George and the French medal he received for these battles. They needed a scapegoat and she was a notable target for scapegoating, Wark said. She then turned to face the firing squad, waved away her blindfold and blew the soldiers a kiss. . Wenig spter wurde Mata Hari jedoch beschuldigt, ein deutscher Spion zu sein. Whatever the case, the 39-year-old was assigned a German codename: H 21., Over the next several months, Mata Hari continued traveling through Europe and carrying out flings with military officers and politicians. Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. Known For: Working as a spy for Germany during World War I Also Known As: Margaretha Geertruida Zelle; Lady MacLeod Born: August 7, 1876 in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands Parents: Adam Zelle, Antje van der Meulen Died: October 15, 1917 in Paris, France Spouse: Rudolf "John" MacLeod (m. 18951906) Children: Norman-John MacLeod, Louise Jeanne MacLeod 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/mata-hari-1779223. Vlad belonged to the crusading Order of the Dragon, which formed in 1408 to defend Catholicism against Ottoman Muslims and Orthodox Christians, according to the book The Crusade in the Fifteenth Century. She also took a number of lovers (often military men from various countries) who were willing to provide her financial support in exchange for her company. The notion that Zelle was an exotic dancer who used her powers of seduction to extract military secrets was false. Zelle and John suspected the children may have been poisoned by a disgruntled servant. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}Tuskegee Airman Clarence D. Lester Broke Barriers, Biography: You Need to Know: Rick Thornton. It was in the City of Lights that Margaretha Zelle reinvented herself as an artist. Whether guilty or innocent, at dawn on October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was driven to a field on the outskirts of Paris. The fact that she portrayed herself as an exotic other might have enabled the French to use her capture as propaganda, separating the blame for the lack of success in the war from themselves. A courtesan, I admit it, she said. Nor was Mata Hari's maid, who acted as an intermediary for the baron's payments. The exotic dancer and courtesan known as Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruidain 1876, to a middle-class Dutch family with aspirations to social refinement; her father was a struggling hat-maker and her mother a low-ranking aristocrat with expensive tastes. Geni requires JavaScript! Margarethas father speculated unsuccessfully in oil and left his family. After a short trial conducted in private in front of a military court, she was found guilty of spying for Germany and sentenced to death by firing squad. A spy, never! When questioned about Kalles messages, she came clean about accepting money from the Germans, but denied passing them any secrets. Photograph: Allstar/MGM. Mata Hari was a professional dancer and mistress who became a spy for France during World War I. Wheelwright thinks this was likely bravado on the dancers part. But were not. Her husband fled with their daughter, and Mata Hari moved to Paris. Experts speculate that years of being used as a bargaining chip gave Vlad a huge chip on his shoulder that helped fuel his decision to attack the Ottomans when he came to power. People came to see me because I was the first who dared to show myself naked to the public. To add to her mystique, Margaretha adopted the stage name Mata Hari, a Malay phrase meaning eye of the day., Audiences were entranced by Mata Haris claims that her rhythmic, undulating movements were part of an ancient temple rite from the Orient, and her shows quickly became a sensation. At the school, the headmaster Wybrandus Haanstra became enchanted by Zelle and pursued her. In the book Karineh Foliant behind the scenes of the passion. By 1905 she was dancing under the name of Mata Hari and had invented a new identity for herself; that of a Javanese princess performing a Hindi priestly dance. The suspicion of Mata Hari was part of a new wave of spy mania that swept France in 1917, as politicians, the press, and government propaganda sought answers (or excuses) for the nations continuing inability to expel foreign invaders, who always seemed to be one step ahead of them literally, in the case of the German Armys impending strategic withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line. Amid growing social unrest at home and mutinous rumblings at the front, the logical scapegoat was internal betrayal by people of dubious background, reviving the xenophobic and anti-Semitic themes of the Dreyfus Affair from 1894-1906. She was killed in an instant when their multiple gunshots exploded as one. The chief French counterintelligence officer, George Ladoux, believed (with no evidence beyond her amorous encounter with the German police officer) that she had accepted an offer from German intelligence to become a paid operative, using her liaisons with powerful men to gain access to key secrets, which she would pass back via unidentified handlers. Dressed in a blue coat accented by a tri-corner hat, she had arrived at the Paris execution site with a minister and two nuns and, after bidding them farewell, walked briskly to the designated spot. She made her dancing debut in a salon and instantaneously became a success. British Arrest (02:49) As a French spy, Mata Hari boarded a boat for Belgium. Rosanoff is bewitched. After her death, her stage name "Mata Hari" became synonymous with spying and espionage. Taken to military prison, she immediately denied the charges, writing, I am innocent. Her appearance. During their courtship, Masloff was sent to the Front, where an injury left him blind in one eye. In 1476, he finally found himself in over his head on the battlefield. Take a Beechams Pill was often the advice. He was, the real Zelle told her interrogators, "the man I love the most in all the world", and she had certainly tried enough of them to know. "It's impossible, it's impossible," Mata Hari exclaimed, upon hearing the decision. Margaretha began to fashion herself as an Indonesian princess, lied to journalists about her birth and took on the name Mata Hari, which translates literally from Malay to eye of the day the sun. While in custody in the ancient Prison de Saint-Lazare outside Paris, she admitted to having spied for the Germans, the MI5 files state. She really did not pass on anything that you couldnt find in the local newspapers in Spain, said Julie Wheelwright of City University in London, the author of The Fatal Lover: Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage. According to History, Vlad's victims died in myriad ways, all of them awful. After separating from her husband, Margaretha searched for work in Paris. She was accused of espionage and was executed by firing squad in October 1917. History 02/03/20 Mata Hari and Vadim Maslov Marlowedk: as a Russian officer became a lover Mata Hari. she snaps back. Wheelwright described her as an independent woman, a divorcee, a citizen of a neutral country, a courtesan and a dancer, which made her a perfect scapegoat for the French, who were then losing the war.. The amateur spy failed to deduce that Kalle had realized exactly what she was up to, and was feeding her out-of-date and made-up information, deceiving her just as she believed she was deceiving him. She was invited to large parties and traveled extensively. She was a femme forte and she worked alone, the report concludes. Margaretha and her husband separated in 1902 and divorced in 1906. There she met and fell in love with a much younger Russian officer, the 21-year-old Vladimir de Masloff, who seemed to be equally infatuated with the aging dancer. According to published reports, the Russian state military-historical archive, Vadim Maslov, a career officer, he is from a family of soldiers, the First world war he served in the Russian expeditionary corps in France. After 10 years, Zelles act was no longer fashionable though she was still able to support herself as a courtesan, though naively, she slept with both French and German soldiers in a Europe at war. He was said to have revelled in dining among his so-called "forest" of stake-mounted corpses, purportedly dipping his bread into their dripping blood. She was now nearly 40, and she had watched her dancing career slowly stagnate. Duly convicted on eight charges of espionage, on October 15, 1917, the greatest woman spy of the century, who was in reality no such thing, was shot at 5 a.m. by a firing squad of twelve men at a barracks in Vincennes, a suburb of Paris. . Visser decided to send Zelle to a school that trained kindergarten teachers so that she'd have a career. Eye of the Dawn | The famous courtesan and exotic entertainer Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari) reaches her middle years disillusioned with life until she meets and falls in love with the dashing Russian soldier Captain Vladimir de Masloff. "He was very intimate with her from. Both children became quite ill in June 1899. Hari consorted across national borders with influential lovers of various nationalities. Vlad the Impaler would gain, lose, and regain his father's seat. There is scant evidence she was really an important spy, though, or working for the Germans: as even the prosecutor at her trial would admit, "there was not enough evidence [against her] to whip a cat". Wheelwright said she became an exotic dancer after fleeing an abusive marriage. Despite a lack of evidence about the secrets she might have passed to the Germans, the prosecution blamed her for the deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers and pointed to her numerous affairs as proof that she had been gathering intelligence. However, it was reported at her arrest and trial in 1917 that Mata Hari had been in the employ of France. Aug. 17, 2014. Her application was successful and she married Rudolf, who was 20 years her senior, in 1895. Mata Hari (1931)Director: George FitzmauriceEntertainment grade: B+History grade: B+. All Rights Reserved. The question of Mata Haris guilt continues to fascinate historians to this day. I never could dance well, she later admitted. August 1876 in Leeuwarden, Niederlande, geboren und war eine professionelle Tnzerin und Geliebte, die 1916 den Auftrag annahm, fr Frankreich auszuspionieren Regierung. Mata Hari was a professional dancer and mistress who accepted an assignment to spy for France in 1916. Fortunately, no sign of that here. Mystery continues to surround Mata Hari's life and alleged double agency, and her story has become a legend that still piques curiosity. It is the first time she has fallen in love and perhaps the first time she has met a man who did not simply desire her for sex. Large, bearded, and beetle-browed, he was often cast as villains in both film and television. She sat as an artists model, all the while making theatrical contacts who she would use to get roles in plays, and then to begin her career as an exotic dancer in 1905. The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star 3. The French eventually intercepted a German cable that named a spy code-named H-21, clearly a code name for Mata Hari. Their divorce became final in 1906. Anxious to make money to start a new life with him, she accepted Ladouxs deal and announced her intentions to seduce military secrets out of high-ranking Germans. Over the course of his life the brutal ruler of Wallachia had killed an estimated 80,000 people, a quarter of which had been impaled on stakes and brandished like flags of flesh outside the city of Targoviste. A spy, never!" However the last few years has seen a revision of these events and of Mata Hari herself. Photograph: Rex Features, Greta Garbo, C Henry Gordon and Lionel Barrymore in Mata Hari. The film should probably just have set itself in 1916, but presumably didn't want to break the dramatic tension before the inevitably tragic October 1917 ending so it's best if you just pretend not to notice this, or that some stuff other than loyal tsarism might have been happening in Russia by October 1917. As does Garbo, in this pre-Hays Code film, Zelle usually ended up starkers. AsOZY describes, some of the tried and truly horrifying tactics he used included sending men infected with bubonic plague to mingle with Ottoman troops, poisoning wells, and conducting night raids. . Mata Hari was executed by firing squad on October 15, 1917. Ever the performer, she supposedly blew a kiss to the troops moments before the fatal shots rang out. To order Her dancing was more of a striptease but she was all the rage in a Europe then in thrall to all things exotic. "Shiva, I dance for you tonight," intones Mata Hari (Greta Garbo) to a six-armed statue of the Hindu god. Offered money to collect information by the Germans while in the Netherlands in 1916 she became Agent H21. Nevertheless the Brits, probably concluding that a washed-up exotic dancer was too implausible to be a real spy, released her and shipped her back to Spain. Kroemer evidently considered her high-class contacts and neutral Dutch citizenship a valuable asset, so he offered her 20,000 francs to become a spy for the Kaiser. On July 11, 1895, the two were married. "I come last?" Some accounts say she blew her executors a kiss yet other accounts say she merely raised her hand in farewell to the nuns who had looked after her in prison. Mata Hari's trial came at a time when the Allies were failing to beat back German advances. Vladimir de Masloff, of the Russian Army, who was stationed in France. When faced with her acquaintances with officers of all ranks and all nations, she replied that she loved all officers, and would rather have as her lover a poor officer than a rich banker, the MI5 files note. Per OZY, Vlad invited the boyars, or local nobility, to a banquet and skewered them like macabre kebabs. Their marriage was a disaster, producing two children who ailed and died young (possibly owing to congenital syphilis contracted from their father). Its leader was future Holy Roman Emperor King Sigismund of Hungary, who inducted Vlad's father, Vlad the Dragon, into the order, per Live Science. Mata Hari is swarmed by fans. In the film, Mata Hari moves between two fictional men: General Shubin and German spymaster Andriani (Lewis Stone). Marcus Lee Dethloff, 43, Bismarck, passed away on September 2, 2022. Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. When he was blinded and injured at the front and sent to recover in France, Zelle desperate to see him, asked French army Captain Georges Ladoux permission to see him. Drawing on her experiences in the Dutch East Indies, she developed a Hindu dance act and began performing under the name Lady Gresha MacLeod. As part of each routine, she would cast off a series of colorful robes and veils until she was left nearly nude. Vladimir de Masloff, of the Russian army, stationed in France. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. Suspected of being a double agent, she was executed in 1917. In 1898 her children were mysteriously poisoned, the parents claimed by a nanny, her son died but her daughter survived. An exhibit that opened in 2017 on Mata Hari at the Museum of Friesland in her hometown of Leeuwarden in the Netherlands backs up this view. At 18 she answered a lonely hearts ad in a newspaper and shortly after married Rudolph John MacLeod, an officer in the East Indies Army, 21 years older than herself. In the mid-1890s, Margaretha recklessly responded to a lonely-hearts ad seeking a bride for Rudolf MacLeod, a much older military captain based in the Dutch East Indies. Country. Her name now represents all female spies and any woman seen to be sabotaging her country through her relationship with men, but the woman behind the myth has somewhat disappeared. Via Live Science, Vlad allegedly nailed turbans to the skulls of Ottoman envoys to display his disdain toward their Muslim faith. Zelle and John had two children together, Norman-John MacLeod and Louise Jeanne MacLeod. Although she was thoroughly searched and nothing incriminating found, a report read, she is regarded by Police and Military to be not above suspicion, and her subsequent movements should be watched.. It is speculated that the French were already feeding Hari false information due to their own suspicions. Mata Hari's lover was a Russian aviator named Alexis Rosanoff. However, documentary evidence of the symptoms feel the same degree of ardour on the part of the officer there. Mata Hari was the stage name for Gertruda Margaretha Zelle, who was born July 8, 1876, in the Dutch East Indies to a Dutch father and a Javanese mother. (It was actually a man named Captain Vladimir de Masloff whom she protected just as she did in the movie about her.) The battles shambled on like war-weary zombies in the form of what History describes as "mainly military campaigns aimed at pushing Muslims from conquered territory, or conquering pagan regions." They spent much of their married life living in the tropics of Indonesia where money was tight, isolation was difficult, and John's rudeness and Zelle's youth caused serious friction in their marriage. Lindholm), Theodor Leontjevitj Masloff (Rtli), Masloff (Rtli), https://digihakemisto.net/item/1045187736/4494912599/2525. The prosecution during Zelles trial went so far as to blame her for the deaths of 50,000 French soldiers, though no specific evidence was ever provided as to how she caused these fatalities. Some historians believe that the Germans suspected Mata Hari was a French spy and subsequently set her up, deliberately sending a message falsely labeling her as a German spy which they knew would be easily decoded by the French. Much of her prison interrogation statement concerns mundane thoughts, not troop movements. The story about this fact of the biography of Mata Hari and Vadim Maslov fiction: persuasive evidence of exactly this (and any other) behavior of a Russian officer in relation to his beloved by anyone of the historians is not given. To order copies of He lives on through the lives of his two beautiful girls . Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on August 7, 1876, as the first of four children. When a scandal broke out, Zelle was asked to leave the school, so she went to live with her uncle, Mr. Taconis, in The Hague. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Productions like the 1931 film Mata Hari starring Greta Garbo, perpetuated the story of the glamorous courtesan and exotic dancer with a dangerous double life as a spy who was suddenly found out by the French, and executed in 1917. She also began affairs with a series of military officers and wealthy aristocrats, many of whom showered her gifts and cash. The prosecutors never presented any proof that she had actually been working for German intelligence, except for a mysterious receipt showing a payment of 5,000 francs, which it turned out was actually a gift from her old lover the baron (sent anonymously, of course, to protect his reputation). According to the Star, the officers noted that on Aug. 4, 1916, Hari wrote to a Don Diego de Leon and then met a Capt. The officers noted that on Aug. 4, 1916, she wrote to a Don Diego de Leon and then met a Capt. Garbo is deliciously watchable in this fictionalised but nonetheless well-researched biopic. Brother of Gabriel Masloff; Maria Masloff; Martha Malka; Kondrad Malka; Ksenia Malka and 3 others; Mikael Malka; Leonid Malka and Elisabet Malka less, Kuolintieto:https://digihakemisto.net/item/1045187736/4494912599/2525 Viitattu 30.7.2022, Papintodistus vihkimist varten: Joensuun ortodoksisen seurakunnan arkisto (JoMA) - I Je:5 Avioliittoasiakirjat 1894-1922, jakso 430; Kansallisarkisto: https://astia.narc.fi/uusiastia/viewer/?fileId=5805005426&aineistoI / Viitattu 3.1.2023. She met a German attach and began tossing him bits of gossip, hoping to get some valuable information in return. she replies. She was mistaken for another spy in England and taken to . Photograph: Rex Features, Greta Garbo in Mata Hari. However, Zelle's world changed drastically when her family went bankrupt in 1889 and her mother died two years later. She sent a striking photo of herself, raven-haired and olive-skinned, to entice him. For some reason (perhaps excessive secrecy, or just fear of looking amateurish to his British colleagues) Ladoux now denied any connection with Mata Hari. Vladimir Masloff . Using cultural and religious symbolism picked up during her time in Java, Margaretha danced in a style novel to Paris. Although she daringly bared her buttocks, she was modest about her breasts, generally keeping them covered with brassiere-styled beads. From 1897 to 1902 they lived in Indonesia: Java and Sumatra. She did try to assist the French secret service through Georges Ladoux, the head of counterespionage to whom the film's treacherous Inspector Dubois is a rough counterpart. Andriani is furious with a German captain who has served as his technical expert, and who assured him that the "new weapon called a tank" was impractical. She began to meet with German contacts. The court also prevented her defense lawyers from calling the baron or Mata Haris maid in the Netherlands to testify to clear up this apparently incriminating detail. In 1903, after losing custody of her daughter, she moved to Paris and looked to start over. Per History,a "horrified" Mehmed fled to Constantinople when he encountered the mass aerial grave serving as grisly bird feed for crows. While flying combat missions for France, he was shot down over the Western Front and severely wounded. After her mother died, 15-year-old Margaretha was sent to live with relatives. After the tragedy, the MacLeod family returned to the Netherlands. Two years after her father declared bankruptcy, when Margreet was 15 her mother died and she was sent to live with her godfather. She moved to the Indies to be with MacLeod, married, and had two children by him, but tragically her older son was fatally poisoned, apparently by an angry servant. Margaretha was incapable of supporting herself and her daughter, or of fighting when her ex-husband took custody of the child. Zelle maintained her innocence up until the time of her death. Another enthralled newspaper writer called her "so feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body trembling in a thousand rhythms.". I never considered myself a German agent with a number, she pleaded, because I never did anything for them.. Rudolf was an abusive alcoholic. they Met in the late summer of 1916 in Paris the Grand Hotel, Lieutenant Maslov, which was at that time a short vacation, granted for military merit (was the First world war), was 23 years old, Mata Hari 40 years. br> Share on Tumblr. Mata Hari wanted to marry him but needed to make enough money to support him. . This must be very early in 1917: Russia was in turmoil that year, with a revolution in February and the tsar's abdication in March. IMDb's advanced search allows you to run extremely powerful queries over all people and titles in the database. The famous courtesan and exotic entertainer Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari) reaches her middle years disillusioned with life until she meets. In real life, he'd have been disappointed: her final performance was in March 1915. By the time Vlad the Impaler was born in roughly 1431, the centuries of savage conflict and occasional cannibalism between Christians and Muslims known as the Crusades were dead but not buried. Sources suggest the children might have been suffering the effects from over-treatment for syphilis. While visiting him at the front, Captain Georges Ladoux offered her to become a spy. At an early age, Mata Hari decided that sexuality was her ticket in life. In 1849-50, he served as captain in the Danish army in the First War of Schleswig, however, in 1851, he left the military in order to go to America and become an engineer. Her marriage elevated her social and financial position and the MacLeods had two children, Norman-John and Louise Jeanne, or Non. She was playing to the crowd, which is what she always did., Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be a registered Torstar account holder. Some argue that Mata Hari was used as a scapegoat with her famed immorality. In 2017, archives of the trial were released by the French government and do not reflect a fair trial. Mata Hari (August 7, 1876October 15, 1917) was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was arrested by the French and executed for espionage during World War I. As war swept the continent, she had some freedom of movement as a citizen of neutral Holland and took full advantage of it, country-hopping with trunks of clothing in tow. In the MI5 files, an intelligence officer sounds impressed with her attitude during her final days. MacLeod drank heavily and detested his pretty young wife, writing to a friend during an epidemic of disease in Indonesia that he wished it would "free me from this creature" ie, kill her. Republication or distribution of this content is After refusing a blindfold, she was placed against a wooden stake and executed by a firing squad of twelve French soldiers. There has been debate over her guilt or innocence ever since. Most of the prosecutions evidence was circumstantial, and her defense attorney was prevented from introducing witnesses that might have backed up her claims. Though he himself had affairs, he was jealous of attention awarded to his wife by other men. Mata Hari was tasked with seducing him. Zelle lived to regret her decision to marry MacLeod, he beat her, kept a courtesan and gave her syphilis, then common among soldiers. This was followed by her mothers death at 15 and a life with relatives. She was in Berlin at the time, and when she tried to travel to France, the Germans confiscated her luggage and bank accounts. Hired by army captain Georges Ladoux, agreeing to pass military information gleaned from her conquests to the French government. The famous courtesan and exotic entertainer Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari) reaches her middle years disillusioned with life until she meets and falls in love with the dashing Russian soldier Captain Vladimir de Masloff. She was, however, noted as the source of German information that the French were not planning an imminent attack in 1915. After respectable routes as a ladies companion, piano tutor and German tutor proved fruitless, she returned to exploiting the aspect of herself which she had used to get a husband. This piece of extracurricular espionage proved her undoing. There she met and fell in love with a much younger Russian officer, the 21-year-old Vladimir de Masloff, who seemed to be equally infatuated with the aging dancer. Vlad belonged to the crusading Order of the Dragon, which formed in 1408 to defend Catholicism against Ottoman Muslims and Orthodox Christians, according to the book The Crusade in the Fifteenth Century. 49 Britten Austin, The Fining Pot is for Silver, Strand Magazine, June 1924 [610-623], 613. The details of Mata Haris espionage career remain sketchy, but it seems to have begun in the fall of 1915, when she was approached by Karl Kroemer, the honorary German consul in Amsterdam. Why Was England Invaded So Much During the 14th Century? Details of the last years of the life of the beloved Mata Hari, looks like the IPinvestigators of the unknown about them no information. She seems to have died bravely, she refused a blindfold and stood silently until the gunshots rang out. About the Book Find at your local library Description The famous courtesan and exotic entertainer Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari) reaches her middle years disillusioned with life until she meets and falls in love with the dashing Russian soldier Captain Vladimir de Masloff. It seems that when the Germans learned nothing useful from her and knowing she was now in the employment of French intelligence, they turned her in.