Finaly I found a solution.
Going back to v 1.4-3 was *not* possible, I couldn't d-u, couldn't purge, couldn't successfully "apt-get -f install"
Then I tried going back two versions to 1.2.3-0.3
dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/wine-bin_1.2.3-0.3_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/libwine-bin_1.2.3-0.3_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/libwine_1.2.3-0.3_i386.deb
followed by
dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/libwine-alsa_1.2.3-0.3_i386.deb
There still were problems with libbz2-1.0. I therefore reinstalled half the system (but maybe reinstalling libbz2-1.0 would be enough), and in the end wine* was installed in version 1.4-6 without problems.
It seems you only run into this problem if you ever installed wine-bin_1.4-4 which broke the system and didn't provide a clean upgrade path to 1.4-6.