For the benefit of anyone stumbling over this question: I finally found the reason I never got a proper intent! Thanks to a response in this question I found out:

I had understood the placeholder "pckname" in Google's tutorial such that this is the (Java) package name of the Activity that I want to start up. But it is obviously the application class's package, i.e. the package of the class that "... extends Application" in your application, which - in my case - is two layers higher up than the activity I wanted to trigger. Using the correct "package name" I immediately got the intended intent (pun intended...) and my application fired up!