Moritz Becker From the information, you gave, I think you're just missing a @Valid annotation on the address element. If you don't have one, the validation is not cascaded.

	public abstract class AbstractCompanyRepresentation<T extends UpdateAddressRepresentation> {

		@Valid
		private T address;

		public T getAddress() {
			return address;
		}

		public void setAddress(T address) {
			this.address = address;
		}
	}

With this annotation added, it works as expected.

Let me know if it fixes your real use case.