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Hans von Trotha

German knight

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ45436 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hans von Trotha, also known as Hans Trapp (c. 1450 – 1503), was a German knight and marshal of the prince-elector of the Palatinate. He also bore the French honorary title of a Chevalier d’Or. In 1480, the elector enfeoffed him with the two castles of Berwartstein and Grafendahn which lay in the South Palatine part of the Wasgau region within the Palatinate Forest. In local folklore he is known as Hans Trapp or, more rarely, Hans Trott.

Family

Hans von Trotha was born into the aristocratic Trotha family who came from the area of the present-day county of Saalekreis, and was the fourth son of the Archbishop of Magdeburg's marshal, Thilo von Trotha. He was probably born in the mid-15th century in Krosigk (today in Saxony-Anhalt). His exact date of birth is not known, but he was the younger brother of Thilo von Trotha, the Bishop of Merseburg who was born in 1443.

Hans only had one son, Christoph, who succeeded his father as the lord of Berwartstein Castle. Because Christoph had no male issue, the line was extinguished upon his death in 1545 and the estate went to his son-in-law from the Alsatian House of Fleckenstein.

Editorial summary

“Hans von Trotha” enters the record as german knight. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hans, Trotha and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1450, 1503, 1480, 1443—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1450. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Hans, Trotha and German.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Hans von Trotha” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hans, Trotha and German provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q45436. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1450, 1503, 1480 and 1443.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hans von Trotha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.