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'''Mata Hari''' (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod, 7 August 1876-15 October 1917) was an exotic dancer from the Netherlands convicted of being a spy for Germany during [[World War I]], and [[Shot At Dawn|executed by firing squad]].
The oldest of the four children of an affluent Dutch businessman, Margaretha Zelle spent much of her childhood in lavish surroundings and was sent to exclusive schools. However, staring in 1889 the family was shattered and
In 1895, at age 19, she married Captain Rudolf MacLeod of the Dutch Colonial Army after replying to an advertisement he had placed in a Dutch newspaper for a [[Mail Order Bride]] a year earlier. She moved to [[Indonesia|Java]] with him and bore him two children -- a son, who died young and a daughter who died at age 21. The marriage was not a happy one and ultimately ended in divorce in 1906, but while she lived in Java she studied the native culture intensely and joined a local dance company. It was here, too, that she found and embraced the name history knows her by: "Mata Hari", the word for "sun" (more literally, "eye of the day") in Malay.
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Late in 1916 she met with German military attaché Major Arnold Kalle in Madrid, and asked if he could arrange a meeting with Crown Prince Wilhelm. At the same time it appears she offered to share French secrets for cash, although whether this was an incentive for Kalle to arrange the meeting with Wilhelm or out of simple greed is unclear. Rather than arrange a meeting, though, Kalle instead sent messages to Berlin [[Bluff the Eavesdropper|in a code known to have been broken by the French]], effusively praising the work of a [[Double Agent]] code-named "H-21" whose transmitted biography was a one-for-one match with Mata Hari's.
At the same time, the Deuxième Bureau was apparently having doubts about having recruited her. A few weeks before the "H-21" transmissions, they [[Feed the Mole|leaked the name of six Belgian agents for the Germans]] to Mata Hari, one of whom was suspected of being an outright [[Double Agent]]. When after she had visited Madrid again the suspected double agent was arrested and executed by the Germans, the Deuxième Bureau decided it had proof that she had passed the names to the Germans. This combined with the "H-21" messages clearly prompted the Bureau to act. On February 13, 1917, Mata Hari was arrested, and five months later, in July of 1917, was put on trial. She was accused of spying for Germany and [[Abomination Accusation Attack|being directly responsible for the deaths of 50,
After a [[Kangaroo Court]] trial in which her defense counsel was denied the right to actively pursue her defense in any way (he wasn't even permitted to examine his own client and witnesses) and the simple fact that she was ''female'' was used as evidence against her<ref> "Without scruples, accustomed to making use of men, she is the type of woman who is born to be a spy", according to Captain Pierre Bouchardon, her prosecutor.</ref>, Mata Hari was convicted and sentenced to death. She was executed by a firing squad before dawn on October 15, 1917.
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{{creatortropes}}
* [[A-Cup Angst]]: She was self-conscious about her small breasts, which is why she never bared them in her act.
* [[Black Like Me]]: Although she didn't look at all Southeast Asian, at the start of her career she presented herself as a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu birth, trained in sacred Indian dance as a child. In this she was no doubt helped by the studies she made of Javanese culture and dance during her marriage to Rudolf MacLeod, as well as Western Europeans' general ignorance of [[Indonesia]] at the time. This "deception" was used as evidence against her during her trial.
* [[Bluff the Eavesdropper]]: Done by Major Arnold Kalle as part of a deliberate plan to
* [[Double Agent]]: Accused by the French government (and convicted) of being one for Germany.
* [[Facing the Bullets One-Liner]]: She is reported to have blown a kiss to the firing squad just before her execution.
* [[Feed the Mole]]: After decoding the "H-21" messages, the Deuxième Bureau let her learn the names of six Belgian agents
* [[Femme Fatale]]: After her death she gained a reputation as one, but as even a casual perusal of this page will indicate, she wasn't, not really.
* [[Follow the Leader]]: By 1910 dozens of Mata Hari imitators had appeared in Europe, diluting the uniqueness of her act and prompting critics to suggest that her success was due entirely to exhibitionism and was without any artistic merit. It's probably no coincidence that her dance career began to fade not long afterward.
* [[Frame-Up]]: While Mata Hari was indeed a recruited spy and apparently did at least offer to sell French secrets to Germany, she was -- as the documents released a century after her death revealed -- innocent of anything of the scale that she was accused of. The "H-21" messages were clearly intended to "expose" her to French intelligence after the Germans discovered she had nothing of any value to provide them, and the French Military took advantage of this to make her a scapegoat for their defeats on the battlefield and the subsequent [[w:1917 French Army mutinies|1917 French Army mutinies]].
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== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Mata Hari (Mmniseries)|Mata Hari]]'', a 1981 dramatic miniseries from the Netherlands in which she recounts her life during the interrogation before her trial.
* ''[[Young Indiana Jones]]'': Apparently Henry Jones Junior lost his virginity to
* ''[[Mata Hari (TV series)|Mata Hari]]'', a 2017 Russian-Portuguese series starring Vahina Giocante, which ran for one season and twelve episodes.
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