German text, how to see it all?

I am running an English desktop but as I am interrested in German news I get daily a copy of a German newsletter. On my SuSE 9.0 I could see all the umlauts and scharfe ss and after starting to work in SuSE 9.1 (pro) I cannot remember to have difficulties until recently as the a o and u umlaut and ss are suddenly gone. Do not know how to get German texts in a readable format. I am using KDE 3.2 and Kmail. Can somebody show me how to get all the missing letters back. I have looked everywhere but to no avail.