I pulled the logcat output (attached to this message), and as it seems, the watchdog tries to restart the scope app several times without success, outputting something like this:
"ContextImpl: Calling a method in the system process without a qualified user:" ...which may actually be the case

But seriously, could that possibly be related to disabling the signature verification in order to be able to install the patched scope app? Strange thing is that it worked very well before I tried to change the time zone. I made sure that nothing else except Asia/Shanghai -> Europe/Berlin got changed, no CR to CR/LF or whatever mess-up. I also tried putting back the original "rigol/shell/start_rigol_app.sh" from the .GEL firmware update file.
Anyway, thanks a lot for the input so far. If all "repair" attempts fail, I can still write back the SD card image. But I'ld rather understand what caused the trouble...
Cheers,
Thomas