. Befriending American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, she joined the Ninety-Nines and took up the cause of encouraging other women to take up aviation. She wrote and illustrated a children's book about flying, ''Air Babies'', which was first published in 1936. After settling in the United States, Kalep founded a toy manufacturing business in New York. Although she was forced to close the business in 1946 due to her poor health, she made a living through the 1950s by selling patents to toy designs to larger businesses. In later decades, she created artworks out of leather, which she exhibited across the United States. She died in Florida in 1989. ==Early life== Kalep was born on 26 June 1899 in the village of Taali in Tori Parish, Pärnu County. She was the only child of Joanna (née Liidemann) and locksmith Aksel Emil, who both died when she was a young girl.〔 She attended Tallinna Tütarlaste Kommertsgümnaasium, a girls' secondary school in Tallinn. As a teenager, Kalep moved to Russia to live with an aunt in Saint Petersburg. She witnessed the events that sparked the February Revolution in 1917, and spent a night in police detention as an eyewitness.〔 She made a failed attempt to flee at the outset of the revolution, during which time she witnessed six men being shot while waiting in line to buy train tickets out of the country.〔 She and her aunt moved to Vladivostok, where she married a Russian general, Count Slastšov, and had a son. She lived in Vladivostok for eight years, during which time she made numerous escape efforts, before her new family was able to successfully flee to China, a refuge they chose because of Slastšov's ties to Zhang Zuolin.〔 Within a year of arriving in Harbin, China, Kalep's son died and her husband disappeared. Kalep was able to support herself by working as an interpreter—she spoke Russian, German, English and Chinese—for a British general in Shenyang. She was also employed by Zhang Zuolin and later his son, Zhang Xueliang, but decided to return to Estonia in 1925. She traveled through Indonesia, Italy and France before eventually arriving in Tallinn in 1926.〔 Soon afterwards she settled in Paris, where she studied the art of oil painting with Russian painter Alexandre Jacovleff.〔〔 She married Rolf Baron von Hoeningen-Bergendorff, who was of German or Austrian descent.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elvy Kalep」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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