no I tried to set the passphrase with s:
like:
iwconfig ath0 key s:PASSPHRASE

The hex key does not contain "-" characters, as it is self typed in 64 characters long, consisting only of A-F and 0-9

edit:
What kind of key did you (broozar) use?
WPA, WPA2, WEP ... ?

edit #2:
Another thing that bugs me is that it seems to be impossible to change the keymap to any german layout.
Whatever I select in the list it seems to always jump back to default-US.