Remembering Mata-Hari – died by firing squad 25 July 1917

I note (thanks to The Guardian who included a picture of her on their site) that this week is the 93rd anniversary of the execution of the legendary spy and femme-fatale Mata Hari. A former dancer in Paris, her exotic and provocative routines brought her fame all over Europe and she  became a celebrated courtesan with lovers including military and political figures from France and Germany. This ultimately led to her being charged and convicted as a spy during the Great War, although the Germans had dismissed her as an ineffective agent. She was executed by firing squad on 25th July 1917.

Now there is a slight China Rhyming angle to Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod) and she’s popped up a couple of times in recent research thinking about the western notion of the Oriental dragon lady (in Foreign Policy) and an essay on Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu’s images of women (for a forthcoming collection on Rohmer and Fu Manchu – more details to follow when I get a publication date for that collection). 

I won’t spell out all of Mata Hari’s exciting life (she’s got her own Wikipedia page here) but she did manage to create a create legend about herself as an Asian Godess/femme-fatale. Rohmer himself chose to believe the legend – in a 1932 interview he ruminated on Mata Hari, “who won her way into the secrets of the Allies through her alluring Oriental dancing.” Her described her (as per her own invented legend) as mixed race (her mother was Javanese, her father a Dutch banker in Batavia); manipulated by evil Eastern forces (at 14 her mother placed her with a mystic in an Indian temple to be trained as a dancer); a seducer of men (at 16 she reputedly ensnared Scots nobleman Sir Rudolf McLeod; a murderess (she reputedly murdered a gardener who poisoned one of her sons); and so naturally a spy.

In reality Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, was born in Friesland to white parents who owned a hat shop, though she was a brunette and had darker skin than her parents, leading to rumours of her part-Javanese ancestry. There was no temple at 16 and she met McLeod, a Dutch Colonial Army Captain and only parts Scots, when he advertised in an Amsterdam newspaper for a wife. Her child fell violently ill from complications relating to the treatment of syphilis contracted from his parents – no vengeful gardener in sight. The marriage fell apart, Margaretha returned to Europe and, incorporating elements of traditional Javanese dance she’d seen while living in the Dutch East Indies, became an exotic dancer with her trademark headdresses and be-jewelled dresses.

And so, on the anniversary of her execution, one woman who embraced Orientalism and Chinoiserie (or Dutch East Indies style) and ended up in a lot of trouble….