umlaut keys don't work in emacs but do in other x apps

[josh]

Hi *,

I'm running emacs 21.4.1 on debian etch with xorg 7.1 and using gnome
2.14 desktop.

Since upgrading to xorg 7.1 (I think that's what caused it, can't
confirm though...) the input of umlaut characters and "ess-zed" (i.e.
öäüß) no longer works in emacs but does in all my other x apps like
gnome-terminal, thunderbird, etc.

As far as I can see, emacs doesn't even get a key event, since if I run
C-h k ("describe key") and then enter one of these keys, emacs doesn't
respond and continues to wait for input.

If I capture the key-event with xev, the event is registered, but
XLookupString fails and nothing is returned:

KeyPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3800001,
    root 0x64, subw 0x0, time 1240145440, (128,63), root:(143,184),
    state 0x0, keycode 47 (keysym 0xf6, odiaeresis), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:

as opposed to pressing a "normal" key (here the letter "a"):

KeyPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x3800001,
    root 0x64, subw 0x0, time 1240200466, (94,91), root:(109,212),
    state 0x0, keycode 38 (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"


My locale is:
josh@om:~$ locale
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Thanks in advance for any help.

-j