Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I She was executed by firing squad in France.
41 Facts About Mata Hari
2.
Mata Hari's story has served as an inspiration for many books, films, and other works.
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Mata Hari was the eldest of four children to Antje van der Meulen and her husband, Adam Zelle.
4.
Mata Hari had three younger brothers; Johannes Hendriks, Arie Anne, and Cornelis Coenraad.
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Mata Hari's father owned a hat shop, made investments in the oil industry, and became affluent enough to give Margaretha and her siblings a lavish early childhood that included exclusive schools until the age of 13.
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Mata Hari's father remarried in Amsterdam on 9 February 1893 to Susanna Catharina ten Hoove.
7.
Mata Hari was the son of Captain John Brienen MacLeod and Dina Louisa, Baroness Sweerts de Landas.
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Mata Hari openly kept a concubine, a socially accepted practice in the Dutch East Indies.
9.
Mata Hari studied Indonesian culture intensely for several months and joined a local dance company.
10.
Mata Hari sought escape from her circumstances by studying the local culture.
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Mata Hari was a contemporary of dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis, leaders in the early modern dance movement, which around the turn of the 20th century, looked to Asia and Egypt for artistic inspiration.
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Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, Mata Hari captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musee Guimet on 13 March 1905.
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Mata Hari became the long-time mistress of the millionaire industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musee.
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Mata Hari posed as a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood.
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Mata Hari was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so.
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Mata Hari brought a carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim.
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Mata Hari was never seen bare-chested as she was self-conscious about having small breasts.
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Mata Hari's act was successful because it elevated erotic dance to a more respectable status and broke new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris was later world-famous.
19.
Mata Hari posed for provocative photos and mingled in wealthy circles.
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Since most Europeans at the time were unfamiliar with the Dutch East Indies, Mata Hari was thought of as exotic, and it was assumed her claims were genuine.
21.
Critics began to opine that the success and dazzling features of the popular Mata Hari were due to cheap exhibitionism and lacked artistic merit.
22.
Mata Hari had begun her career relatively late as a dancer and had started putting on weight.
23.
Mata Hari had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries.
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Mata Hari gave an account of this in his 1922 book Queer People, saying that she eventually admitted to working for the Deuxieme Bureau.
25.
In December 1916, the Second Bureau of the French War Ministry let Mata Hari obtain the names of six Belgian agents.
26.
Two weeks after Mata Hari had left Paris for a trip to Madrid, the Germans executed the double agent while the five others continued their operations.
27.
On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Elysee Palace on the Champs Elysees in Paris.
28.
Bouchardon established that much of the Mata Hari persona was invented.
29.
Mata Hari maintained throughout her ordeal that she had never been a German spy.
30.
Mata Hari defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad.
31.
Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study.
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Mata Hari's head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.
33.
Mata Hari's sealed trial and other related documents, a total of 1,275 pages, were declassified by the French Army in 2017, one hundred years after her execution.
34.
The largest-ever Mata Hari exhibition was opened in the Museum of Friesland on 14 October 2017, one hundred years after her death.
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Mata Hari's birthplace is located in the building at Kelders 33.
36.
Architect Silvester Adema studied old drawings of the storefront to reconstruct it as it appeared when Adam Zelle, the father of Mata Hari, had a hat shop there.
37.
The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.
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Mata Hari twice won championship honors as the top filly in the sport.
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In 2017, the 2nd season of American TV Series - Designated Survivor had the lead character President Kirkman refer to his son Leo's girlfriend as 'Mata Hari' given the finding that she was a Turkish Spy.
40.
In 2019, English singer-songwriter Frank Turner released a song about Mata Hari, entitled "Eye of the Day", on his album No Man's Land.
41.
In 2021, Azerbaijan participated in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Mata Hari", performed by Samira Efendi.