MATA HARI'S SCRAPBOOKS BROUGHT TO BIRTHPLACE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992                   TAG: 9201070208
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LEEUWARDEN, THE NETHERLANDS                                LENGTH: Medium
MATA HARI'S SCRAPBOOKS BROUGHT TO BIRTHPLACE
Mata Hari's scrapbooks have come home, 96 years after she left this quiet farming town to become a nude dancer, seductress and World War I's most famous spy.
The two scrapbooks include photographs, newspaper clippings, playbills and calling cards collected by the woman who wooed high-ranking officers of the Allied and German armies while apparently spying for both sides.
Mata Hari, born in Leeuwarden as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in 1876, ordered her servant to destroy the albums along with all of her possessions after her execution in 1917. But the servant couldn't bring herself to do it.
Instead, the servant sent them to Hollywood in the 1930s for researchers to use in making a film based on Mata Hari's life.
The newly founded Mata Hari Foundation recently bought the scrapbooks from a former MGM employee for $46,000, according to the Rotterdam-based NRC Handelsblad newspaper.
Like their subject, the scrapbook collection is daring.
Photos show the Dutch-Javanese beauty in seductive poses, wearing only jewelry and a bikini top. One signed portrait taken in 1915 is believed to be the last taken of Mata Hari. The photos were apparently taken during her engagements as an exotic dancer in various European capitals.
The albums are being kept in a safe at the Frisian (province) Literature Museum and Documentation Center, where officials plan to make them the centerpiece of a permanent Mata Hari exhibit, the paper said.
The museum also has obtained a scrapbook put together by a local admirer after Mata Hari's death.
Mata Hari left this town at the age of 19 when she married a captain in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army and accompanied him to the former Dutch colony, currently Indonesia.
Their relationship quickly soured. In 1903 she left him and went to Paris, where she began dancing in nightclubs and nude reviews. She chose Mata Hari, Javanese for "eye of the morning," as her stage name.
Mata Hari's sense of adventure led her to become involved with men in the most powerful circles and brought her prized military secrets.
Because of that, both the French and the Germans reportedly enlisted her as a spy. But the French army apparently grew suspicious, and executed her in the Paris suburb of Vincennes in Oct. 1917.
She insisted on wearing her trademark black silk stockings before the firing squad.
The collections are a bonanza for the provincial museum and this town, which is the capital of the dairy-producing Frisian Province.
"With this fabulous material, Leeuwarden can make itself known as the city of Mata Hari," foundation official D. Lok was quoted by the NRC Handelsblad as saying.
Before the scrapbooks' purchase, the museum only had one display case devoted to the town's most famous citizen. It contained one snapshot and several belongings.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB