Done as suggested @netweb – changed nothing. The activity streams of previous groups state correctly “XY started the forum topic ABC in the group 123” but the link to the topic is broken, returns a 404. All groups still return ‘This group does not currently have any forums.’ at /forum. Permalinks checked.
To demonstrate the dilemma – groups are all here, including group forums:
youthpolicy.org/community/forums/
But then you go to any group and their forum, and it says ‘This group does not currently have any forums.’ We are on bbPress 2.2-bleeding, as suggested in the codex here.
Weird.