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Mata Hari
Mata Hari was born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden on 7 August 1876. She grows up in a wealthy upper middle class family and is a good student. The family falls apart, however, and at age 19 she marries Rudolph MacLeod, a career officer in the Dutch East Indies Army. He is twenty years older than she is. They have two children: a son, who dies in the East Indies, and a daughter. The marriage is a disaster. In 1902, the family returns to the Netherlands. Shortly afterwards, the marriage is annulled.
Paris
Margaretha departs for Paris, leaving her young daughter in the care of her ex-husband. Her performance as an Oriental dancer in Madame Kiréevsky’s salon is a great success. Monsieur Guimet’s Museum for Oriental Art is the first venue where she performs as Mata Hari, which is Malay for 'eye of the day' (i.e. the Sun). The fact that she dances in the nude causes a sensation. Within a few weeks, she is the talk of the town. To reporters interviewing her she spins yarns about sacred Indian temples, about her studying Oriental dance, about her mother, whom she claims to be a Javanese princess and about her father, supposedly a Scottish nobleman … The press love it and accept her fabrications as gospel truth.
Lady MacLeod
Her performances have made Mata Hari a woman of wealth, lavishly supported by a host of lovers. She prefers men in uniform. One of these, a German called Herr Kiepert, invites her to attend manoeuvres of the German Imperial Army in Silesia. This episode will later play a role in the espionage trial. Some time later, she is living the quiet life in a small chateau near Tours at the expense of Felix Rousseau, a French banker. It is too quiet for her tastes, however, and after a year she moves to a villa in Paris. When the First World War breaks out in the summer of 1914, Mata Hari is in Berlin. She is supposed to perform there for the first time but the theatre closes before opening night. Margaretha is forced to flee the country but is unable to return to Paris. Finally, she ends up in The Hague, penniless and without her luggage.
H21
In the spring of 1916, Mata Hari is contacted by the German intelligence service. Her code name will be agent H21 and she receives an advance of 20,000 guilders. Shortly afterwards, she turns up in Paris again, where she falls in love with a Russian officer, Captain Vadime de Massloff. In the summer of 1916, Captain Ladoux, the head of French counterintelligence, asks her to become a French agent. Without realizing what is happening, she becomes entangled in a web of intrigue. Her naïveté and flights of fancy make her unfit for the role of double agent and she is soon distrusted by all parties. She is arrested in Paris on 13 February 1917 and sentenced to death as a pro-German spy in a dubious trial. On 15 October 1917, she is executed by firing squad.
