Actually, that sounds pretty hot. Yes indeed.
...
Anyway, though the actual person did somewhat resemble this in a very, very vague sort of way, most of what we think we know about Mata Hari (assuming we know anything at all) is a product of the countless movies, TV shows, and writing that has been made since her death. Nowadays, the name Mata Hari refers more to the mythological figure we have in our minds than it does the actual lady who used that name, but she was a real person - a real interesting person at that.
Article
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle MacLeod (7 August 1876, Leeuwarden – 15 October 1917, Vincennes), a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I.
Dutch. Doesn't seem quite as spicy, does it? Well, actually, anyone who's been to Amsterdam might disagree with me.
Margaretha had a privileged childhood until age 13 when her family suffered a triple whammy: dad went bankrupt, parents divorced, and mom died - all in the space of two years. She moved in with her godparents and studied to become a kindergarten teacher, "but when the headmaster began to flirt with her conspicuously, she was removed from the institution by her offended godfather." That's when she made the brilliant decision to answer an ad in the paper placed by a man looking for a wife. Everyone knows that's how happy, mutually beneficial marriages start, right?
Margaretha married Dutch Colonial Army officer Rudolf John MacLeod (1 March 1856, Heukelum - 9 January 1928, Velp) in Amsterdam on 11 July 1895. He was the son of John Brienen MacLeod and Dina Louisa Frijherrine Sweerts de Landas. They moved to Java in the Dutch East Indies and had two children, Norman-John (30 January 1897, Amsterdam - 27 June 1899) and Jeanne-Louise (2 May 1898, Java - 10 August 1919).
The marriage was an overall disappointment. MacLeod was a violent alcoholic who would take out his frustrations on his wife, who was half his age, and whom he blamed for his lack of promotion. He also openly kept both a native wife and a concubine.
An upstanding fellow by any standard!
To distract herself from the misery of her marriage, Margaretha began studying the Indonesian culture. She joined a local dance company and took the artistic name Mata Hari, which is Indonesian for "sun" (literally translates to "eye of the day"). Her unfortunate circumstances were laying the groundwork for what would become the best part of her life.
After leaving and getting back together with MacLeod, Margaretha finally made a clean break in 1902 and moved to Paris, where she became somewhat of a early 20th Century version of Lady Gaga:
Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905. She became the long-time mistress of the millionaire Lyon industrialist Emile Etienne Guimet, who had founded the Musée. She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood. She was photographed numerous times during this period, nude or nearly so. Some of these pictures were obtained by MacLeod and strengthened his case in keeping custody of their daughter.
Maybe it's more apt to say that Lady Gaga is an early 21st Century version of Mata Hari. They both became mega-stars almost overnight, dress(ed) in extreme cutting edge/unusual fashion (for the time), and spawned legions of weaker imitations. They also have one other thing in common ... er, two things, I suppose:
The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head. She was seldom seen without a bra as she was self-conscious about being small-breasted.
I love that first line there. Isn't it a bit redundant to say that the most popular part of a stripper's act is when she takes all her clothes off?
If she had only been known for being a pioneering exotic entertainer, this would still be a pretty interesting article, but we have only scratched the surface of this lady's story. As her cachet and notoriety increased, so did the status of the men who pursued her ... in Europe ... in 1913 ... see where I'm going with this?
Mata Hari was also a successful courtesan, though she was known more for her sensuality and eroticism rather than for striking classical beauty. She had relationships with high-ranking military officers, politicians, and others in influential positions in many countries, including the German crown prince, who paid for her luxurious lifestyle.
Her relationships and liaisons with powerful men frequently took her across international borders. Prior to World War I, she was generally viewed as an artist and a free-spirited bohemian, but as war approached, she began to be seen by some as a wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress.
What happened next is a bit difficult to piece together. Since the Netherlands were neutral in the Great War, she was able to move freely across borders. She traveled frequently between the Netherlands and France, and went through Spain and England to avoid the battlefields.
There is no concrete evidence available that Mata Hari was a spy, and some say there never was. She reportedly confessed to British intelligence officers that she was working for the French (allied with Britain), but it's not certain whether this was a ruse to make her appear more intriguing and alluring, or if it was indeed true. The scant evidence against her was itself a bit suspect:
In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.
After that, the inevitable happened.
On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.
Thus, the career of one of history's greatest seductresses ended. And yet, mystery continues to surround her to this day. Was she really a spy, or did the French use her as a scapegoat? Or did she wrong a high-ranking officer who doctored the intel? So little is known about what really happened. Heck, we don't even know where her body wound up.
Mata Hari's body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris, but in 2000, archivists discovered that the head had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954, when the museum had been relocated. Records dated from 1918 show that the museum also received the rest of the body, but none of the remains could later be accounted for.
I'm starting to think that the remains of famous, controversial figures are very elusive in general. Maybe her head is seducing John F. Kennedy's brain somewhere.
The mystery and controversy surrounding the end of her life coupled with her unparalleled success as a high-concept exotic dancer have made her story perfect fuel for gossip, rumour, and fictionalization. It seems like most people would rather make up interesting stories about her than actually solve the mystery of her death. Maybe the world doesn't want to solve the mystery. Maybe the mystery itself is Mata Hari's last, and greatest, seduction.
(Wow, that's a pretty deep closing thought for a blog, eh? Damn. If only I could get paid for this stuff.)
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