Portrait of Mata Hari
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876–1917) was born in in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, to Adam Zelle and his first wife Antje van der Meulen. She was the eldest of four children.
The Zelles were a well-to-do merchant-class family and Margaretha had a privileged childhood. But her fortune took a downturn when she was thirteen-years-old.
Her father went bankrupt and her parents divorced. Two years later, her mother died and her family fell apart.
Although her father remarried in 1893, Margaretha chose to live away from home, first with her godfather in Sneek and then with her uncle in The Hague. She had studied for a time to be a kindergarten teacher, but left the program at age sixteen when she was found in a compromising position with her fifty-one-year-old principal.
“I was not content at home. . . I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun.” ― Mata Hari
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