Mata Hari (1876-1917)

DOSSIER:

Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" Zelle, daughter of Adam Zelle and his first wife Antje van der Meulen, was born on 7 Aug 1876 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. She died by firing squad on 15 Oct 1917 in Vincennes, Paris, France.

At 18, Margreet answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by Dutch Colonial Army Captain Rudolf MacLeon who was looking for a wife. She married him in Amsterdam on 11 Jul 1895 and had two children: Norman-John and Louise Jeanne MacLeod.

CODE NAME:
Mata Hari

The MacLeods lived together from 1897-1902 in Java and Sumatra where she acquired her knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances. 

They separated after returning to Europe, at which point she took to dancing upon the Paris stage from 1905, initially as 'Lady MacLeod' and soon after as 'Mata Hari', the name she retained until her execution.

She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Hata Hari, meaning "eye of the day" in Malay. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France. Her attractiveness, as well as her willingness to appear almost nude on the stage, made her a huge hit. She cultivated numerous lovers, including many military officers.

Still unclear today are the circumstances around her alleged spying activities. It was said that while in The Hague in 1916 she was offered cash by a German consul for information obtained on her next visit to France. Indeed, Mata Hari admitted she had passed old, outdated information to a German intelligence officer when later interrogated by the French intelligence service.

Mata Hari herself claimed she had been paid to act as a French spy in Belgium (then occupied by German forces), although she had neglected to inform her French spymasters of her prior arrangement with the German consul. She was, it seemed, a double agent, if a not very successful one.

It appears (the details are vague) that British intelligence picked up details of Mata Hari's arrangements with the German consul and passed these to their French counterparts.

She was consequently arrested by the French on 13 Feb 1917 in Paris. Following imprisonment she was tried by a military court on 24-25 Jul 1917 and sentenced to death by a firing squad. The sentence was carried out on 15 Oct 1917 in Vincennes near Paris. She was 41.

To many she remains the unfortunate victim of a hysterical section of the French press and public determined to root out evidence of a non-existent enemy within, a scapegoat attractive as much for her curious profession as for her crimes.