I have this thing about people who were wrongly executed. I always think of Mata Hari in that way. She was put to death on October 15, 1917, for the record.
For those of you who are not familiar with her, Mata Hari was a dancer. She was also known as a “courtesan,” which is, in plain terms, a woman paid to entertain and have sexual relationships with wealthy or upper-class clients. So yeah. A high-priced, highfalutin hooker.
But she was also an “alleged spy” and that is why they killed her. A French firing squad did the deed at Vincennes outside of Paris.
She wasn’t born a hooker. Or a spy. Nope.
She came into this world as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, born on August 7, 1876, in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. She enjoyed a privileged childhood until her father’s financial setbacks led to their family’s impoverishment. Margaretha, the eldest of four children, grew up in a household where her father owned a successful hat and cap business. Apparently, she was a little bit flamboyant, even from a young age. I mean, she even had a goat-drawn carriage at the age of six.
But then bad news came along. Tragedy struck when her father went bankrupt in 1889, which drastically changed their circumstances. Her mother passed away when Margaretha was just 15, leading to her and her brothers being separated and sent to live with different relatives.
At 18, Margaretha responded to a newspaper advertisement seeking a bride for Captain Rudolf MacLeod, a military officer stationed in the Dutch East Indies. Despite their 21-year age difference, they married in 1895. Unfortunately, their marriage was marred by unhappiness and abuse, exacerbated by MacLeod’s heavy drinking and infidelity. They had two children, a son and a daughter, though their son tragically died.
So. That, my friends, was her groundwork. A bit of it, at least. We don’t know the deep dives.
Anyway, Mata Hari made a name for herself as a dancer in Paris starting in 1905. She became famous for her exotic, “Asian-inspired” performances, claiming she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning “eye of the day.” In reality, she had lived in Malaysia with her ex-husband, a member of the Dutch colonial army, and learned basic dance moves there. “You put your left foot in, and you shake it all about.”
Her act, which often included nudity, packed venues across Europe. Along the way, she also became a high-profile courtesan, attracting lovers, including military officers. When World War I broke out, Mata Hari’s love life took a darker turn. In 1917, the French arrested her for espionage, accusing her of revealing secrets about the Allies’ new weapon. Their secret tank of some sort or another. She was tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad in October 1917.
While some suggest she may have worked as a spy for Germany or even as a double agent for France, there’s evidence that she wasn’t particularly effective at any of it, IF at all. In fact, the Germans had little to do with her.
Her military trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as “the greatest woman spy of the century” as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the western front.
I think she may have known some things. Little things of no consequence. And some French Bird, with his pants down, was probably jealous of her affair with someone else. Or she rejected him completely. So he took his story of her being a spy to the officers above. And so it went.
I wonder, as she stood in front of the firing squad, what she was thinking. What was she remembering? Maybe she was six again and happy. Riding in her carriage pulled by her favorite goat.
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“The world is not a fair place, and it’s not always easy to do the right thing, but injustice anywhere should concern you, because it affects us all.” – Barack Obama
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“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu
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“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
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The woman was killed. For not.
