German umlauts are missing, Kubuntu 9.10

[Hausmoasta]

Hi!
My umlauts have gone. Unfortunately, not everywhere. First time I've
remarked it was in Firefox and Thunderbird depending on the logged-in
user. The following snippet, I have typed in the terminal and copied via
the clipboard (ctrl-c ctrl-v): äääääääääätsch. Thus umlauts are
displayed, processed, .. I can't only enter them anymore. "@", "|", "?"
come as typed, z and y have their correct position, on my germen
keyboard - qwertz.
I've tested a couple of other programs: - works / + works not
gedit -
xemacs +
kwrite +
kvbkd (dependencies of the Recipient, as the real keyboard) - / +
openoffice +


In System Preferences -> Country / Region & Language -> Keyboard Layout
I get the command: "setxkbmap-model pc105-layout de-variant"

Ciao
Tom