[2] Her father belonged to a Roman Catholic Carinthian family whose nobility had been confirmed as of the early 16th century.

After the death of Duke Augustus and the accession of his son, Joachim Frederick in 1699, she followed the duchess to her dower house at Østerholm on Als.

Here, she developed a relationship with Joachim Frederick's younger brother, Christian Charles, who at the time served as a colonel in the army of Brandenburg-Prussia.

When his father died, he had only inherited the manors of Sebygaard and Gottesgabe on Ærø island, which his uncle Bernhard had held earlier.

[1] Their witnesses were the host, high bailiff Carl Wilhelm von Curti, and his wife Anna Helena Schenk zu Schweinsberg.

[1] However, despite the fact that Dorothea Christina was able to prove her pure noble descent by generations back Joachim Frederick forced his brother to accept a settlement.

The settlement was prepared by the court, signed by both brothers in Norburg on 24 November 1702 and confirmed by the Danish king on 5 December 1702.

Her claim was supported by the opinions of the law school of the University of Kiel and foreign lawyers, such as Johann Peter von Ludewig and Christian Thomasius.

Frederick Charles's cousin John Ernest from the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön-Rethwisch line still claimed the Holstein parts of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön, which stood under imperial suzerainty.

Dorothea lived the rest of her life at her dower house in Reinfeld and the Widow's Palace in Plön.