Hi folks!
The next vampire on Summon History is Mata Hari. Mata Hari was the stage name Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle. She was born in
Leeuwarden (in the Netherlands) on August 7, 1876 as the eldest of for children. At the age of 18 she answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by a Dutch Colonial Army officer called Rudolf John McLeod who was looking for a wife. Since he was a violent alcoholic their marriage was very unhappy. By this time they already had 2 children and lived in
Java, in the Dutch East Indies. Margaretha escaped her circumstances by studying the Indonesian culture and she joined a local dance company where she started to use her artistic name Mata Hari. Mata Hari is Indonesian for "sun" (literally "eye of the day").
In 1903 she moved to Paris and by 1905 she became a well known exotic dancer. Mata Hari successfully built up an image of being a Java princess of Hindu birth and became more and more popular with her new, provocative dance style. Critics later on referred to this as
orientalism. With her popularity she managed to become a successful courtesan and had relationships with high-ranked military officers, politicians and even the German crown prince.
When World War I broke out, the Netherlands stayed neutral, so as a Dutch citizen Margaretha Zelle could easily cross national borders. During her travels Margaretha was once interviewed by the British Intelligence. She admitted to work for the French military intelligence, although later she didn't confirm this story. In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code named H-21. Strangely the Germans used a code that they knew the French had already broken. The French military intelligence identified H-21 as Mata Hari.
On February 13, 1917 Mata Hari got arrested and put on trial. She was accused of spying for the Germans and found guilty. She was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917 at the age of 41.
Pat Shipman's biography Femme Fatale argues that Mata Hari never was a double agent, but was used as a scapegoat by the head of the French counter-espionage Georges Ladoux.
by: Mephistopheles
f.y.i.: this article is just a summary of
Mata Hari's Wikipedia entry. So credits should go to Wikipedia.
