Can't get output compression to work

I am clueless and would really appreciate some help. The problem started when I configured “Google XML Sitemaps” and “Hyper Cache”. Compressed output of either the sitemap or the cached pages did simply not work. I then tried to enable output compression referring to: http://codex.wordpress.org/Output_Compression

The first method (via .htaccess) did not compress the page. I checked with: http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php and also the “reply header” didn’t show a sign of compression.

The second method (via php code) resulted in a blank page with the error message “server unexpectedly terminated the connection”.

My hoster stated that deflate and gzip would run on their Apache and sent me the configuration page: http://php.clichehosting.de

1) Could someone please check the configuration page and let me know whether compression is really supported on the server side.
2) If yes, is here anything else I need to do to enable output compression?

Thank you so much!
Andreas