Mata Hari ★ The Dancing ’Double Spy’

Mata Hari, byname of Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, née Zelle, (born Aug. 7, 1876, Leeuwarden, Neth.—died Oct. 15, 1917, Vincennes, near Paris, France), dancer and courtesan whose name has become a synonym for the seductive female spy. She was shot by the French on charges of spying for Germany during World War I. The nature and extent of her espionage activities remain uncertain, and her guilt is widely contested. The daughter of a prosperous hatter, she attended a teachers’ college in Leiden. In 1895 she married an officer of Scottish origin, Capt. Rudolph MacLeod, in the Dutch colonial army, and from 1897 to 1902 they lived in Java and Sumatra. The couple returned to Europe but later separated, and she began to dance professionally in Paris in 1905 under the name of Lady MacLeod. She soon called herself Mata Hari, a Malay expression for the sun (literally, “eye of the day”). She and MacLeod divorced in 1906. Tall, extremely attractive, superficially acquainted with East Indian dances, and willi