I just found the thread again... I used Testdisk to recover the partition table, PhotoRec to recover the pictures. I found 99% of the deleted files (30000 pictures in total), with quite some duplicates, obviously from some auto-saving image manipulation software. The rest was lost, but I was able to recover all their favorite pictures - birth of their kid etc. Thanks again. And Thanks you reminded me :)
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton