"Her breasts heave languidly, her eyes shine moistly"

The industrialist Émile Étienne Guimet paid a lot for the invitation. He had given his latest discovery the - albeit sparse - clothing and jewelry, placed value on a handpicked audience and is said to have even advised her to give her a stage name. Because "Margaretha Geertruida Zelle-MacLeod" would hardly have fitted the style of the performance. But it was "Mata Hari" who on March 13, 1905 in the Parisian Guimet Museum drove the guests crazy by dropping almost all their covers.

Born in 1876, the daughter of a hat maker in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, she was willing to pay for social advancement with her most important asset, her body. In 1895 she went to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) with Colonial Officer Campbell Rudolf John MacLeod. From her impressions and her southern complexion, which she owed to her mother's Javanese roots, she created the artificial figure of an Indian dancer whose central message was a sultry, overwhelming eroticism.

After her return and her divorce, she perfected the art of erotic undressing with her “dance of the veil” and turned it into a highly lucrative business model. "She sways beneath the veils that simultaneously envelop and reveal her... Her breasts heave languidly, her eyes gleam with tears," wrote one languid critic. “Her secular dance is a prayer; lust becomes worship.”

She immediately became the star of the bourgeoisie and bohème. In the frivolous milieu of Paris, Madrid, Vienna and Berlin, Mata Hari set new standards, not only on the stage but also in the beds of men who had enough money. Because her lifestyle was in no way inferior to her greed for attention. She always suffered from money worries.

Her celebrated role model had also prompted numerous imitators onto the scene, who delighted the relevant establishments of the fin de siècle with ever more daring depictions. In addition, the selection of economically powerful admirers decreased significantly after the outbreak of war in 1914.

Therefore, in 1915, the offer of the German military intelligence service to scout out clues to new offensive plans of the Entente in return for a corresponding fee in the rear of the front was quite right for her. But Mata Hari's penchant for neat men in uniform aroused the suspicions of French military espionage. In Paris, a trap was set for "Agent H 21". Sentenced to death as a spy in summary proceedings in July 1917, she was shot dead in Vincennes near Paris on October 15. She was 41 years old.

It was probably clear to everyone involved that Mata Hari had not passed on any substantial information. But her male judges found her a prominent scapegoat whose sentencing could divert attention from the numerous mutinies that shook the French army in the spring of 1917.

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This article was first published in March 2021.