Mata Hari: A Life From Beginning to End (Biographies of Women in History Book 9) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2019-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Code Name H21

“Certainly this life suits me. I can satisfy all my caprices; tonight I dine with Count A and tomorrow with Duke B. If I don’t have to dance, I make a trip with Marquis C. I avoid serious liaisons.”

—Mata Hari

As in Indonesia, Mata Hari’s dark coloring worked against her. The striking features and dark skin and hair that had helped Mata Hari sell herself as a Javanese court dancer were now a liability. Police stopped her on the street and demanded that she produce her Dutch passport to prove her nationality. Convinced she was Russian, police transported her to the police station on a number of occasions.

Mata Hari was determined to escape Germany. She boarded a train to Switzerland on August 6, 1914 with an extensive set of luggage but hardly a franc in her purse. It seems she didn’t have the appropriate documentation to prove her neutral Dutch citizenship, or if she did, the authorities simply wouldn’t accept it. Mata Hari was thrown off the train to Switzerland somewhere in Germany and forced to take another train back to Berlin, without her luggage.

Back at her hotel in Berlin, Mata Hari plotted what to do next. She had to travel to Frankfurt to get a new Dutch passport, then she would go directly to Amsterdam. But before she started her journey, there were a few things to attend to. First, she needed money. Mata Hari quickly made the acquaintance of a Dutch businessman who was sympathetic to his fellow Dutchwoman and offered to pay her fare to Amsterdam. Next, Mata Hari had her hair dyed in an attempt to conceal her identity and perhaps her age. Her new Dutch passport listed her age as 38, her height as 5 ft 11, and her hair color as blonde.

Mata Hari successfully returned to Holland in late 1914. She moved into a house in the Hague and somehow convinced a contractor to make extensive renovations with no money to pay him. The contractors accepted her request to pay nothing for two years from the day she moved in. With no way to support herself and nothing to show for her long and successful career, Mata Hari made money the only way she could—by being a mistress to wealthy men. She reignited her affair with Baron Edouard Willem van der Capellan, a colonel in the Dutch military.

Van der Capellan covered Mata Hari’s expenses, including her maid Anna’s salary, but she soon ran up debts. Hounded by creditors and quickly bored with life in the Hague, Mata Hari looked for distractions. There was no fun to be had anymore with no fuel, little food, and definitely no glamor in Holland during the First World War. Then, in the autumn of 1915, the German consul in Amsterdam, Karl Kroemer, arrived.

Kroemer tried to recruit Mata Hari as a spy for Germany. He offered her the sum of 20,000 francs to pass information to the German government using invisible ink. Her code name would be H21.

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