How to configure Velocity Escape Tool with Spring Properties?

I create e-mails from templates via Velocity in a Spring Web Application. Now I need to HTML escape SOME of the values. I found the Velocity Escape Tool. But I did not get the configuration working.

What I have tryed so fare is (spring applicationContext.xml):

<bean id="velocityEngine" class="org.springframework.ui.velocity.VelocityEngineFactoryBean">
    <property name="resourceLoaderPath" value="classpath:/velocity/emailTemplates" />
    <property name="preferFileSystemAccess" value="false" />
    <property name="overrideLogging" value="true" />
    <property name="velocityProperties">
        <util:properties>
            <prop key="input.encoding">UTF-8</prop>
            <prop key="output.encoding">UTF-8</prop>
            <prop key="tools.toolbox">application</prop>
            <prop key="tools.application.esc">org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.EscapeTool</prop>
        </util:properties>
    </property>
</bean>

Template (htmlEscapeTest.vm):

with escape: $esc.html($needEscape)

TestCase:

@Test
public void testHtmlEscapingSupport() {

    final String needEscape = "<test>";

    ModelMap model = new ModelMap();
    model.addAttribute("needEscape", needEscape);
    String result = VelocityEngineUtils.mergeTemplateIntoString(velocityEngine, HTML_ESCAPING_TEMPLATE_FILE, model);
    assertThat(result, StringContains.containsString("&lt;test&gt;"));
}

But the Test failed, ...got: "with escape: $esc.html($needEscape)"

Can anybody give me a hint what I am doing wrong?

If I add new EscapeTool() explicite in the test:

VelocityContext velocityContext