I agree, this is most probably an environment issue, but i just don't know where else to search, that's why i'm asking and appreciating every single answer...
I can quite surely exclude a wrong script or wrong server. I called the prototype-ajax-object with the full URL to the perl script that should handle the request. I can also exclude a proxy since i'm only testing this on my home server within my local network. The requests don't pass any proxies on their way...