Mata Hari | Biography, Spy, Photos, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Mata Hari (born August 7, 1876, Leeuwarden, Netherlands—died October 15, 1917, Vincennes, near Paris, France) was a Dutch dancer and courtesan whose name has become a synonym for the seductive female spy. She was shot by the French on charges of spying for Germany during World War I. The nature and extent of her espionage activities remain uncertain, and her guilt is widely contested.

Margaretha Zelle was the daughter of a prosperous hatter who lost the family’s money when Margaretha was a teenager. Her parents subsequently divorced, and, following the death of her mother in 1891, Zelle lived with relatives. She later attended a teachers’ college in Leiden. In 1895 she married Capt. Rudolph MacLeod, an officer in the Dutch colonial army. According to many reports, Rudolph was abusive, and he infected Margaretha with syphilis. From 1897 to 1902 they lived in Java and Sumatra. The couple had two children, though their son died, allegedly poisoned by the nanny; however, some have speculated that he contracted syphilis from his parents and that his death was caused by mercury treatments for the disease. After returning to Europe, the couple separated, eventually divorcing in 1906. Margaretha initially had custody of their daughter, but Rudolph refused to provide financial assistance, forcing her to leave the child in his care.

Destitute and hoping to earn enough money to reunite with her daughter, Margaretha began to dance professionally in Paris in 1905 under the name of Lady MacLeod. She soon renamed herself Mata Hari, a Malay expression for the Sun (literally, “eye of the day”). Tall, extremely attractive, superficially acquainted with East Indian dances, and willing to appear virtually nude in public, Mata Hari was an instant success in Paris and other large cities. Throughout her adult life she had numerous lovers, and many of them were military officers. Some of the liaisons involved money.

The facts regarding her espionage activities remain obscure. According to some accounts, in late 1915, while she was living in The Hague, an honorary German consul offered to pay her for whatever information she could obtain on her next trip to France. After her arrest by the French, she acknowledged that, while she had accepted money from Germany, she had given only outdated information to a German intelligence officer.

According to statements that Mata Hari supposedly made, she had agreed to act as a French spy in German-occupied Belgium and did not bother to tell French intelligence of her prior arrangement with the Germans. She had intended to secure for the Allies the assistance of Ernest Augustus, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Germany and heir to the dukedom of Cumberland in the British peerage.

The French began to suspect Mata Hari of duplicity, and on February 13, 1917, she was arrested and imprisoned in Paris. Officials blamed her espionage activities on Germany’s behalf for the death of up to 50,000 French soldiers, though there was no evidence to support that allegation. On July 24–25, 1917, she was tried by a military court and sentenced to death. Some three months later she was shot by a firing squad. Although the claim that she blew kisses to her executioners was later discredited, the assertion that she refused to wear a blindfold is probably true.

In the years following her death, Mata Hari became the subject of numerous books and movies. As more information was uncovered, doubts arose over her guilt. The German government publicly exculpated her in 1930, and the French dossier documenting her activities reportedly indicated her innocence. In 2017 France released various documents relating to Mata Hari, and they led many to believe that she had been a scapegoat of French officials looking for someone to blame for the country’s setbacks in the war. In addition, it was speculated that her disregard for societal norms also played a role in her arrest, conviction, and execution.