Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876-1917) lived for several years in Malaysia with her husband and came to Paris in 1905 to find fame as a performer of exotic Asian-inspired dances, using the music for example of the traditional East Javanese ‘Gandrung’.
She toured all over Europe, claiming she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning ‘eye of the day’ in Malay. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude.
She became a famous courtesan, and, with the outbreak of World War, her catalog of lovers began to include high-ranking military officers of various nationalities.
In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage and imprisoned her at St. Lazare Prison in Paris. In a military trial conducted in July, she was accused of revealing details of the Allies’ new weapon, the tank, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and on October 15 she refused a blindfold and was shot to death by a firing squad at Vincennes.
There is some evidence that Mata Hari acted as a German spy, and for a time as a double agent for the French, but the Germans had written her off as an ineffective agent whose pillow talk had produced little intelligence of value. Her military trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as ‘the greatest woman spy of the century’ as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the western front. Her only real crimes may have been an elaborate stage fallacy and a weakness for men in uniform.
Whatever the fictions and fantasies of the life of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, the legend of Mata Hari fascinates today with its potent combination of oriental eroticism and wartime espionage.
I have used the music of the ‘Gandrung’ as the sound track to the images of this video.
Enjoy!
