Wrong characters displayed in console

[csj <csj@zapo.net>]

Since I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel series, I noticed that
extended characters like the German "umlauted" vowels are being
displayed wrong on my framebuffer console.  If I open, say in
Emacs, the same file in an xconsole the characters are displayed
right (so I know the problem isn't an Emacs character mapping
problem).  The characters also display properly when I reboot
into a framebuffer console under kernel 2.4.X (leading me to
suspect the problem is specific to 2.6).

Does anybody have any idea what's wrong with my kernel 2.6
console setup?