Sam Waagenaar
Sie nannte sich Mata Hari
Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg 1964
376 pages, 23 b&w images; German language
De moord op Mata Hari
Original edition (Dutch language)
Amsterdam, 1964
Mata Hari - A Biography
(English edition)
Appleton Century, New York 1965
Sam Waagenaar (1908-1997) researched for years on Mata Hari and had probably the most profound knowledge of all her biographers. He owned Mata Hari's personal notebooks with photos and newspaper article., He personally spoke with relatives and contemporary witnesses, i.e. Mata Hari's maid Anna Lintjens and he had access to special files of the French and British Government. He worked as a consultant for the 1930 MGM movie "Mata Hari" with Greta Garbo.
In our opinion, out of a plenty of books about Mata Hari, this is the best researched and most reliable biography. It describes the ambivalent character of Margaretha Zelle between naivety and shrewdness, opportunism, narcism, hedonism and pretension. Waagenaar shows, that she had no idea, which dangerous game she played, dealing with the secret services of France and Germany.
In a chronologic way Waagenaar narrates her story from her childhood to her early marriage with the Dutch military officer Rudolf John MacLeod and their life in Java and Sumatra. A large chapter talks about her career as the exotic dancer in Paris and Europe, finally leading to her dubios and dangerous connections to the German Intelligence Service and Captain Ladoux at the French counterintelligence. The time after her arrest by the French police at Paris in February 1917 with the long lasting interrogations by Captain Bouchardon and the quite short military trial is reported very detailed.
Unfortunately this excellent biography provides no index and bibliography.
A second (revised) edition of this Mata Hari biography was published in 1976:
De echte Mata Hari - Niet Zo Onschuldig
Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1976
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Original German Edition 1964
Marion von Schröder-Verlag
German Edition by Fackel-Verlag
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