Weller, a private senior lecturer, at Tübingen University, submitted the Y Elegy at the end of 1937, to the "Certamen Hoeufftianum", a competition of neo-Latin poetry of the "Royal Dutch Academy of Wetenschappen" (KNAW) held annually in Amsterdam, which he won thirteen times in the course of his life. In 1938 Weller was awarded the Gold Medal for this text. The fact that Weller could be promoted to the position of Special Professor in the same year (despite certain doubts on account of his Catholicism) shows that knowledge of Latin among Nazi officials was not wide.