I got it working... it looks like just showing up at the
java ranch gave me that couple extra IQ points to solve this riddle.
/usr/bin/java was the default jre installation, which apparently is not ompatible to the jdk that I installed. Easily fixed by:
#mv /usr/bin/java /usr/bin/java.old
#ln -s /jdk.../bin/java /usr/bin/java