Netherlands
Mata Hari
1876–1917 Dancer convicted of spying for Germany, 1917
Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, she settled in Paris and rose to fame as the exotic dancer Mata Hari after her debut in 1905, posing as a Javanese princess. As a Dutch subject she could cross borders freely during the war, and in 1916 the French intelligence service, the Deuxième Bureau, hired her to spy on the Germans, reportedly offering one million francs. She was arrested in Paris on 13 February 1917, tried in July for spying for Germany, and shot by a firing squad at Vincennes on 15 October 1917, aged 41. Later historians have argued that France needed a scapegoat after its military failures that spring and that she passed on nothing of consequence. Her trial files were declassified in 2017.
In the chronicle
Sources
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Hari
- resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Zelle
- www.biography.com/performer/mata-hari
- www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mata-hari-executed
- www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/16/humanities.highereducation
- www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2017/10/15/new-picture-emerges-mata-hari-who-faced-firing-squad-years-ago/1LIx3r433WFzNRZ2KTHXuO/story.html