<p>Friedrich Neumann described Thomasin's Der Welsche Gast as a linguistic phenomenon without comparison within the corpus of German literature of the Hohenstaufen period. In the didactic literature of the time, Der Welsche Gast does indeed occupy a unique position ... [It] betrays the heavy hand of the clerical moralist who moves from providing the younger members of his audience with a primer for proper social etiquette in his early verses to a...