I readdress the issue whether the topological charge of the gauge background has an influence on a hadronic observable. To this end pion correlators in the Schwinger model with 2 dynamical flavours are determined on subensembles with a fixed topological charge. It turns out that the answer depends on a specific function of the sea-quark mass and the box volume which is in close analogy to the Leutwyler-Smilga parameter in full QCD.