Hans Bayer, known by the pseudonym Thaddäus Troll, was a German journalist and writer and one of the most prominent modern poets in the Swabian German dialect. In his later years, he was also an active campaigner for libraries and for support, pension rights, and fair publishing contracts for writers. He was born in Cannstatt, a suburb of Stuttgart, and committed suicide there at the age of 66. The literary award Thaddäus-Troll-Preis is named in his honour.

Swabian is one of the dialect groups of Upper German, sometimes one of the dialect groups of Alemannic German, that belong to the High German dialect continuum. It is mainly spoken in Swabia, which is located in central and southeastern Baden-Württemberg and the southwest of Bavaria. Furthermore, Swabian German dialects are spoken by Caucasus Germans in Transcaucasia. The dialects of the Danube Swabian population of Hungary, the former Yugoslavia and Romania are only nominally Swabian and can be traced back not only to Swabian but also to Franconian, Bavarian and Hessian dialects, with locally varying degrees of influence of the initial dialects.