In order to advance in rank, he would need a wife, but as he had syphilis, permission to marry would be denied. Within three years, they had two children, a boy and a girl, and a disintegrating marriage in an isolated outpost of central Java.

He sneaked around the rules, advertised in a local newspaper and was answered by 18-year-old Margaretha Zelle. Mac Leod drank, gambled, kept mistresses, and worst of all, he beat her, violently and regularly.

She was living in Berlin in the summer of 1914, waiting for a performance scheduled for September at the Metropol Theater, entertaining several lovers, including the chief of police.

“Today with the war, the passport, I am obliged to live and sign Zelle, but that woman is not known to people.

As for me, I consider myself to be Mata Hari.”If it weren’t for her obsession with money, her fame might have been short-lived, her name obscure to us today.

Given custody of their daughter, but receiving none of the court-appointed support from Mac Leod, Margaretha began frequenting houses of ill-repute.

Mac Leod had her followed, and took their daughter away from her.