Early Life
On August 7, 1876, Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Her mother, Antje Zelle, passed away when Mata Hari was 15 years old, and her father, Adam Zelle, was a hat merchant who went bankrupt due to poor investments. Mata Hari and her three brothers were divided up and sent to live with different relatives after the death of their mother.
Mata Hari made the early decision that her sexuality was her ticket to success in life. She bravely responded to a newspaper ad in the middle of the 1890s asking for a bride for military captain Rudolf MacLeod, who was stationed in the Dutch East Indies and had a mustache. To lure him in, she sent him a dramatic picture of herself, olive-skinned and with raven hair. They were married on July 11, 1895, when Mata Hari was barely 19 years old, despite their age difference of 21 years. Mata Hari gave birth to a daughter and a son during their turbulent nine-year marriage, which was characterized by MacLeod's heavy drinking and frequent outbursts over the attention his wife received from other officers.
By the early 1900s, Mata Hari's marriage had deteriorated. Her husband fled with their daughter, and Mata Hari moved to Paris. There, she became the mistress of a French diplomat who helped her hatch the idea of supporting herself as a dancer.
Exotic Dancer and Mistress
Mata Hari's exotic appearance and the "temple dance," which she invented by incorporating religious and cultural symbolism from the Indies, were ideal for Paris in 1905. She grabbed the opportunity with her usual assurance. Claiming to be a Hindu artist, she skillfully removed her veils from her body. During a particularly memorable garden show, Mata Hari rode a white horse almost completely nude. She bravely showed off her buttocks, but she was modest about her breasts, usually hiding them behind beads shaped like brassieres. Her stage name, "Mata Hari," which translates to "eye of the day" in Indonesian, completed her remarkable metamorphosis from military wife to Eastern siren.
After taking the Paris saloons by storm, Mata Hari moved on to other cities with bright lights. She enthralled critics along the way and contributed to the striptease's transformation into an art form. "Slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair," was how a reporter in Vienna described Mata Hari. "Makes a strange foreign impression," he wrote of her face. She was described as "so feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body trembling in a thousand rhythms" by another enthralled newspaper writer.
But in a matter of years, Mata Hari's notoriety had diminished. Her bookings started to dwindle as younger dancers started to perform. Sex became solely a matter of financial necessity for her as she used her seduction skills to bolster her income by luring government and military men. In the years preceding World War I, tensions in Europe were rising, but Mata Hari foolishly had no boundaries when it came to her loves—including German officers. Being a citizen of neutral Holland, she had some freedom of movement as war raged across the continent, and she made the most of it, traveling from one country to another with trunks of clothes in tow. But soon, British and French intelligence became aware of Mata Hari's carefree travels and relationships, and they began to monitor her.
Spy for France
Nearing forty years of age, plump, and long past her dancing days, Mata Hari fell in love in 1916 with Vladimir de Masloff, a 21-year-old Russian captain. Masloff was sent to the Front during their courtship, where an injury rendered one of his eyes blind. Determinate to provide for her family, Mata Hari agreed to take a lucrative espionage assignment for France from Georges Ladoux, an army captain who believed her connections to the courtesan would be useful to French intelligence.
Afterwards, Mata Hari insisted that she intended to use her connections to get secrets from the German high command and give them to the French, but she was never able to accomplish that. She met a German attaché and started feeding him tidbits of gossip in the hopes of extracting some useful information. Rather, she was identified as a German spy in his communiqués to Berlin, which the French quickly intercepted. According to some historians, the Germans set Mata Hari up by sending a message falsely identifying her as a German spy, which they knew the French would easily decipher. The Germans believed Mata Hari was a French spy. Others, of course, believe that she was in fact a German double agent. In any case, the French authorities arrested Mata Hari for espionage in Paris on February 13, 1917. They threw her in a rat-infested cell at the Prison Saint-Lazare, where she was allowed to see only her elderly lawyer — who happened to be a former lover.
Mata Hari, who had long lived a fabricated life, embellishing both her upbringing and resume, fumbled answers during protracted interrogations by military prosecutor Captain Pierre Bouchardon. After a while, she revealed something shocking: during one of her frequent trips to Paris, a German diplomat had once paid her 20,000 francs to gather intelligence. However, she vowed to investigators that she never really kept her end of the bargain and that she was always loyal to France. She explained to them that she just saw the money as payment for purses and bags that had once vanished on a train headed out of Germany, all the while being harassed by border guards. Okay, I admit it—a courtesan. A spy, never!" she told her interrogators, defiantly. "I've lived my entire life for pleasure and love."
The Trial and Execution
At the time of Mata Hari's trial, the Allies were struggling to stem German advances. Mata Hari's arrest was just one of many scapegoats used to justify military defeats: real or imagined spies. Captain Georges Ladoux, her main adversary, ensured that the evidence against her was compiled in the most damaging manner possible, sometimes even manipulating it to further implicate her.
Prosecutors therefore painted Mata Hari's admission that a German officer paid her for sexual favors as espionage money. Furthermore, money she represented in court as a regular stipend from a Dutch baron was actually provided by German spymasters. The amorous Dutch baron was never called to testify, despite having knowledge of the truth. Nor was the maid of Mata Hari, who served as a go-between for the baron's payments. Additionally, Mata Hari's morals worked against her. Bouchardon, whose incessant interrogations served as the model for the prosecution, concluded, "She is the type of woman who is born to be a spy—without scruples, accustomed to make use of men."
The military tribunal deliberated for less than 45 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. "It's impossible, it's impossible," Mata Hari exclaimed, upon hearing the decision.
On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was executed by firing squad. She had arrived at the execution site in Paris with a minister and two nuns, dressed in a blue coat that was accentuated by a tri-corner hat. After saying goodbye to them, she walked quickly to the assigned spot. Then she threw off her blindfold, turned to face the firing squad, and kissed the soldiers. Their gunfire burst into multiple explosions, killing her instantly.
Legacy and Popular Culture
The exotic dancer and courtesan, whose name became a metaphor for the seductive spy who extracts secrets from her paramours, met an unlikely end. The New York Times gave her execution barely four paragraphs, calling her "a woman of great attractiveness and with a romantic history.
Mata Hari's life and supposed double agency remain shrouded in mystery, and her tale has endured as a folktale that still sparks interest. Many biographies and film portrayals of her life have been produced, most notably the 1931 film Mata Hari, which starred Greta Garbo as the courtesan-dancer and Ramon Novarro as Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff.