Add UTF-8 encoding to ResponseEntity

responseHeaders.add("Content-Type", "text/html; charset=utf-8");

The solution was to add a StringHttpMessageConverter with utf-8 in restTemplate bean like:

@Bean
public RestTemplate restTemplate() {
    RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
    restTemplate.getMessageConverters()
            .add(0, new StringHttpMessageConverter(Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
    return restTemplate;
}

I've solved the same problem just adding charset=utf8 to my RequestMapping.

Before

@RequestMapping(path = "/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/hal+json")

After

@RequestMapping(path = "/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/hal+json;charset=utf8")

I add this to my other methods too. I hope this helps.