ah, got it!
My mistake during test alignment was to let the motor and handcontroller "see" the adjustment I made to get the virtual binos into upright position. I used the HC to slew. Pressed Enter - and that failed.
Now I tested alignment again:
1. let the mount assume the first alignment star's position 2. with running motor/Handcontroller, losen the Altitude lock, turn the binos manually upwards into viewing position, 3. fasten Alt lock 4. press Enter on handcontroller. That seems to work. The software is unaware of the manual manipulation and when choosing "select and slew" correctly slews to the chosen object. At least as far I can tell here with autumn's permanent cloud cover. The handcontroller shows the correct coordinates as per SkySafari and the direction the mount points to looks correct. So I guess, I overcame my logically challenged moment.
Thanks for letting me ask the question here on this forum. That helped, already
Annette