... use Encode; ... my $fetch = $dbh->prepare("SELECT `id`,`bezeichnung` FROM `system` ORDER BY `bezeichnung` ASC"); $fetch->execute(); my @system = (); #while ( ($system[scalar @system]{id},$system[scalar @system-1]{name}) = $fetch->fetchrow_array()){} while ( ($system[scalar @system]{id},$system[scalar @system-1]{name}) = $fetch->encode('utf8',fetchrow_array())){}