Hi James;
and thanks for your input. 
I'll have a look at how things are. The MaxDB instance runs inside a VMWare infrastructure VM, and after restarting the VM I am at least able to get the database instance into Admin mode. Doing a VM snapshot now, just to be sure before moving anywhere further, and am about to try a new full backup of the DB instance after that. Anything else - later...
Cheers and thanks again,
Kristian