follow-up question: Thanks to @silverpill I made progress with my "Follow" request sent to Mastodon. After fixing a few more issues my current error message from Mastodon is:

"Could not refresh public key pub.saar.social/user/achim/key"

This URL returns my full profile having type "Person", which also contains the public key. The type "Person" is also used in the AP book by @evanEvan Prodromou which I use as a reference.

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If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://social.saarland/users/achim/statuses/115877742740249246 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)