umlauts (8bit characters) input

[Hendrik Sattler <sattler2000@gmx.de>]

Hi,

8bit characters work fine everywhere(bash, mcedit, etc) except with emacs.
When I press 'ü', it asks me for "Shell command on region:", 'ö' goes to
"beginning of buffer" and 'ä' does nothing.
The editing is done in KDE's konsole, locale is set to
LANG=de_DE@euro
LC_CTYPE="de_DE@euro"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE@euro"
LC_TIME="de_DE@euro"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="de_DE@euro"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE@euro"
LC_PAPER="de_DE@euro"
LC_NAME="de_DE@euro"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE@euro"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE@euro"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE@euro"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE@euro"
LC_ALL=

I had to reinstall my system and took my configuration files with me. I
worked before, why not now?
Here's my ~/,emacs:
(custom-set-variables
  ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it!
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 '(bar-cursor 2)
 '(case-fold-search t)
 '(current-language-environment "German")
 '(default-input-method "german-postfix")
 '(global-font-lock-mode t nil (font-lock))
 '(gnuserv-program (concat exec-directory "/gnuserv"))
 '(show-paren-mode t nil (paren))
 '(transient-mark-mode t))
(custom-set-faces
  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it!
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 )

Any suggestions?

Thanks

HS