 Because Christoph had no male issue, the line was extinguished on his death in 1545 and the estate went to his son-in-law from the Alsatian House of Fleckenstein.As one of the younger sons of an aristocratic family, Hans entered the service of the electors and counts palatine of the Rhine in Heidelberg as a young man in the late 1470s.The link to Electoral Palatinate probably came about as a result of Archbishop John of Magdeburg, the patron of Bishop Thilo von Trotha.