37 Facts About Mata Hari

Mata Hari's story has inspired books, films, and other works.

Mata Hari had three younger brothers: Johannes Hendriks, Arie Anne, and Cornelis Coenraad.

Mata Hari's father owned a hat factory and 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.

Mata Hari's father remarried in Amsterdam on 9 February 1893 to Susanna Catharina ten Hoove.

Mata Hari studied to be a kindergarten teacher in Leiden, but when the headmaster began to flirt with her conspicuously, she was removed from the institution by her godfather.

Mata Hari was the son of Captain John Brienen MacLeod and his wife Baroness Dina Louisa Sweerts de Landas.

Mata Hari openly kept a concubine, a socially accepted practice in the Dutch East Indies at the time.

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.

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.

Mata Hari became the long-time mistress of the millionaire industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musee.

Mata Hari was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so.

Mata Hari brought a carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim.

Mata Hari was never seen bare-chested as she was self-conscious about having small breasts.

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.

Mata Hari posed for provocative photos and mingled in wealthy circles.

Since most Europeans at the time were unfamiliar with the Dutch East Indies, Mata Hari was thought of as exotic, and her claims were accepted as genuine.

Critics began to opine that the success and dazzling features of the popular Mata Hari were due to cheap exhibitionism and lacked artistic merit.

Mata Hari had begun her career relatively late as a dancer and had started putting on weight.

Mata Hari had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries.

Mata Hari gave an account of this in his 1922 book Queer People, saying that she eventually admitted to working for the Deuxieme Bureau.

In December 1916, the Second Bureau of the French War Ministry let Mata Hari obtain the names of six Belgian agents.

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.

On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Elysee Palace on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Bouchardon established that much of the Mata Hari persona was invented.

The Canadian historian Wesley Wark stated in a 2014 interview that Mata Hari was never an important spy but a scapegoat for French military failures that had nothing to do with her.

Mata Hari maintained throughout her ordeal that she had never been a German spy.

Mata Hari defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad.

Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study.

Mata Hari's head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.

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.

The largest-ever Mata Hari exhibition was opened in the Museum of Friesland on 14 October 2017, one hundred years after her death.

Mata Hari's birthplace is located in the building at Kelders 33.

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.

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.

Two songs named after Mata Hari have appeared at the Eurovision Song Contest:.

Mata Hari twice won championship honors as the top filly in the sport.

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.