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The industrialist Émile Étienne Guimet had paid for the invitation.

He had donated the - albeit sparse - clothing and jewelry to his latest discovery, attached importance to a hand-picked audience and is said to have even advised her on a stage name.

Because "Margaretha Geertruida cell-MacLeod" would hardly have matched the style of the presentation.

As it is, it was “Mata Hari” who drove the guests crazy on March 13, 1905 in the Paris Museum Guimet by dropping almost all their covers.

The daughter of a hatter in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, born in 1876, was ready to pay for her social advancement with her most important asset, her body.

In 1895 she went to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) with the 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 fictional character of an Indian dancer, whose central message was sultry, overwhelming eroticism.

Margaretha Geertruida cell MacLeod alias Mata Hari in work clothes

Source: Wikipedia / Public Domain

After her return and divorce, she perfected the art of erotic undressing with her “veil dance” and turned it into a highly profitable business model.

"She sways under the veils that conceal and reveal her at the same time ... Her breasts lift languidly, the eyes glisten with moist," wrote a languishing critic.

“Your secular dance is a prayer;

lust becomes adoration. "

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She immediately became a star of the bourgeoisie and bohemian.

In the frivolous milieu of Paris, Madrid, Vienna or Berlin, Mata Hari set new standards, not only on the stages, but also in the beds of men who had enough money.

Because their lifestyle was in no way inferior to their greed for attention.

She constantly suffered from financial worries.

Her celebrated role model had also called numerous imitators onto the scene, who gladly delighted the relevant establishments of the fin de siècle with increasingly daring representations.

In addition, the selection of economically potent admirers decreased significantly after the outbreak of war in 1914.

Therefore, in 1915, the offer from the German military intelligence service to scout out indications of the Entente's new offensive plans in the rear of the front for an appropriate fee was quite right.

But Mata Hari's penchant for neat men in uniforms aroused the distrust of French military espionage.

A trap was set in Paris for “Agent H 21”.

Sentenced to death as a spy in July 1917, she was shot dead in Vincennes near Paris on October 15.

She was 41 years old.

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It was clear to everyone involved that Mata Hari had not passed on any substantial information.

But she came in handy for her male judges as a prominent scapegoat, whose condemnation could divert attention from the numerous mutinies that shook the French army in the spring of 1917.

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