OK! Progress! I just got off the phone with Origin's. Some *very* nice gentlemen there was able to solve at least part of my problem. According to him, EA/Origin's *AND* Direct2Drive had a mixup between german versions of the game and U.S./English keys. I had been given a German Key by D2D and was fed the EN version of the game, The En version of the game accepted the German key and installed and the Tech I spoke with rumored that the error message I was getting could be tied to the key mixup.
Now, when I plugged my German Key into Origin's, it fed me the German version of the game. Well Duh ... it's a german key! So he went and generated me a brand new key and attached it to my account, this one he tripple checked to make sure it was for the English version of the game. Then he made sure that Origin's beta would feed me the English version of the game. So that is what is downloading now, hopefully it really i the correct version of the game!
I shall keep this forum apprised of this issue and shall report back when the installer is finished in 8-9 hours.