Character encoding of GET request parameter

Hello fellow Stackoverflowers.

I have an issue that i need some help with:

We're making an http GET web service call from a smartphone app to a Java/Spring MVC application. We're on a Tomcat application server that is fronted by an Apache server with a mod_proxy proxy setup.

One of the parameters imbedded in the URL is the word "Männen", which is the organization name that's one of the parameters. The app makes a Jquery Ajax GET request and the parameter leaves the app as "M%E4nnen", which to my understanding means the "ä" has been properly URL-encoded. When it arrives to the Spring controller, it has been distorted to "Männen".

I have googled and found quite a few threads on this and they all recommend modifying the Tomcat server.xml file by adding URIEncoding="UTF-8" to all connectors. Of course, i tried this. It made a change but did not solve the issue. The string now comes through as "M�nnen". There was also a thread suggesting you add "nocanon" to the ProxyPass parameter in the Apache proxy configuration. This was tried but made no difference.

Using the logs, i can follow the request:

1. In the Apache access log, the parameter is logged as "M%E4nnen"
2. In the Apache proxy log, the parameter is logged as "M%E4nnen"
3. In the Tomcat localhost_access log, the parameter is logged as "M%E4nnen"
4. In the Spring controller that receives the request, the parameter is logged as "M�nnen"

My Spring application also has a character encoding filter, but as far as i understand, it only works on the request body. It is configured as shown below:

<filter><filter-name>CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name><filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class><init-param><param-name>encoding</param-name><param-value>UTF-8</param-value></init-param><init-param><param-name>forceEncoding</param-name><param-value>true</param-value></init-param></filter><filter-mapping><filter-name>CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name><url-pattern>/*</url-pattern></filter-mapping>

I really don't know what else to try or where else to look. If anyone could guide me in the right direction, it would be highly appreciated.