Yes, this helps. Kind of ;-) ... using the character set char-set:alphabetic, my umlauts are now parsed. But I don't get them back in my result, at least not as printable characters. Instead, the following happens, and utterly confuses me:
#;2> (define s3 (parse letters (string->list s)))
#;3> s3
"Gnsesger"
#;4> (string-length s3)
6
#;5> (string->list s3)
(#\G #\x4bb3 #\e #\s #\x49e5 #\r)
#;6> (list->string (string->list s3))
"G䮳es䧥r"
So, I put the parse result into 's3'. Printing it, I read an eight character string, namely the one I want, minus my beloved umlauts. 'string-length' returns that string to be six characters long, and 'string->list' gives me exactly that, swallowing still other ASCII characters of my string and reversing that using 'list->string' includes Chinese ... even though '(list->string (string->list s1))', with my pure ASCII string, reverses without fault.
I guess I have some problems understanding some utf8 concepts?!
/Christoph