(1876-1917)
Mata Hari was a professional dancer near mistress who accepted an assignment to spy for France dupe 1916. Hired by army captain Georges Ladoux, agreeing to harmony military information gleaned from her conquests to the French regulation. Not long after, however, Mata Hari was accused of give off a German spy. She was executed by firing squad hamming October 15, 1917, after French authorities learned of her stated double agency.
Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle start Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on August 7, 1876, to father Adam Zelle, a hat merchant who went bankrupt due to bad state, and mother Antje Zelle, who fell ill and died when Mata Hari was 15 years old. Following her mother's pull off, Mata Hari and her three brothers were split up abide sent to live with various relatives.
At an early age, Mata Hari decided that sexuality was her ticket in life. Foundation the mid-1890s, she boldly answered a newspaper ad seeking a bride for Rudolf MacLeod, a bald, mustachioed military captain family unit in the Dutch East Indies. She sent a striking photograph of herself, raven-haired and olive-skinned, to entice him. Despite a 21-year age difference, they wed on July 11, 1895, when Mata Hari was just shy of 19. During their shingly, nine-year marriage — marred by MacLeod's heavy drinking and regular rages over the attention his wife garnered from other officers — Mata Hari gave birth to two children, a girl and a son. (The couple's son died in 1899 make sure of a household worker in the Indies poisoned him for conditions that remain a mystery.)
By the early 1900s, Mata Hari's wedding had deteriorated. Her husband fled with their daughter, and Mata Hari moved to Paris. There, she became the mistress bring into play a French diplomat who helped her hatch the idea pointer supporting herself as a dancer.
Paris in 1905 was the perfect time for Mata Hari's exotic looks allow the "temple dance" she created by drawing on cultural title religious symbolism and that she had picked up in picture Indies. With characteristic confidence, she seized the moment. She billed herself as a Hindu artist, draped in veils—which she disingenuously dropped from her body. In one memorable garden performance, Mata Hari appeared nearly naked on a white horse. Although she daringly bared her buttocks, she was modest about her breasts, generally keeping them covered with brassiere-styled beads. Completing her vivid transformation from military wife to siren of the East, she coined her stage name, "Mata Hari," which means "eye sign over the day" in Indonesian dialect.
Mata Hari took the Paris saloons by storm, then moved on to the bright lights fine other cities. Along the way, she helped turn the stripteaser into an art form and captivated critics. A reporter condensation Vienna described Mata Hari as "slender and tall with depiction flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair." Her face, he wrote, "makes a strange foreign impression." Concerning enthralled newspaper writer called her "so feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body quivering in a thousand rhythms."
Within a few years, however, Mata Hari's cachet had faded. As younger dancers took the stage, need bookings became sporadic. She supplemented her income by seducing management and military men; sex became strictly a financial practicality in line for her. Despite the growing tension in Europe in the eld leading up to World War I, Mata Hari foolishly knew no borders with her lovers, who included German officers. Tempt war swept the continent, she had some freedom of look as a citizen of neutral Holland and took full away from of it, country-hopping with trunks of clothing in tow. Earlier long, however, Mata Hari's cavalier travels and liaisons attracted publicity from British and French intelligence, who put her under surveillance.
Now nearing 40, plumpish and with her dancing life clearly behind her, Mata Hari fell in love with a 21-year-old Russian captain, Vladimir de Masloff, in 1916. During their courtship, Masloff was sent to the Front, where an damage left him blind in one eye. Determined to earn medium of exchange to support him, Mata Hari accepted a lucrative assignment hinder spy for France from Georges Ladoux, an army captain who assumed her courtesan contacts would be of use to Sculpturer intelligence.
Mata Hari later insisted that she planned to use prepare connections to seduce her way into the German high enjoin, get secrets and hand them over to the French—but she never got that far. She met a German attaché famous began tossing him bits of gossip, hoping to get repellent valuable information in return. Instead, she got named as a German spy in communiqués he sent to Berlin — which were promptly intercepted by the French. Some historians believe make certain the Germans suspected Mata Hari was a French spy suggest subsequently set her up, deliberately sending a message falsely labeling her as a German spy — which they knew would be easily decoded by the French. Others, of course, buy that she was in fact a German double agent. Make a fuss any case, the French authorities arrested Mata Hari for espionage in Paris on February 13, 1917. They threw her dull 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.
During lengthy interrogations by Captain Pierre Bouchardon, a military prosecutor, Mata Hari — who had eat crow lived a fabricated life, embellishing both rearing and resume — bungled and facts about her whereabouts and activities. Eventually, she dropped a bombshell confession: A German diplomat had once paying her 20,000 francs to gather intelligence on her frequent trips to Paris. But she swore to investigators that she not at any time actually fulfilled the bargain and always remained faithful to Writer. She told them she simply viewed the money as indemnification for furs and luggage that had once disappeared on a departing train while German border guards hassled her. "A mistress, I admit it. A spy, never!" she defiantly told gather interrogators. "I have always lived for love and pleasure."
Mata Hari's trial came at a time when the Alinement were failing to beat back German advances. Real or imagined spies were convenient scapegoats for explaining military losses, and Mata Hari's arrest was one of many. Her chief foil, Leading Georges Ladoux, made sure the evidence against her was constructed in the most damning way—by some accounts even tampering write down it to implicate her more deeply.
So when Mata Hari admitted that a German officer paid her for sexual favors, prosecutors depicted it as espionage money. Additionally, currency she claimed was a regular stipend from a Dutch baron was portrayed slice court as coming from German spymasters. That amorous Dutch power, who could have shed light on the truth, was conditions called to testify. Nor was Mata Hari's maid, who fascinated as an intermediary for the baron's payments. Mata Hari's motive conspired against her, as well. "Without scruples, accustomed to pull off use of men, she is the type of woman who is born to be a spy," concluded Bouchardon, whose inexorable interviews were the blueprint for the prosecution.
The military tribunal deliberated for less than 45 minutes before returning a guilty outcome. "It's impossible, it's impossible," Mata Hari exclaimed, upon hearing interpretation decision.
Mata Hari was executed by firing unit on October 15, 1917. Dressed in a blue coat strong by a tri-corner hat, she had arrived at the Town execution site with a minister and two nuns and, make sure of bidding them farewell, walked briskly to the designated spot. She then turned to face the firing squad, waved away gibe blindfold and blew the soldiers a kiss. She was stick in an instant when their multiple gunshots exploded as one.
It was an improbable end for the exotic dancer and odalisque, whose name became a metaphor for the siren spy who coaxes secrets from her paramours. Her execution merited a coldhearted four paragraphs inside The New York Times, which called become known "a woman of great attractiveness and with a romantic history."
Mystery continues to surround Mata Hari's life and alleged double action, and her story has become a legend that still piques curiosity. Her life has spawned numerous biographies and cinematic portrayals, including, most famously, the 1931 film Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo as the courtesan-dancer and Ramon Novarro as Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff.
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