[10] Her father owned a hat factory and shop,[7] made investments in the oil industry, and became affluent enough to give Margaretha and her siblings a lavish early childhood[11] that included exclusive schools until the age of 13.

[15] Friends of Margaretha's in the Netherlands recall her writing to them around this time to say that she had taken the name Mata Hari, the word for "sun" in the local Indonesian language (literally, "eye of the day").

In 1899, their children fell violently ill from complications relating to the treatment of syphilis contracted from their parents,[17] though the family claimed an irate servant poisoned them.

She was a contemporary of dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, leaders in the early modern dance movement, which around the turn of the 20th century, looked to Asia and Egypt for artistic inspiration.

[12] Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, Mata Hari captivated her audiences and was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905.

Entertainers of her era commonly invented colourful stories about their origins, and she posed as a Javanese princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood.

Since most Europeans at the time were unfamiliar with the Dutch East Indies, Mata Hari was thought of as exotic, and her claims were accepted as genuine.

"[22] One journalist in Vienna wrote after seeing one of her performances that Mata Hari was "slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair" and that her face "makes a strange foreign impression.

Critics began to opine that the success and dazzling features of the popular Mata Hari were due to cheap exhibitionism and lacked artistic merit.

[25] In fact, his involvement was minimal, and it was German government propaganda that promoted the image of the Crown Prince as a great warrior, the worthy successor to the Hohenzollern monarchs who had made Prussia strong and powerful.

[27] They wanted to avoid publicizing that the man expected to be the next Kaiser was a playboy noted for womanizing, partying, and indulging in alcohol, who spent another portion of his time associating with far right-wing politicians, with the intent to have his father declared insane and deposed.

[28] When the ship called at the British port of Falmouth she was arrested and taken to London, where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, assistant commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage.

A full transcript of the interview is in Britain's National Archives and was broadcast, with Mata Hari played by Eleanor Bron, on the independent station LBC in 1980.

[29] It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or if French authorities were using her in such a way but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.

[30] In late 1916, Zelle traveled to Madrid, where she met the German military attaché Major Arnold Kalle and asked if he could arrange a meeting with the Crown Prince.

[31] During this period, Zelle apparently offered to share French secrets with Germany in exchange for money, though whether this was because of greed or an attempt to set up a meeting with Crown Prince Wilhelm remains unclear.

[31] In January 1917, Major Kalle transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy code-named H-21, whose biography so closely matched Zelle's that it was obvious that Agent H-21 could only be Mata Hari.

Two weeks after Mata Hari had left Paris for a trip to Madrid, the Germans executed the double agent while the five others continued their operations.

In the meantime, Ladoux had been preparing a case against his former agent by casting all of her activities in the worst possible light, going so far as to engage in evidence tampering.

[35] The Canadian historian Wesley Wark stated in a 2014 interview that Mata Hari was never an important spy but a scapegoat for French military failures that had nothing to do with her.

"[36] Wheelwright described Zelle as "an independent woman, a divorcée, 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.

"[37] The most terrible and heartbreaking moment for Mata Hari during the trial occurred when her lover Maslov—by now deeply embittered as a result of losing his eye in combat—declined to testify for her and told her that he did not care whether she was convicted.

In October 2001, documents released from the archives of MI5 (British counter-intelligence) were used by a Dutch group, the Mata Hari Foundation, to ask the French government to exonerate Zelle as they argued that the MI5 files proved she was not guilty of the charges she was convicted of.

[4] A spokesperson from the Mata Hari Foundation argued that at most, Zelle was a low-level spy who provided no secrets to either side, stating: "We believe that there are sufficient doubts concerning the dossier of information that was used to convict her to warrant re-opening the case.

Wales recorded her death, saying that after the volley of shots rang out, "Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face.

[48] Mata Hari's sealed trial and other related documents, a total of 1,275 pages, were declassified by the French Army in 2017, one hundred years after her execution.

Architect Silvester Adema studied old drawings of the storefront to reconstruct it as it appeared when Adam Zelle, the father of Mata Hari, had a hat shop there.

[51] The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.

[67] In 2019, English singer-songwriter Frank Turner released a song about Mata Hari entitled "Eye of the Day" on his album No Man's Land.

In a 1940 The Three Stooges satire of Nazi Germany, You Nazty Spy!, Mata Hari is spoofed as "Mattie Herring," played by Lorna Gray.