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Mata Hari
(1876—1917)

Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I.

Margaretha Zelle was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland in the Netherlands, as the only daughter and second child among the four children of Adam Zelle and Antje van der Meulen, both born and raised in Friesland. Adam owned a hat store, had made successful investments in the oil industry and became affluent enough to give Margaretha a lavish early childhood. Thus, Margaretha attended only exclusive upper class schools until age 13. However, Margaretha's father went bankrupt in 1889, her parents divorced soon afterwards, and Margaretha's mother died in 1891. The family had come apart and she moved to live with her godfather, Heer Visser, at Sneek. At Leiden, she studied to be a kindergarten teacher but when the headmaster began to flirt with her conspicuously, she was sent from the institution by her offended godfather. After only a few months she fled to her uncle's home in The Hague.

At 18, she answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by a man looking for a wife. Margaretha married Dutch Colonial Army officer Rudolf John MacLeod in Amsterdam. They moved to Java (Dutch East Indies) and had two children, Norman and Jeanne-Louise.

The marriage was an overall disappointment. MacLeod was a violent alcoholic who would take out his frustrations on his wife, who was half his age, and whom he blamed for his lack of promotion. He also openly kept both a native wife and a concubine. The disenchanted Margaretha abandoned him temporarily, moving in with Van Rheedes, who was another Dutch officer. For months she studied the Indonesian traditions intensively, joining a local dance company. In 1897, she revealed her artistic surname Mata Hari, Malay for "eye of the day" or the sun, via correspondence to her relatives in Holland.

At MacLeod's urging, Margaretha returned to him although his aggressive demeanor hadn't changed. She escaped her circumstance by studying the local culture. Their son Norman died in 1899 possibly of complications relating to the treatment of syphilis contracted from his parents, though the family claimed he was poisoned by an irate servant. Some sources maintain that one of Rudolf's enemies may have poisoned a supper to kill both of their children (Norman and Jeanne-Louise). After moving back to the Netherlands, the couple divorced in 1903, with Rudolf forcibly retaining the custody of his daughter (who later died at the age of 21, also possibly from complications relating to syphilis).

In 1903, Margaretha moved to Paris, where she performed as a circus horse rider, using the name Lady MacLeod. Struggling to earn a living, she also posed as an artist's model.

By 1905, she began to win fame as an exotic dancer. It was then that she adopted the stage name Mata Hari. She was a contemporary of dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, leaders in the early modern dance movement, which around the turn of the 20th century looked to Asia and Egypt for artistic inspiration. Critics would later write about this and other such movements within the context of orientalism. Gabriel Astruc became her personal booking agent.

Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body with a mystique that captivated both her audiences and the public, Mata Hari was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. Following that success, she became the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet who founded the Musée. She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood. She was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so. Some of these pictures were obtained by MacLeod and strengthened his case in keeping custody of their daughter.

She brought this carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was seldom seen without a bra as she was self-conscious about being small-breasted.

Although the explanations and claims made by her about her origins were fictitious, the act was spectacularly successful because it elevated exotic dance to a more respectable status, and so broke new ground in a >Dutch East Indies and thus thought of Mata Hari as exotic, it was assumed her claims were genuine.

By approximately 1910, myriad imitators had arisen. Critics began to opine that the success and dazzling features of the popular Mata Hari was due to cheap exhibitionism, lacking artistic attributes. Although she continued to schedule important social events throughout Europe, she was disdained by serious cultural institutions as a dancer who did not know how to dance.^[4]

Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, though she was known more for her sensuality and eroticism rather than for striking classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries, including the German crown prince, who paid for her luxurious lifestyle.

Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Prior to World War I, she was generally viewed as an artiste and a free-spirited bohemian, but as war approached, she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress.

During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, Margaretha Zelle was thus able to cross national borders freely. To avoid the battlefields, she traveled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain, and her movements inevitably attracted attention. She was a courtesan to many high-ranking allied military officers during this time. On one occasion, when interviewed by British intelligence officers, she admitted to work as an agent for French military intelligence, although the latter would not confirm her story. It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or if French authorities were using her in such a way, but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.

In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.

On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her hotel room at Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.

Pat Shipman's biography Femme Fatale argues that Mata Hari was never a double agent, speculating that she was used as a scapegoat by the head of French counter-espionage. Georges Ladoux had been responsible for recruiting Mata Hari as a French spy and later was arrested for being a double agent himself. The facts of the case remain vague, because the official case documents regarding the execution were sealed for 100 years.

Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, but in 2000, archivists discovered that the head had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954, when the museum had been relocated. Records dated from 1918 show that the museum also received the rest of the body but none of the remains could later be accounted for.

The fact that a former exotic dancer had been executed as a spy immediately provoked many unsubstantiated rumours. One is that she blew a kiss to her executioners, although it is possible that she blew a kiss to her lawyer, who was a witness to the execution and a former lover of hers. Her dying words were purported to be "Merci, monsieur". Another rumour claims that, in an attempt to distract her executioners, she flung open her coat and exposed her naked body. "Harlot, yes, but traitor, never," she is reported to have said. A 1934 New Yorker article, however, reported that at her execution she actually wore "a neat Amazonian tailored suit, specially made for the occasion, and a pair of new white gloves" though another account indicates she wore the same suit, low-cut blouse and tricorn hat ensemble which had been picked out by her accusers for her to wear at trial, and which was still the only full, clean outfit which she had along in prison.^[11] Neither description matches photographic evidence.

The fact that almost immediately after her death questions rose about the justification of her execution, on top of rumours about the way she acted during her execution, set the story. The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent, using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers fired the popular imagination, set the legend and made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.

Much of the popularity is owed to the film titled Mata Hari (1931) and starring Greta Garbo in the leading role. While based on real events in the life of Margaretha Zelle, the plot was largely fictional, appealing to the public appetite for fantasy at the expense of historical fact. Immensely successful as a form of entertainment, the exciting and romantic character in this film inspired subsequent generations of storytellers. Eventually, Mata Hari featured in more films, television series, and in video games - but increasingly, it is only the use of Margaretha Zelle's famous stage name that bears any resemblance to the real character. Many books have been written about Mata Hari, some of them serious historical and biographical accounts, but many of them highly speculative.

Fujeira, 1972, Mata Hari and Lt. Alexis Rosanoff