| Sumario: | The analysis of a passage in Thomasin of Zirclære's long didactic poem Der welsche Gast, containing a harsh criticism against Hungarians, needs to be set in the context of a growing imperial influence on Hungary in the High Middle Ages, often justified as assistance for the integration of the newcomers into Christian Europe, as a quick survey of German texts can display. The immediate political background must have been the anti-German revolution which had taken place in Hungary but a couple of years before Thomasin composed his work; the early thirteenth-century Patriarchate of Aquileia, being a centre of German culture, would attentively observe political and cultural developments beyond the Alps. Thomasin's bitter words were clearly intended to please a German-speaking public which must have been disgruntled with the setback of the Germanization process. It is realistic to assume that some of Berthold of Andechs-Merania's retainers, if not the prelate himself, were among the audience; as long as no further evidence is provided, it must remain a mere hypothesis that Thomasin had learnt of Yolanda's faux pas by the time he had completed the poem.
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