Mata Hari Biography

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born on 7 August 1876, in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, to Adam Zelle, a hat merchant who went bankrupt owing to faulty investments, and Antje Zelle, who became ill and died when Mata Hari was only 15 years old. Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, popularly known as Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and prostitute accused of spying for Germany during World War I. Many people believe she was innocent because the French Army required a scapegoat, even though she accepted to receive money to function as a German spy during interrogation. She was shot and executed by a firing squad in France.

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Early Life

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on 7 August 1876. Adam Zelle (1840–1910) and his first wife Antje van der Meulen (1842–1891) had four children together. Johannes Hendriks, Arie Anne, and Cornelis Coenraad were her three younger brothers. Her family affectionately referred to her as "M'greet." Despite the popular opinion that Mata Hari was of Jewish, Malaysian, or Javanese (i.e. Indonesian) origin, researchers have concluded that she had neither Jewish nor Asian ancestry and that both of her parents were Dutch. Margaretha's father established a hat shop, invested in the oil industry, and grew wealthy enough to provide Margaretha and her siblings with a privileged early childhood that included enrollment at prestigious schools until they were 13 years old. Mata Hari and her 3 brothers were split up after their mother (Antje Zelle) died and sent to live with various relatives. 

She married Capt. Rudolph MacLeod, a Scottish officer in the Dutch colonial army, 1895, and lived in Java and Sumatra from 1897 to 1902. She began dancing professionally in Paris in 1905 under the name Lady MacLeod after the pair returned to Europe but ultimately split. Mata Hari, a Malay expression for the sun (literally, "eye of the day"), was her new name. In 1906, she and MacLeod divorced. Mata Hari was an instant success in Paris and other large cities because she was tall, extremely attractive, superficially familiar with East Indian dances. 

Mata Hari Career

Zelle relocated to Paris in 1903 and worked as a circus horse rider under the name Lady MacLeod, much to the chagrin of the Dutch MacLeods. To make a living, she posed like an artist's model. Mata Hari came to prominence as an exotic dancer in 1904. She was a contemporary of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, leaders of the early modern dance movement, which looked to Asia and Egypt for creative inspiration around the turn of the century. Later critics would discuss this and other similar movements in the context of Orientalism. Gabriel Astruc was appointed to her as her booking agent. Mata Hari captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the start of her performance at the Musée Guimet on March 13, 1905. She was promiscuous, flirtatious, and brazenly flaunted her body. She was the long-time mistress of Émile Étienne Guimet, the rich Lyon businessman who had founded the Musée. She pretended to be a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu ancestry who had grown up surrounded by sacred Indian dance. Her passion to perform as well as her style and independent attitude, made her a popular woman.

By 1910, there were plenty of imitators. Critics began to argue that the popular Mata Hari's fame and dazzling qualities were due to cheap spectacle and lacked artistic worth. Although she continued to plan big social events around Europe, serious cultural institutions dismissed her as a dancer who didn't know how to dance. After 1912, Mata Hari's career began to wane. On March 13, 1915, she performed in what would be her final performance.

Mata Hari Spy

The Netherlands remained neutral during World War I. Zelle was entitled to freely cross national borders as a Dutch subject. She went between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain to avoid the battlefields, and her movements attracted notice. During the war, Zelle met with Captain Vadim Maslov, a 23-year-old Russian pilot serving with the French, whom she described as the "love of her life." In the spring of 1916, Maslov was part of the 50,000-strong Russian Expeditionary Force sent to the Western Front. Maslov was shot down and critically injured during a dogfight with the Germans in the summer of 1916, losing his left eyesight, leading Zelle to request permission to see her wounded lover at the hospital where he was being nursed near the front. Zelle would not normally be allowed near the front as a neutral country citizen. Agents from the Deuxième Bureau met Zelle and told her that if she agreed to spy for France, she would be allowed to visit Maslov.

Due to the war, Zelle had performed as Mata Hari in front of Crown Prince Wilhelm, Kaiser Wilhelm II's eldest son and supposedly a top German general on the Western Front. She could have been able to get information by seducing the Crown Prince for military secrets, according to the Deuxième Bureau. In reality, he played a little role, and it was German government propaganda that boosted the Crown Prince's reputation as a great warrior, a worthy heir to the Hohenzollern kings who had made Prussia strong and powerful. 

How Mata Hari Died?

On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was shot by a firing squad. She had arrived at the Paris execution site with a minister and two nuns, dressed in a blue coat with a tri-cornered hat, and after bidding them farewell, proceeded rapidly to the allotted area. She then turned around to face the firing squad, waved her blindfold away, and kissed the soldiers. When their several gunfires detonated as one, she was instantly murdered. 

The exotic dancer and courtesan, whose name became a metaphor for the siren spy who coaxes secrets from her paramours, met an improbable end. Her execution received only four words in The New York Times, which described her as "a woman of great beauty and a romantic history." Because of her daring and performance, many writers wrote a book with the name “Mata Hari biography book”.