This woman is still a mystery today.
But Marga von Etzdorf undoubtedly had courage and humor, even in disastrous moments.
Around 1932 when it crashed over Bangkok.
The engine of their bright yellow airplane "Kiek in die Welt" had stopped at a height of 80 meters.
"Nobody who saw the break or the pictures of it would believe that a human being could emerge even halfway alive from the ruins of my poor 'Kiek in die Welt'," she wrote in a letter.
Then the German pilot joked about her serious injuries, which tied her to the bedside for months: “One vertebra slipped in shock and lies almost 2 cm next to the others, as well as sprains, kidney bruises, bruises on the spine, bump on the head, hole in the Bein and I wish I had as many thalers as bruises. "
With girlish happiness, Marga von Etzdorf told a radio reporter about an emergency landing in the Kyrgyz steppe. Kyrgyz people wrapped in furs were amazed when she repaired the engine and had to "shoot back and forth like an oiled lightning bolt" between the cockpit and the propeller. At the start she waved "the good Kyrgyz" aside, who climbed onto the roof of a mud hut. "To make matters worse, a wild herd of horses with a shepherd appeared, which I first had to drive away."
Just on quickly, because she wanted to go to Japan: every day a good 1000 kilometers and ten hours of flight in her little Junkers A 50 Junior, unprotected from storms and rain in the open cockpit with her face soon sunburned.
On August 18, 1931, Marga von Etzdorf, 24, started in Berlin.
Eleven days later, she wanted to reach Tokyo.
Up until then, no woman had managed a solo flight from Europe to Japan.
"She dared to do something"
There were only months between the start in the steppe in 1931 and the crash in Bangkok in 1932, but they were characteristic of the life of the exceptional pilot: With Marga von Etzdorf triumphs followed with cruel regularity - up to her suicide in 1933: she shot herself in Aleppo after a failed landing with a submachine gun in the left temple.
"I can't reconcile that," says Isolde Wördehoff, "as if they were two different people." Here the happy chat, there deep seriousness.
But suicide?
Isolde Wördehoff, 79, was a passionate aviator and competition pilot herself for a long time.
Like Etzdorf, she asserted herself in the male-dominated aviation world and was elected to the board of the Aero Club in 1991 as the first woman.
It flew for the first time in 1959 and only stopped two years ago - "a rational age decision that hurt terribly".
For years she has been working intensively with Marga von Etzdorf, in whom she sometimes recognizes herself: “She dared something, she was daring, maybe even callous.
She wanted to see the world, make a difference, was hungry for adventure, inquisitive and very unconventional. «Etzdorf was enthusiastic about technology from a young age.
That contradicted the image of women of her time.
"A terrific pioneering act"
Once revered as one of the world's best female pilots, Marga von Etzdorf later stood in the shadow of former rivals like Elly Beinhorn for a long time.
For a long time only experts were interested in her travel memoirs “Kiek in die Welt” and the estate in the archive of the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
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Her flight to Tokyo was "an unimaginable mental and physical achievement, a grandiose, spectacular pioneering act," says Isolde Wördehoff.
»By today's standards that is unimaginable: inaccurate maps, no radio in your little machine.
Then she had to endure the noise of the engine in the open cockpit for hours every day. "
Even the preparation was a mammoth logistical task.
Etzdorf had to organize expensive overflight rights and financially "calculate very precisely," as she wrote.
The limited amount of fuel forced them to refuel several times a day.
Every stopover, however, carried the risk of a breakdown that ended their adventure.
As with her British competitor Amy Johnson, who achieved world fame in 1930 with her solo flight from London to Australia.
Johnson also wanted to fly to Tokyo in 1931, but crashed over Warsaw.
Almost at the same time as Etzdorf, she dared a second attempt, but only accompanied by her flight mechanic.
Alone but not lonely
The German, on the other hand, flew alone, navigated with a map and compass, and orientated herself on the courses of rivers and railway lines.
Sometimes she was so overtired that she saw double images and thought paths were tracks.
In her travelogue she uses the "we" form: her companion was her plane.
Etzdorf was happy in the air - just like on her very first flight: A friend had won a sightseeing flight voucher, which he gave her as a present.
"That day it grabbed me so that I would never let go," she later wrote.
Only when flying can you experience "this feeling of infinite, three-dimensional freedom".
She wanted more of that.
At 19, in 1927, she was only the second German female pilot to acquire a flight license after the war. Shortly thereafter, she became Lufthansa’s first co-pilot and saw “the men’s slightly astonished faces” during the interview.
She convinced with submissive charm;
as a co-pilot "even a woman could not cause any harm".
When passengers thanked the "gentlemen pilots" after landing, Marga von Etzdorf gave them this illusion.
She was silent - and bowed like a man.
Triumph in Tokyo
In 1930, with the help of her grandparents, she bought her own machine and broke away from such constraints.
With »Kiek in die Welt« she first did loopings and advertising flights, then she lived up to the name: She flew to Istanbul.
To Madrid.
And from there to the Canary Islands, a spectacular success.
On the way back, however, she had to make an emergency landing in Sicily due to a storm and hit a wall on a slippery meadow the next day.
Your machine was transported back by train.
It was a first insult.
She absolutely wanted to avoid that a year later on the Japan flight.
On August 29, 1931, she actually achieved the great triumph: Marga von Etzdorf landed in Tokyo, cheered by thousands of onlookers.
It rained congratulatory telegrams for the "dashing flight", and Japanese newspapers also celebrated their "brilliant achievement".
For six weeks she enjoyed the fame, exploring Japan, visiting temples, climbing mountains.
"That was one of the happiest times in her life," says Isolde Wördehoff.
The pilot was beaming in the photos.
Often there, for example swimming together: her uncle Hasso von Etzdorf, who was only a little older, was an attaché at the embassy in Tokyo at the time.
"It seems to me as if she adored him endlessly." Whether it was more is uncertain.
"She really appreciated the cocktail"
A special travel book in the estate gives insights into Etzdorf's emotional life.
The whimsical entries come from friends and guests, and the aviator garnished them with photos that she cut out.
It is said of "Hasso from the German Embassy" that he devoted himself entirely to the visit of the pilot, with whom he had been "intimately" connected for a long time.
And under a photo of the two: "You can see them whispering together here."
"In Tokyo and Yokohama people drank the very best alcohol to their health," reads a rhyme next to a photo of drunk bottles.
"She appreciated the cocktail very much, no wonder that she was finally tired, tired of all the hype and longing for the sea." In October 1931, Marga von Etzdorf recovered in Kamakura on the picturesque Sagami Bay.
Soon afterwards their luck ended.
Actually, Etzdorf wanted to meet Elly Beinhorn on her return flight from Japan in Bangkok, who was just circling the world.
But she was stuck for months in China, which was in the middle of a civil war and was vying for Manchuria with Japan.
Beinhorn was long gone when Marga von Etzdorf crashed in Bangkok.
"I fell on my face, in good German," she downplayed the accident in a radio interview with Beinhorn in 1932.
"I reassured the others who were much more upset than me."
"Pact with the devil"
And yet Etzdorf was now considered unlucky, and she needed a new machine and sponsors;
Fuel and overflight rights were expensive.
In 1933 she entered into a "pact with the devil," as Wördehoff puts it.
The National Socialists were only just in power when Etzdorf set out on a solo flight to Australia on May 27, 1933.
On board: a submachine gun, 100 cartridges as well as weapons catalogs and price lists.
Her ambition to fly had made the apolitical pilot into an arms dealer for the Nazis, who broke the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
This deal was unknown for decades, until a file was found by the historian Evelyn Crellin in 2006. The letter from a former flight officer unmasked: As a contact for the NSDAP for the arms manufacturer Haenel, who supplied Etzdorf's machine, he asked the »gracious lady« to »somewhere on the flight ( …) To initiate business with this weapon «.
"It goes without saying that" she will share in the profits.
On May 28, 1933, Marga von Etzdorf made a landing error near Aleppo, then under French administration.
Your machine could be repaired - but the French would have discovered the explosive freight.
Shortly after landing, the German shot herself in the guest room of the airport building.
The secret scandal
Why?
Perhaps out of desperation, since the scandal would have ended her career.
Maybe she was disappointed about the crash landing again.
The Nazis exploited her death for propaganda purposes;
SA and SS men held honor guard during the laying out.
Officially, the pilot had a fatal accident.
When her suicide became known, the newspapers tried their "melancholy" and the rivalry with Elly Beinhorn.
The French authorities, surprisingly, remained silent.
Perhaps this silence shows respect for a great aviator. Or also from a possible partial fault of the French airport management, as Isolde Wördehoff suspects: Because the landing cross was partly blown with sand when Etzdorf's last landing.