Mata Hari's Tragic End

Mata Hari, at 34, a bit plump and approaching her last few years on stage. By 1910, Mata Hari had spawned various imitators of her erotic dance routines in Paris while touring Europe maintaining amorous liaisons with various high-ranking military officers, politicians, and royalty with strong influences in government and economy. By the start of WWI, she may have already engaged in espionage activities that remained contentious.  Prior to the war, she was generally considered a free-spirited artist, but as war progressed, she began to achieve notoriety as a dangerous seductress whose relationships could so easily lend themselves to espionage suspicions.

With an administration eager to win the war, one double agent for whom everything that went wrong with the war could be blamed was most convenient, making Mata Hari the perfect scapegoat, which explains why the case against her received maximum publicity in the French press, which was more than eager to hype her role in the war, and unwittingly created her legendary reputation as a dangerous seductress, a femme fatale.

In Feb 1917, with the flimsiest of evidence, the French government arrested Mata Hari in her room at the Hotel Elysée Palace in Paris, and put on trial in July, accused of spying for Germany, and causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. She was executed by firing squad in October, two months after turning 41. British reporter Henry Wales said to have witnessed the execution claimed she refused a blindfold, even blowing a kiss to her executioners. "Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backward, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her." A non-commissioned officer then walked up to her body, pulled out his revolver, and shot her in the head to make sure she was dead.

Mata Hari Seductress Extraordinaire

What was it with Mata Hari that captivated her regal and powerful audiences? Without the classic beauty of a Cleo de Merode, her statuesque figure and milky skin that was rare among European women made her stand out. Her figure would shame that of Venus de Milo. And she knew how to leverage her sultry appeal to win recognition. There was clear flirtatious style in all of Mata Hari's stage acts that garnered wide acclaim. Her most applauded segment was her progressive shedding of clothes until she wore nothing but her signature jeweled bra and some head and arm ornaments. Her exhibitionist act was an instant success as it defied acceptable norms in stage performance, pioneering on exotic dance, and liberating body expressions to erotic heights that Paris was later to become world-famous for.

Promiscuous even at a tender age, Mata Hari would never be content with just one man, and the military provided her with a steady supply, with focus on those in power that eventually got her recruited by a government minister to spy for France. As a Dutch national, she was free to cross borders throughout western Europe, making her espionage career shuttling between Germany, France, Belgium, and Britain easy. And this ease would later bring her career to a tragic end.

The Real Mata Hari

Beauty and seductiveness are not always together. Here is the real Mata Hari, the definitive femme fatale. Not exactly a ravishing beauty as Greta Garbo, she did have the sultry allure that brought dozens of French generals and admirals to divulge their military secrets while in bed allegedly causing the deaths of more than 50,000 French soldiers during WWI. (About the only thing common between Mata Hari and Greta Garbo who portrayed here in a 1931 film that made her famous was that both were flat chested.)

Born in 1876, she was a contemporary of the most photographed woman at that time, Cleo De Merode, just a year older than her, (which I colorized early last year). A Dutch by decent, Margeretha Geertruida Zelle took the name Mata Hari (Eye of Dawn) after a brief sojourn with her husband (which she eventually divorced) in Malang, Eastern Java where she reputedly learned the erotic dances of Javenese girls that she reprised upon her return to France at the turn of the 20th century. By 1905, Mata Hari had become a celebrity to many royals and military officers, on par with the likes of Isadora Duncan who was also her contemporary who pioneered in modern freestyle dance.

Colorized Greta Garbo in the 1931 film Mata Hari

Expect Hollywood to be bigger than life.  The real archtype femme fatale Mata Hari would have swooned to see herself portrayed by the more beautiful Greta Garbo in this 1931 film, just 14 years after she was executed by the French in a firing squad. Of course, the court was never able to prove the allegations that Mata Hari was a double agent, a spy and counter spy, for France and Germany.  All they had was circumstantial evidence, but they needed someone to blame for causing the deaths of at least 50,000 French soldiers during WWI.   Details of the trial had been sealed and are scheduled to be declassified by the French military this year, exactly one hundred years after her execution.