Mata Hari: Seductress, yes, but traitor, never!

Nabila Habib

The glamorously fuzzy history of Mata Hari is such that when the truth ends and aspersions begin, it is hard to tell. Many imminent personalities became the victims of this enticing beauty when they simply failed to distinguish between glamour and seduction! Famous for being the ultimate seductress spy to being the most shameless harlot, Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, née Zelle was born in a very commonplace family. In a period of prosperity, her father, a hatter, was able to give the girl exclusively upper class schooling. However, the affluence didn’t last long. Margaretha soon lost her mother, her father went bankrupt and she had to live with her grandfather, studying to be a schoolteacher. By fifteen she started getting an inkling of her exotic persona when the headmaster of the school she was working in, began to flirt with her conspicuously. Disgraced, she ran off to an uncle’s place. By 18 she had married a Dutch naval officer Rudolf John MacLeod in Amsterdam, and the couple moved to Java. But the wedlock was a disaster full of drinking, gambling, adultery and vicious hatred. Following the death of their son, a disillusioned Margaretha fled from the marriage and the country, but not before having extensively studied the culture and art of Indonesia. By then she had learnt the hard way that pleasing powerful people was the secret of her happiness. Using her dusky looks and knowledge about oriental performing arts, she recreated herself, soon acquiring the persona of an exotic temple-dancer and rose to fame as Mata Hari, an Indonesian term meaning ‘eye of the day’. From the time Mata Hari was launched, she was an overnight success. Her erotic dances and revealing costumes shot her to fame as the most irresistibly tantalizing enchantress in Europe. A courtesan par excellence, she swayed a line of famous and powerful men to her tunes. She was also the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet. She danced her way to international acclaim, enthralling crowds in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Milan and Rome. World War I changed her fortune. She had relationships with many high-ranking military officers, politicians, and people in influential positions in many countries, including the German crown prince. Her wealthy lovers paid for her luxurious lifestyle .But she fell for a Russian captain fighting for the French. He was severely injured, so Mata Hari allegedly agreed to spy for France to earn enough money to support them. Her recruiter Georges Ladoux, was a German double agent. On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested, put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and held responsible for the deaths of at least 50,000 gallant French soldiers. She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41. Irrefutably, she had been the mistress of many senior Allied officers and government officials, even the French Minister of War. She spoke several European languages and travelled widely in wartime Europe, but her guilt still remains a looming question, for the secret that propelled Margaretha Zelle, destined to be a Dutch schoolteacher, to transform herself into Mata Hari - an international symbol of sexuality, remains a mystery. She was a contemporary of the early modern dance movement that looked towards Asia and Egypt for artistic inspiration. Later, along with dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, leaders of the movement, she was named as the performers of Orientalism. All that is said in this famous and titillate saga of a courtesan and dancer cannot be proved for authenticity, but Mata Hari did have some powerful, yet dangerous attributes that transformed the rural Dutch girl to international femme fatale, and evoked such strong emotions in those who met her.