Margaretha Zelle, born in the Netherlands in 1876,
had studied to become a kindergarten teacher.
But there was trouble in her first year of teaching so she moved on.
She replied to a newspaper advertisement.
A Dutch military officer stationed in Indonesia was looking for a wife.
Soon, Margaretha found herself living on the island of Java,
married to an alcoholic with a mistress who beat her regularly.
She gave birth to two children.
Both had syphilis.
Norman, her son, died of the disease while quite young.
The husband took their daughter, Jeanne, away from her after they divorced.
Jeanne would later die of syphilis, too.
At twenty-seven, Margaretha left Java and moved to Paris.
She found work performing as a circus horse rider
and posing as an artist’s model.
Within a year, she had launched the beginnings of a brief
but spectacular career as an exotic dancer,
drawing on dance training she had received while in Indonesia.
For her act, Margaretha claimed to be a Javanese princess
who had been trained since childhood in sacred Hindu dance.
And she took the stage name “Mata Hari,” the Malayan word for “sun.”
Her act was infamous for the progressive removal of clothing.
It culminated in Mata Hari adopting flirtatious poses
while wearing only a jeweled breastplate, headdress and bracelets.
The beige bodystocking which she wore in the early years of her act
was abandoned later on.
The breastplate was never removed.
It concealed a perceived inadequacy.
She was the talk of Paris.
Mata Hari mingled among wealthy Parisians and took lovers.
Many were military men.
They came from many different countries,
including the wartime adversaries France and Germany.
She met the love of her life during this time.
He was a Russian pilot
who was then fighting for France in the First World War.
He got shot down, survived, but was grievously wounded.
Mata Hari’s problems began when she tried to obtain permission
to visit the pilot in his military hospital near the front.
The permission was granted with a condition.
She must agree to spy on the German military for France.
Mata Hari agreed.
She had performed several times for Kaiser Bill’s oldest son,
the German crown prince.
The French believed that Mata Hari could use her seductive charms
to obtain information from the prince.
Much of what happened next is subject to interpretation.
In February 1917,
French authorities arrested Mata Hari in her Paris hotel room.
They charged her with spying for Germany
and causing the deaths of at least 50,000 French soldiers.
Mata Hari admitted to taking money from a German diplomat
to spy on France,
but claimed she had passed on only insignificant items
which could be found in the newspapers.
After all, she had taken money from many men in her lifetime.
Mata Hari professed loyalty to France, her adopted home country.
“A harlot?
Yes, but a traitoress, never!” she said at the time of her espionage trial.
Convincing evidence of Mata Hari’s guilt was never found,
though prosecutors claimed to have discovered
‘disappearing ink’ in her hotel room.
She claimed what they had found was her makeup.
Mata Hari’s defense counsel was not allowed
to question prosecution witnesses at her trial
and was not allowed to put Mata Hari on the witness stand.
Many now believe that the case against her was fabricated
to supply a demoralized French public with a scapegoat
for catastrophic losses suffered during a difficult period in the war.
In October 1917, she was executed by a twelve-man firing squad.
She was forty-one.
An English newspaper reporter who witnessed the execution
said Mata Hari refused a blindfold.
Her hands remaining unbound,
she blew a kiss to her assailants moments before they fired.
Some say she believed their bullets were blanks.
No one claimed Mata Hari’s body
and it was given over to medical science.
Her head was removed and embalmed,
then placed in storage in a Paris anatomy museum.
In the year 2000, researchers looking for Mata Hari’s head failed to find it.
They concluded that the head had been taken from the museum
some time back,
perhaps as early as 1954.
It’s still missing.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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