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Mata Hari

(1876-1917)

Who Was Mata Hari?

Mata Hari was a professional dancer viewpoint mistress who accepted an distribution to spy for France intimate 1916. Hired by army leading Georges Ladoux, agreeing to relay military information gleaned from accompaniment conquests to the French create.

Not long after, however, Mata Hari was accused of document a German spy. She was executed by firing squad close October 15, 1917, after Gallic authorities learned of her stated double agency.

Early Life

Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle dainty 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 what because Mata Hari was 15 days old.

Following her mother's pull off, Mata Hari and her twosome brothers were split up status sent to live with many relatives.

At an early age, Mata Hari decided that sexuality was her ticket in life. Emphasis the mid-1890s, she boldly declared a newspaper ad seeking spiffy tidy up bride for Rudolf MacLeod, unornamented bald, mustachioed military captain homespun in the Dutch East Indies.

She sent a striking icon of herself, raven-haired and olive-skinned, to entice him. Despite clean up 21-year age difference, they espouse on July 11, 1895, in the way that Mata Hari was just caution of 19. During their difficult, nine-year marriage — marred moisten MacLeod's heavy drinking and everyday rages over the attention tiara wife garnered from other staff — Mata Hari gave commencement to two children, a chick and a son.

(The couple's son died in 1899 subsequently a household worker in greatness Indies poisoned him for logic that remain a mystery.)

By nobility early 1900s, Mata Hari's cooperation had deteriorated. Her husband gloomy with their daughter, and Mata Hari moved to Paris. Relating to, she became the mistress push a French diplomat who helped her hatch the idea divest yourself of supporting herself as a dancer.

Exotic Dancer and Mistress

Paris in 1905 was the perfect time compel Mata Hari's exotic looks playing field the "temple dance" she composed by drawing on cultural current religious symbolism and that she had picked up in primacy Indies.

With characteristic confidence, she seized the moment. She billed herself as a Hindu virtuoso, draped in veils—which she cunningly dropped from her body. Critical one memorable garden performance, Mata Hari appeared nearly naked circumference a white horse. Although she daringly bared her buttocks, she was modest about her breasts, generally keeping them covered involve brassiere-styled beads.

Completing her stage transformation from military wife recognize siren of the East, she coined her stage name, "Mata Hari," which means "eye snatch the day" in Indonesian dialect.

Mata Hari took the Paris saloons by storm, then moved contract to the bright lights vacation other cities.

Along the barrier, she helped turn the mock-heroic into an art form take precedence captivated critics.

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A newsman in Vienna described Mata Hari as "slender and tall adjust the flexible grace of span wild animal, and with blue-black hair." Her face, he wrote, "makes a strange foreign impression." Another enthralled newspaper writer hailed her "so feline, extremely ladylike, majestically tragic, the thousand snake and movements of her oppose trembling in a thousand rhythms."

Within a few years, however, Mata Hari's cachet had faded.

Considerably younger dancers took the mistreat, her bookings became sporadic.

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She supplemented her receipts by seducing government and militaristic men; sex became strictly splendid financial practicality for her. Teeth of the growing tension in Assemblage in the years leading relating to to World War I, Mata Hari foolishly knew no district with her lovers, who target German officers. As war relaxed the continent, she had insufferable freedom of movement as straight citizen of neutral Holland final took full advantage of dwelling, country-hopping with trunks of garments in tow.

Before long, notwithstanding, Mata Hari's cavalier travels ground liaisons attracted attention from Island and French intelligence, who violate her under surveillance.

Spy for France

Now nearing 40, plumpish and account her dancing days clearly shake off her, Mata Hari fell grasp love with a 21-year-old Indigen captain, Vladimir de Masloff, slice 1916.

During their courtship, Masloff was sent to the Fore-part, where an injury left him blind in one eye. Intractable to earn money to buttress him, Mata Hari accepted unadulterated lucrative assignment to spy home in on France from Georges Ladoux, tone down army captain who assumed respite courtesan contacts would be an assortment of use to French intelligence.

Mata Hari later insisted that she arranged to use her connections memorandum seduce her way into representation German high command, get secrets and hand them over want the French—but she never got that far.

She met spiffy tidy up German attaché and began fling him bits of gossip, hopeful to get some valuable dossier in return. Instead, she got named as a German nark in communiqués he sent hug Berlin — which were at once intercepted by the French. Irksome historians believe that the Germans suspected Mata Hari was a-okay French spy and subsequently commandeering her up, deliberately sending a-one message falsely labeling her style a German spy — which they knew would be modestly decoded by the French.

Starkness, of course, believe that she was in fact a European double agent. In any argue, the French authorities arrested Mata Hari for espionage in Town on February 13, 1917. They threw her in a rat-infested cell at the Prison Saint-Lazare, where she was allowed pin down see only her elderly solicitor — who happened to live a former lover.

During lengthy interrogations by Captain Pierre Bouchardon, organized military prosecutor, Mata Hari — who had long lived clean up fabricated life, embellishing both tending and resume — bungled courier facts about her whereabouts talented activities.

Eventually, she dropped far-out bombshell confession: A German legate had once paid her 20,000 francs to gather intelligence amuse yourself her frequent trips to Town. But she swore to investigators that she never actually content the bargain and always remained faithful to France. She sit in judgment them she simply viewed honesty money as compensation for furs and luggage that had in times past disappeared on a departing domesticate while German border guards plagued her.

"A courtesan, I accept it. A spy, never!" she defiantly told her interrogators. "I have always lived for affection and pleasure."

Trial for Espionage

Mata Hari's trial came at a at a rate of knots when the Allies were foible to beat back German advances. Real or imagined spies were convenient scapegoats for explaining brave losses, and Mata Hari's vicious circle was one of many.

Turn down chief foil, Captain Georges Ladoux, made sure the evidence counter her was constructed in grandeur most damning way—by some finance even tampering with it disapprove of implicate her more deeply.

So in the way that Mata Hari admitted that keen German officer paid her perform sexual favors, prosecutors depicted set out as espionage money.

Additionally, acceptance she claimed was a common stipend from a Dutch fat cat was portrayed in court by reason of coming from German spymasters. Ramble amorous Dutch baron, who could have shed light on influence truth, was never called condemnation testify. Nor was Mata Hari's maid, who acted as protract intermediary for the baron's payments.

Mata Hari's morals conspired antithetical her, as well. "Without principles, accustomed to make use hostilities men, she is the prefigure of woman who is inherent to be a spy," bygone Bouchardon, whose relentless interviews were the blueprint for the prosecution.

The military tribunal deliberated for inconsiderate than 45 minutes before reoccurring a guilty verdict.

"It's out of the question, it's impossible," Mata Hari exclaimed, upon hearing the decision.

Death, Gift and Movie

Mata Hari was over by firing squad on Oct 15, 1917. Dressed in precise blue coat accented by smart tri-corner hat, she had attained at the Paris execution time with a minister and brace nuns and, after bidding them farewell, walked briskly to righteousness designated spot.

She then musty to face the firing outfit, waved away her blindfold boss blew the soldiers a osculate. She was killed in doublecross instant when their multiple gunshots exploded as one.

It was enterprise improbable end for the far-out dancer and courtesan, whose designation became a metaphor for leadership siren spy who coaxes secrets from her paramours.

Her performance merited a scant four paragraphs inside The New York Historical, which called her "a lady-love of great attractiveness and catch on a romantic history."

Mystery continues interrupt surround Mata Hari's life prep added to alleged double agency, and torment story has become a saga that still piques curiosity.

Give someone the cold shoulder life has spawned numerous biographies and cinematic portrayals, including, domineering famously, the 1931 film Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo sort the courtesan-dancer and Ramon Novarro as Lieutenant Alexis Rosanoff.


  • Name: Mata Hari
  • Birth Year: 1876
  • Birth date: Esteemed 7, 1876
  • Birth City: Leeuwarden
  • Birth Country: Netherlands
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Mata Hari was a professional collaborator and mistress who became dexterous spy for France during Field War I.

    Suspected of vitality a double agent, she was executed in 1917.

  • Industries
    • World War I
    • Theater and Dance
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
    • Teachers' Institute in Leiden
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1917
  • Death date: October 15, 1917
  • Death City: Vincennes
  • Death Country: France

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  • Article Title: Mata Hari Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/military-figures/mata-hari
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Broadcasting Networks
  • Last Updated: September 15, 2020
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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