Mata Hari: Seductress, Social Shocker, and Spy (II)

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris

Seduction. Deception. Beauty. Destruction.

Thus continues the tale of the stunning, but tragic, figure remembered as Mata Hari. When last we left her, Mata was at the peak of her career as one of the most famous courtesans the world has ever seen. Her risqué dancing and exotic appearance were only part of her appeal. As with the stars of today, scandal only made her more popular; such as her role in a love triangle that resulted in one of her lovers killing another lover (1). Yes, Mata had a string of men falling at her feet; her affairs would stretch across France, Holland, Russia, and Germany. She gave them her attention and body; in return, she received jewels, clothes, expensive housing, and other such elaborate gifts (2,1). It seemed a blessed life to Mata, whose love of presents and shopping was matched solely by her need for attention.

However, WWI was hardly the time for Mata to be traipsing back and forth between Germany and France, from her lovers in the French military to those in the German army. But then, she was never one to obey conventional rules of behavior. While bedding several high-ranking officers in France, Mata also traveled to Berlin, catching the eye of ever wealthier and more powerful men. Her lovers included Berlin’s Crown Prince and other members of the nobility, including the Kaiser’s foreign minister (2). Logic would suggest that sleeping with enemies is a bad idea, but Mata’s greed overcame her reason. She willing accepted illicit funds from her German fans, several officers paying her with money from the “espionage fund,” a fact the French would later use against her at trial (2). With each trip across the French/German border, the French’s suspicions increased.

In 1915, the French finally detained Mata, questioning her as to whether she was spying for her German lovers. Mata responded by bragging about her “intimacies with many German leaders,” offering to spy for the French instead (1). They agreed, sending her to Belgium and Spain, where she used her contacts with many German lovers to spy for the French (3). It was during this time that the French claim she turned traitor and began spying for the Germans as well (4).

1916 proved the turning point for Mata’s future. By then she was already doomed. The French knew she was receiving money from the espionage fund and that German officers were paying her for “services”; though they could not prove what these services involved (4). Then, they intercepted a German message incriminating her as a spy and claiming that they had paid her through a specific bank. She was arrested in 1917 on charges of being a German double agent (5). According to the charges, Mata had betrayed information relating to the secret production of tanks for Allied forces (6).

In truth, the proof against Mata was very weak. The information she supposedly released was old and had already been broadcast in the news (7). The evidence was circumstantial, mainly consisting of a confession given after extensive interrogation, an “uncashed 5000 franc check drawn on the bank specified in the German message, and a tube containing what was identified as invisible ink” (8). Mata claimed the check was payment for sexual services and that the ink was a disinfectant used for contraceptive purposes, both of which were possible considering her career (2). The German officer who wrote the intercepted message had in fact been one of her previous lovers, and there is some question as to whether the message was sent out of jealousy due to her leaving him for newer conquests (9). At least, if she was a double spy, “she was not a very competent spy. She produced very little information and the quality was rather poor” (3).

Irregardless of the lack of substantial evidence against her, Mata was doomed from the start. Her witnesses were a variety of lovers, including some amongst the French military, including the Former Minister of War (2). However, this only seemed to offer further proof as to her lack of morality and strengthened the impression of her as a seductive spy. Her interrogator was only too happy tell the court that “[a] woman such as Mata Hari, with her successive liaisons, could play a useful role in obtaining the half-secrets that fit together” and he denounced her as a “dangerous creature” (8). The prosecutor admitted that “[t]he Zelle lady appeared to us as one of those international women. . . her numerous relations, her subtle ways, her aplomb, her remarkable intelligence, her immorality, congenital or acquired, all contributed to make her a suspect” (4). He then denounced her as a “sort of Messalina, dragging a horde of admirers behind her chariot” (4). After her death, one author noted that, “When the time came for her fellow intrigants to disclaim this plaything of politicians and spy-masters, the material for her perpetuation was in the files of every newspaper worth the name. For she had been promoted as a sensational dancer. She was proclaimed a modern Delilah who had shorn a hundred Samsons” (2). Another noted that:

Mata Hari captured the public imagination precisely because her invented self—a mysterious, “foreign,” and erotic being—fit perfectly the sexualized myth of women spies constructed in the years before and during the war. . . . She represented the decadence of Salome with her exotic dancing, the hidden female threat with her sexual exploits, and the enemy within through her espionage (9).

“When the court adjourned the night before her verdict, “the jury had nothing but impressions . . . of a woman who had lived brilliantly. . . and who had had many lovers. . . one of guilt based on an accumulation of accusations” (10).

It was no surprise that the courts found Mata Hari guilty of espionage, and, despite her claims to innocence, a military court condemned her to death. On October 15, 1917, at the age of 41, Mata Hari was shot to death by a firing squad (3). But in death, Mata received what she had always wanted in life–fame and a mark upon history forever. Since her death, her story has only grown as books, movies, plays, documentaries, and the works of historians, journalists, and various articles exaggerated and varied the story bits at a time. She started the lies by rewriting her past, but the world has taken her lies and turned them into epic myths and legends. Like “Jezebel” for wicked women, “Benedict Arnold” for traitors, the name “Mata Hari” is now synonymous with spy. Spies like Tokyo Rose and Radient Jade are still remembered respectively as the “Mata Hari of the aitrways” and the “Mata Hari of the East.”

The story lives on, but the world should not forget what drove her to this fated ending. She was originally an innocent, abandoned to the vileness of her abusive husband, the loneliness of a homeless life, and the heartbreak of a failed marriage and parenthood. Unlike many others, she fought back against her past and determined to forge her own future. The world would not let her, forcing her to leave home and family and to survive the decadence and sexuality of Parisian life. She was accused of treason, but didn’t the world betray her first? This is her real story, not the tale she and the writers have tried to make it. And what a story it was!

Works Cited

Erika Ostrovsky, Eye of the Dawn: The Rise and Fall of Mata Hari (New York: MacMillan Publ. Co., Inc., 1978).
Kurt Singer, The World’s 30 Greatest Women Spies (New York: Wilfred Funk, 1951).
Spy and Terrorist Briefing Center, Office of Counter Intelligence, “Mata Hari,” http://www.hanford.gov/oci/index.cfmv (Accessed April 5, 2010).
Russell Warren Howe, Mata Hari: The True Story (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1986).
“Facing Death as Spy, Mata Hari, Dutch Dancer, Owes Her Arrest To Paris Banker Whom She Ruined,” The Washington Post, July 30, 1917, http://www.proquest.com/ (Accessed April 8, 2010).
“Dancer Must Die as Spy in France; Mata Hari Loses Her Final Appeal,” The Washington Post, Sep. 29, 1917, http://www.proquest.com/ (Accessed April 8, 2010).
Fitzroy Maclean, Take Nine Spies (New York: Atheneum, 1978).
Pat Shipman, Femme Fatale: Love Lies and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (New York: William Morrow, 2007).
Tammy M. Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (New York: New York Univ., 2003).
Sam Waagenaar, Mata Hari (New York: Appleton-Century, 1965).