I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun.
—Mata Hari
Mata Hari—born Margaretha Zelle (1876–1917)—was an exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed as a German spy during World War I. Her life and espionage trial have been a source of enduring fascination. Many supporters believe Mata Hari was unjustly targeted because of her free-spirited sexuality—and because the French needed a scapegoat for their military setbacks.
A citizen of the Netherlands, Zelle was expelled from school at age sixteen for sleeping with her principal. She married a Dutch army officer at age eighteen and moved with him to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He was an abusive husband who infected her with syphilis, and they divorced several years later.
Returning to Europe, Zelle moved to Paris in 1903, where she began dancing at nightclubs and adopted the stage name Mata Hari—Indonesian for “Eye of the Day.” Her exotic costumes and sultry striptease routine, supposedly based on native Indonesian dances, became a sensation. Mata Hari also began acquiring lovers among the French elite, a list that eventually included prominent businessmen and military officers.
By the time World War I began, Mata Hari was famous throughout Western Europe and had performed across the continent. As a citizen of neutral Holland, she was able to travel freely among the warring powers in Europe, and she visited France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Spain during the war.
Almost a century after her arrest, the details of her case remain somewhat murky. Mata Hari had lovers on both the German and French sides of the trenches, and she apparently volunteered to spy for both sides. It is unclear whether she actually learned secrets of any importance. In 1917, however, the French intercepted a German military communication that named her as a spy, and they arrested her that February. She was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. On the morning of October 15, she put on one last show, blowing a kiss to her firing squad and refusing to wear a blindfold. She was forty-one at the time of her death.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Famed actress Greta Garbo (1905–1990) played Mata Hari in a 1931 movie.
- A Mata Hari is a cocktail whose recipe includes Courvoisier, vermouth, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, and sugar.
- Dutch lawyers filed suit in 2001 to clear Mata Hari’s name, arguing that she had been framed by the government.
