Ohhh, I see my mistake. Thank you very much.

Could you point me where this behaviour is documented?
I haven't found mention of it in the following:

• http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/5.2/javadocs/org/hibernate/FlushMode.html - According to the above this is not relevant at all when no transaction is present;
• http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/5.2/userguide/html_single/Hibernate_User_Guide.html#configurations-misc
• http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/5.2/javadocs/org/hibernate/cfg/AvailableSettings.html#ALLOW_UPDATE_OUTSIDE_TRANSACTION