Dutch exotic dancer (1876–1917)
Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod (née Zelle, ; 7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917), better known by the stage name Mata Hari ( , ; , lit. 'eye of the day'), was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. She was executed by firing squad in France. The idea of a beautiful exotic dancer using her powers of seduction as a spy made her name synonymous with the "femme fatale". Her story has inspired books, films, and other works.
It has been said that she was convicted and condemned because the French Army needed a scapegoat, and that the files used to secure her conviction contained falsifications. Some have even stated that Mata Hari could not have been a spy and was innocent.
Early life.
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born 7 August 1876 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands to Antje van der Meulen (1842–1891) and her husband, Adam Zelle (1840–1910), a hat factory owner. She had three younger brothers; Johannes Hendriks, Arie Anne, and Cornelis Coenraad. She was affectionately called "M'greet" by her family. Despite traditional assertions that Mata Hari was partly of Jewish, Malaysian, or Javanese, i.e., Indonesian descent, scholars conclude she had no Jewish or Asian ancestry, and both of her parents were Dutch. Her father owned a hat factory and shop, made investments in the oil industry, and became affluent enough to give Margaretha and her siblings a lavish early childhood that included exclusive schools until the age of 13.
Soon after Margaretha's father went bankrupt in 1889, her parents divorced, and her mother died in 1891. Her father remarried in Amsterdam on 9 February 1893 to Susanna Catharina ten Hoove (1844–1913). The family fell apart, and Margaretha was sent to live with her godfather, Mr. Visser, in Sneek. She studied to be a kindergarten teacher in Leiden, but when the headmaster began to flirt with her conspicuously, she was removed from the institution by her godfather. A few months later, she fled to her uncle's home in The Hague.
Dutch East Indies.
At 18, Margaretha answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by Dutch colonial army captain Rudolf MacLeod (1856–1928), who was living in what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and was looking for a wife. Margaretha married MacLeod in Amsterdam on 11 July 1895. He was the son of Captain John Brienen MacLeod (a descendant of the Gesto branch of the MacLeods of Skye, hence his Scottish surname) and his wife Baroness Dina Louisa Sweerts de Landas. The marriage enabled Zelle to move into the Dutch upper class and placed her finances on a sound footing. She moved with her husband to Malang on the east side of the island of Java, travelling out on the in May 1897. They had two children, Norman-John MacLeod (1897–1899) and Louise Jeanne MacLeod (1898–1919).
The marriage was overall a disappointment. Rudolf was an alcoholic, physically abused Margaretha, and blamed her for his lack of promotion. He openly kept a concubine, a socially accepted practice in the Dutch East Indies at the time. When Rudolf was posted to Medan, Margaretha and the children remained in Toempoeng with the family of Mr. van Rheede, the government comptroller. Friends of Margaretha's in the Netherlands recall her writing to them around this time to say that she had taken the name "Mata Hari," the word for "sun" in the local Indonesian language (literally, "eye of the day").
At Rudolf's urging, Margaretha returned to him, but his behavior did not change. In 1899, their children fell violently ill from complications relating to the treatment of syphilis contracted from their parents, though the family claimed an irate servant poisoned them. Jeanne survived, but Norman died. Some sources maintain that one of Rudolf's enemies may have poisoned their supper to kill both of their children. After moving back to the Netherlands, the couple officially separated on 30 August 1902. The divorce became final in 1906, and Margaretha was awarded custody of Jeanne. Rudolf was legally required to pay child support but never did. Once when Jeanne visited Rudolf, he did not return her to her mother. Margaretha did not have the resources to fight the situation and accepted it, believing that while Rudolf had been an abusive husband, he had been a good father. Jeanne later died at the age of 21, possibly from complications related to syphilis.
Career.
Paris.
In 1903, Zelle moved to Paris, where she performed as a circus horse rider using the name Lady MacLeod, much to the disapproval of the Dutch MacLeods. Struggling to earn a living, she also posed as an artist's model.
By 1904, Mata Hari rose to prominence as an exotic dancer. 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. Gabriel Astruc became her personal booking agent.
Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, Mata Hari captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. She became the long-time mistress of the millionaire industrialist Émile Étienne Guimet, who had founded the Musée. Entertainers of her era commonly invented colourful stories about their origins, and she posed as a Javanese 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.
Mata Hari brought a 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 breastplate and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was never seen bare-chested as she was self-conscious about having small breasts. Early in her career, she wore a bodystocking for her performances that was similar in color to her skin, but that was later omitted.
Her act was successful because it elevated erotic dance to a more respectable status and broke new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris was later world-famous. Her style and free-willed attitude made her popular, as did her eagerness to perform in exotic and revealing clothing. She posed for provocative photos and mingled in wealthy circles. Since most Europeans at the time were unfamiliar with the Dutch East Indies, Mata Hari was thought of as exotic, and her claims were accepted as genuine. One enthusiastic French journalist wrote in a Paris newspaper that Mata Hari was "so feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body trembling in a thousand rhythms." One journalist in Vienna wrote after seeing one of her performances that Mata Hari was "slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair" and that her face "makes a strange foreign impression."
By about 1910, myriad imitators had arisen. Critics began to opine that the success and dazzling features of the popular Mata Hari were due to cheap exhibitionism and lacked artistic merit. 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.
Mata Hari's career went into decline after 1912. On 13 March 1915, she performed in the last show of her career. She had begun her career relatively late as a dancer and had started putting on weight. However, by this time, she had become a successful courtesan, known more for her sensuality and eroticism than for her classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries. Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Before World War I, she was generally viewed as an artist 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.
Espionage.
During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, 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. During the war, Zelle was involved in what was described as a very intense romantic-sexual relationship with Captain Vadim Maslov, a 23-year-old Russian Staff Captain of the 1st Special Infantry Regiment serving with the French, whom she called the love of her life. Maslov was part of the 50,000-strong Russian Expeditionary Force sent to the Western Front in the spring of 1916.
In April 1916, Maslov was wounded fighting in the ill-fated Nivelles Offensive to capture the German controlled fortified Brimont mountain range, losing his sight in his left eye, which led Zelle to ask for permission to visit her wounded lover at the hospital where he was staying near the front.
As a citizen of a neutral country, Zelle would not normally be allowed near the front. Zelle was met by agents from the Deuxième Bureau who told her that she would be allowed to see Maslov if she agreed to spy for France.
Before the war, Zelle had performed as Mata Hari several times before the Crown Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II and nominally a senior German general on the Western Front. The Deuxième Bureau believed she could obtain information by seducing the Crown Prince for military secrets. In fact, his involvement was minimal, and it was German government propaganda that promoted the image of the Crown Prince as a great warrior, the worthy successor to the Hohenzollern monarchs who had made Prussia strong and powerful. They wanted to avoid publicizing that the man expected to be the next Kaiser was a playboy noted for womanizing, partying, and indulging in alcohol, who spent another portion of his time associating with far right-wing politicians, with the intent to have his father declared insane and deposed.
Unaware that the Crown Prince did not have much to do with the running of Army Group Crown Prince or the 5th Army, the Deuxième Bureau offered Zelle 1 million francs if she could seduce him and provide France with good intelligence about German plans. The fact that the Crown Prince had, before 1914, never commanded a unit larger than a regiment, and was now supposedly commanding both an army and an army group at the same time should have been a clue that his role in German decision-making was mostly nominal. Zelle's contact with the Deuxième Bureau was Captain Georges Ladoux, who later emerged as one of her principal accusers.
In November 1916 she was traveling from Spain aboard the steamship . When the ship called at the British port of Falmouth she was arrested and taken to London, where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, assistant commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage. He gave an account of this in his 1922 book "Queer People", saying that she eventually admitted to working for the Deuxième Bureau. Initially detained in Canon Row police station, she was then released and stayed at the Savoy Hotel. A full transcript of the interview is in Britain's National Archives and was broadcast, with Mata Hari played by Eleanor Bron, on the independent station LBC in 1980. 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 late 1916, Zelle traveled to Madrid, where she met the German military attaché Major Arnold Kalle and asked if he could arrange a meeting with the Crown Prince. During this period, Zelle apparently offered to share French secrets with Germany in exchange for money, though whether this was because of greed or an attempt to set up a meeting with Crown Prince Wilhelm remains unclear.
In January 1917, Major Kalle transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy code-named H-21, whose biography so closely matched Zelle's that it was obvious that Agent H-21 could only be Mata Hari. The Deuxième Bureau intercepted