In 1932, a New York businessman became curious about the fate of a Dutch dancer he had photographed in a Berlin theatre before the war. Sanford Cluett’s subject was the infamous spy, Mata Hari aka Marguerite Zelle MacLeod, who became a double-agent and was executed by the French in 1917 for espionage with the Germans. They probably met in 1914 when Mata Hari was engaged for a six-month run at the Metropole theatre which was abruptly cancelled at the outbreak of war. Frustrated with the lack of a credible biography about Mata Hari, Cluett sought the advice of Dr. Elisabeth Schragmüller.
Dr. Schragmüller was an appropriate source. Although Cluett mistakenly thought she had directed the German ‘women’s secret service’, (no such organisation existed), she was the former head of the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle Antwerpen and, in 1916, had trained Mata Hari in spy craft. ‘Mademoiselle Docteur’ was well-known in Europe, having published German and French accounts of her espionage activities, which she promoted with interviews and an author tour in 1931. Cluett would later share this intriguing correspondence with the spy writer Richard Rowan, who had written extensively about Dr. Schragmüller and Mata Hari.
This private exchange between friends about a mutual interest offers insight into the contradictions for spy writers in the 1930s who balanced their ambition to tell ‘truth’ with the pressure to satisfy their readers. Rowan recognised that news editors and spy writers were collaborating in myth making by recirculating uncorroborated and fictionalised accounts of espionage. In The Spy Menace (1934), Rowan cited Mata Hari as an example. He noted how editors turned to her photographs, professionally produced for her various pre-war theatrical performances, to cover her execution. ‘No other spy, surviving or executed, enjoyed the advantage of a pre-war publicity agent,’ he wrote, ‘When she was pierced by ten rifle bullets at Vincennes, every newspaper editor in the world had pictures of her at his disposal.’ It was through the repetition of these images, he observed, the myth took root.
Through such observations, Rowan set himself apart from his fellow writers on Mata Hari who, he claimed penned only ‘romantic nonsense’, instead of ‘established facts in her remarkable case’. But did Rowan himself live up to his promise of accuracy and objectivity?
The biographical details about Mata Hari that appear in his spy histories published as Spy and Counter-Spy in 1928, and Spy Menace 1934, are relatively accurate on her early life, her abusive marriage and her rise to fame. Rowan’s assessment of Mata Hari as an agent, however, appears just as steeped in tropes of female spies as his competitors. In Spy Menace he cast doubts on French spy writers, including Emile Massard, who regarded her as both ‘utterly depraved and . . . [an] incredibly crafty and superhuman spy’. Yet Rowan also relied on the trope of Mata Hari as the spy-courtesan, who was doomed to failure by her ‘utter depravity’: to attract powerful men who could provide her with military information, she exploited her public profile which created suspicion. ‘She had many of those qualities which go to make a dangerously successful spy; but she had one uncompromising fault, she was far too easily noticed wherever she went for her own self-preservation’.
Despite extensive interrogation by Captain Pierre Bouchardon, her French prosecutor, lengthy interviews with her former lovers, and surveillance reports by Paris detectives, none proved that she exchanged sex for information. But Mata Hari’s German recruiters may have
taken a more nuanced view of her potential assets. As Colonel Walter Nicolai, wartime director of IIIb, the German intelligence service, described the qualities he sought in potential agents in his post-war history, Geheime Machte: ‘Agents are a folk shimmering in all colours and they require above all, guidance by an outstanding personality . . . The ability to judge a character and to think straight, and sophistication in personal interaction with people are indispensable as well.’ Nicolai and Dr Schragmüller might have also considered Mata Hari’s education, her linguistic skills, and her Dutch nationality which enabled her cross frontiers without suspicion. They could also exploit her vulnerabilities: her lack of domestic ties (divorced and estranged from her family), and her inability to live within her means.
In a post-war assessment, several agents in General Frederich Gempp’s history of the German secret service, including Dr. Schragmüller, commented that Mata Hari had even supplied them with useful information. After training her in ‘military and political-military matters’, Dr Schragmüller remarked on her ‘exquisite elegance’ and ‘eccentric personality’ despite her anxiety that the Dutch dancer, once on assignment, might ignore ‘prescribed regulations’. --------
If Rowan genuinely wished to bust the myths surrounding Mata Hari and Dr. Schragmüller, he might have followed Cluett’s investigative lead. Not only did Cluett’s letter find its recipient, addressed to ‘Dr. Elisabeth Schragmüller, München’, but he received a handwritten reply. In it, she despairs of a biography of Mata Hari that offers ‘a good description of life and of her psychology’. Given how readily post-war spy writers employed literary tropes of female agents, this was hardly surprising. It seems ironic then that despite Rowan’s understanding of how such falsehoods could ossify into myth, he chose to exploit them rather than pursue a more authentic intelligence history.
Thanks to the Milne Special Collections and Archives Division, University of New Hampshire, 18 Library Way, Durham NH 03824 for permission to quote the Cluett/Schragmuller correspondence.
You can read more about my investigations into the history of women in intelligence on my websitehttps://www.juliewheelwright.com
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