The correct solution would have been to upgrade to hibernate 4.2.15 / 4.3.6 or above and add the following lines to your persistence.xml:

<property name="hibernate.event.merge.entity_copy_observer" value="allow"/>

multiple representations of the same entity stack overflow, java - Multiple representations of the same entity are being merged (Hibernate) - Stack Overflow. I have two tables in my database - Restaurant and RestaurantTable. There is a @OneToMany relationship between them (a restaurant can have many tables). java.lang.IllegalStateException: Multiple representations of the same entity with @ManyToMany 3 entities (11 answers). Closed 2 years ago.