Talk:Mata Hari

1985 Film

I came here hoping to find some reference to the 1985 film and its accuracy. Since it stars Sylvia Kristel, famous for her roles in the Emmanuelle series, I have doubt the film's focus was historical accuracy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089565/

There appears to have been several other renditions of Mata Hari throughout cinematic history, which at least merit mention beside Greta Garbo's.

Further, the page herein seems to be overly abundant with video game refernces that either use Mata Hari's name only, or are genericaly derived from her. There are many real world, literary, and cinematic refernces that are probably much more deserving of mention than these. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.240.34.148 (talk • contribs) 00:27, 3 November 2005

Pop culture reference: War in Hell

I remember she is one of the characters in the 'Heroes in Hell' series of books. However, it's a sort of shared world thing and it's a LONG time since I read it, so I don't remember the details well enough to add it sensibly, like in which of the books or which author, which would be necessary for veracity. (Besides being new to this wikipedia edit thing). If someone has the books at hand and can double check this, please do! [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.208.95.71 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 20 September 2006

1970s documents

I just removed the following material:

German documents unsealed in the 1970s proved that Mata Hari truly had been a German agent. In the autumn of 1915, she had entered the German secret service, and on orders of section III B-Chief Walter Nicolai, had been instructed about her duties by Major Roepell during a stay in Cologne. Her reports were to be sent to the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle West (War News Post West) in Düsseldorf under Roepell as well as to the Agent mission in the German embassy in Madrid under Major Arnold Kalle, with her direct handler being Captain Hoffmann, who also gave her the code name H-21.

I removed this because the reference does not support what is started and on at least one point contradicts this material (specifically where she received the code name H-21). If there are other references to the documents released in the 70s feel free to put back in the supported material. I'd love to hear a legitimate summary of what they actually contain. However, until there is a source, given how poor the information is, I'm ready to doubt those documents exist at all, especially since I haven't seen reference to them in other things I've read about Mata Hari.

References

Reference 32 "Brieven van Mata Hari (Letters of Mata Hari)." has a dead link — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.195.190.233 (talk) 14:39, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Possible edit to Popular Culture

Zsa Zsa Gabor Played Mata Hari in the Movie Up The Front (1972) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.172.70.92 (talk) 01:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Allegiance France

The infobox says: Allegiance France. Is that correct? Charles Juvon (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Birth house was not destroyed

This article links to a source that claims that Mata Hari’s birth house was destroyed. This claim is factual untrue but newspapers kept on copying each other’s story.

That fire destroyed two ajactend buildings and the only casualty was in her birth house. However, that person died of smoke inhalation . The fire it self was never in the building. It was just smoke, heat and water damage. The birth house was fully restored in the years after.

Correct Dutch article of regional media outlet (use google translate).

Could someone please remove that note? Sidebart (talk) 23:37, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Espionage

The Espionage Section is written in a manner which appears inconsistent with regard to Mata Hari's guilt or innocence. Was she a spy for France? Germany? Both? Neither? What is the scholarly consensus? The perspective of the writing appears to support all of these premises at varying points, which is contradictory to say the least. The reader is left confused as to what actually occurred and what was merely accusation. Objectivity, clarity, accuracy, and consistency should be prioritized in a revised version of this section. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree, as well as listing her occupation additionally as 'spy'. Odin Vex (talk) 17:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

World of Biography source

There are a few facts in the article as of September 2024 that are cited to worldofbiography.com. I don't think that's a reliable source - it seems to get some facts from Waagenaar, and others from rumour that aren't supported by modern sources - so I've added an unreliable tag when it's first used. If anyone's got better sources it'd be worth replacing those citations. (I've also replaced one citation to Keay's The Spy Who Never Was, which is a published work but is full of invented inner thoughts and doesn't cite its sources, so doesn't seem particularly reliable.) Adam Sampson (talk) 15:27, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Why is it so popular?

it suddenly jumped up in popularity. Doing this (talk) 14:39, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm wondering that too. It's not obvious. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:27, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson It looks like it was in a recent TIL post on reddit about 2 days ago [2] – The Grid (talk) 21:36, 11 June 2025 (UTC)