The owners
The Van de Haar family
Originally the owner of De Haar castle was a member of the Van de Haar family, who, as a 'ministeriaal' or manservant of the sovereign (in this province the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht), had enough prestige to have a fortified residence. Though the marriage between Josyna van de Haar and Dirk van Zuylen in 1449 the castle became property of the Van Zuylen family. The castle remained the most beloved castle of this family, until this very day.
The Van Zuylen family
The Van Zuylen family originally comes from the vicinity of Cleves in Germany, just across the Dutch-German border. There they were the owners of, amongst other properties, the castle of Anholt. Around 1200, one of the members of this family came to Utrecht, where the family was involved in the reclamation of the marshes. From 1250 on, the name of Zuylen was used for several castles built during this period, such as 'Zuylen aan de Vecht', Zuylenburg near Overlangbroek, and Zuylensteyn near Leersum. They all had the coat of arms of Van Zuylen, originally the three red 'columns' in a silver field. The heraldic 'columns' are found again and again at De Haar castle, often in combination with the heraldic diamonds of the Van de Haar family.
After a few generations there were fifteen Van Zuylen branches spread all over the province. Most of these fifteen branches became extinct, with the exception of the Van Zuylen family who owned the small Nyevelt castle, which was situated south of Vleuten in those days. The Roman Catholic branch moved to the Southern Netherlands. The present Van Zuylen van Nijevelt van de Haar family descends from this line.
The descendants of Josyna van de Haar and Dirk van Zuylen became extinct in the seventeenth century and thus the Van Stembor family who lived in the Southern Netherlands inherited the castle. One of the daughters, Antonia van Stembor, married Rudolf van Zuylen van Nijevelt, and when their son Anthony died childless in 1801, a distant cousin inherited De Haar. His grandson, Baron Etienne, would become the restorer of the castle. In the seventeenth century there must have been regular visits from the Southern Netherlands, but later on the castle became too ruinous, so that De Haar must have been a desolate place most of the time for more than two centuries.
Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nijevelt van de Haar and baroness Hélène de Rothschild
Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nijevelt inherited the impressive ruins of De Haar castle after the death of his father in 1890. From his childhood onward he had been fascinated by the social and political family history, which reached its zenith around 1500, the period in which De Haar was rebuilt on a more grandiose scale than ever before. In the meantime, Etienne van Zuylen married the French baroness Hélène de Rothschild in 1887, which enabled him to make his dream come true: the renaissance of his ancestral castle. The castle was to give an exact picture of what it used to be, but should also be comfortable to live in. And indeed, the castle still reflects something of the international and luxurious fashion of that time, which combines comfort with a refined and valuable interior.
