Dancer, stripper, temptress, femme fatale, lover, courtesan, spy
"Une danse est un poème dont chaque mouvement est un mot"
(The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word)
Mata Hari was born on august the 7th, 1876 as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands (add 100 to her age as shown in this profile).
At 18 she married a Dutch naval officer named Rudolf MacLeod. They moved to Java and had two children, Norman and Non. Both were poisened, probably by the baboe (babysitter) as a revenge, and only the girl Non survived. When they returned to Holland they divorced and Rudolf gained custody over Non.
In the opening years of the 20th century, Margaretha moved to Paris where she performed as a circus horse rider, using the name Lady MacLeod. Struggling to earn a living, she also obtained work as an artist's model.
In 1905, she began to win fame as an exotic Oriental-style dancer. It was then that she adopted the stage name Mata Hari, which means "sun" (literally, "eye of the day") in Indonesian and Malay.
Promiscuous, flirtatious, and one that openly flaunted her body with a mystique that captivated both her audiences and the public, Mata Hari was literally an overnight success. For her act, she posed as a princess from Java of priestly Indian birth, pretending to have been initiated into the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood, which she was not. In those days it was quite easy for someone possessing a flamboyant personality to invent a character, and present it as fact with a good chance of success due to the limits on tele-communications available at the time. This was precisely what Mata Hari did, and with great success. She was photographed numerous times during this point in her career in either scant clothing, or nude. She brought this carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which led to wide acclaim.
On march 13, 1905. Mata Hari danced in the Museum for Eastern Arts in Paris in front of a statue of Shiva, accompanied by four dancers. She stripped to almost completely naked - only her breasts were covered by a cotton bra. However for these five images, taken at the same location, she wore a 'maillot scandaleux', which is a skin coloured body stocking.
Mata Hari never did a 'full monty'. The cotton bra or breast plates always stayed in place - she was ashamed of her tiny breasts. Sometimes she also covered her body with a 'maillot scandaleux' during performances when nudity was prohibited. There are no known topless photos of her. The few you find on the Internet with her name attached are in fact of women who mimiced her act. There are some paintings of Mata Hari that show her topless (with larger breasts than she actually had) like 'Salome' and 'Bathing Nymph'.
Although the explanations and claims made by her about her origins were total fiction, the act was spectacularly successful because it elevated exotic dance to a more respectable status, and so broke new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris was later to become world famous. Her style and her free-willed attitude made her a very popular woman. Also, her willingness to wear or perform in exotic and sexually explicit clothing made her popular. She posed for provocative photos, and mingled in wealthy circles.
Throughout her life she had a fascination with men in uniform. And the war caused the world around her to become an exceedingly fascinating place. Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, and had relationships with many high-ranking military officers, politicians and others in influential positions in many countries, including France, Russia and Germany. She was not known for being remarkably beautiful, but had an attractive air about her which people responded to.
In happier times prior to World War I, she had been generally viewed as an artist, a free-spirited bohemian. But as the times grew more grim she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress. Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men took her across international borders frequently, which eventually would lead to her downfall.
During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, Margaretha Zelle was thus able to cross national borders freely. To avoid the battlefields, she would travel between France and the Netherlands via Spain and England, and her movements inevitably attracted attention. She was courtesan to many high-ranking allied military officers during this time. On one occasion, when interviewed by British intelligence officers, she admitted to working as an agent for French military intelligence, although the latter would not confirm her story. 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.
Paintings of Mata Hari by Piet van der Hem, 1914
Mata Hari as 'Salome with the head of John the Baptist'. Painting made for the prince of San Faustino, Rome, 1912
Mata Hari poses in the uniform of her lover Hallaure
In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, were able to recognise H-21 as Mata Hari. Remarkably, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving historians to suspect that the messages were contrived so that if she was in fact working for the French, they would identify her as a double agent and effectively neutralize her.
On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her Paris hotel room. At the time of her arrest, France was at a low point in the war. Morale was down, there was seemingly no end in sight, hundreds of thousands of both Central Powers and Anglo-Russian Entente forces had died, and there was a hunger for a scapegoat. The now-famous Dutchwoman seemed to fit the role. Mata Hari was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers. Although it has been speculated since that there was no concrete evidence, she was nevertheless found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.
Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, but in 2000, archivists discovered that the head had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954, when the museum had been relocated. Records dated from 1918 show that the museum also received the rest of the cadaver but none of the remains could later be accounted for.
The fact that a former exotic dancer had been executed as a spy immediately provoked many rumours. One is that she blew a kiss to her executioners, although it is more likely that she blew a kiss to her lawyer, who was a witness to the execution and a former lover of hers. Her dying words were purported to be "Merci, monsieur". Another rumour claims that, in an attempt to distract her executioners, she flung open her coat and exposed her naked body. A third rumour had it that Mata Hari was unusually composed at the execution, refusing to be tied or blindfolded — and that this is because the firing squad was to be bribed to use blanks for a fake execution, but the plan failed. However, the last tale bears a suspicious resemblance to the plot in Puccini's earlier opera, Tosca.
Naturally, popular imagination was fired by the idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent, using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers. This image has made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.
Much of the enduring popularity is owed to the film entitled Mata Hari (1931) and starring Greta Garbo in the leading role. While based on real events in the life of Margaretha Zelle, the plot was largely fictional, appealing to the public appetite for fantasy at the expense of historical fact. Immensely successful as a form of entertainment, the exciting and romantic character in this film inspired subsequent generations of storytellers. Eventually, Mata Hari featured in more films, television series, the anime series Read or Die, and in video games — but increasingly, it is only the use of Margaretha Zelle's famous stage name that bears any resemblance to the real character.
Many books have been written about Mata Hari, some of them serious historical and biographical accounts, but many of them highly speculative.
The most reliable sources are from Sam Waagenaar (1908-1997) who worked for MGM in 1930 when the movie was shot and stumbled during promotional research on Mata Hari's two scrapbooks that were kept by her former maid. Later he did additional research and wrote three biographies about her:
- (The murder on) Mata Hari (1963)
- Mata Hari - not so innocent (1976)
- Mata Hari - geslepen spionne of onschuldige schoonheid (1995)
The second book was a revised version of the first when new information was available from German sources that prooved she actually was payed and received training by the Germans. The first two books were coffee table editions, the third a pocket.
This short biography is based on WikiPedia.
A more comprehensive biography of Mata Hari can be foundhere .
The images on this page are partly collected from the internet, partly scanned from Sam Waagenaar's books on Mata Hari.
Finally:
"Une danse est un poème dont chaque mouvement est un mot"
(The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word)
These words were written in one of Mata Hari's scrapbooks. She probably got the inspiration for these words from the French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who wrote: "Une danse est un poème".