Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

Can not add manuelly products to configurable product “there was an error”

we are having a problem with out Magento2 installation. Everything worked fine until recently when we tried to add a new variant to a configurable product.

The error happens when navigating to the “add product manually” page, see third image.

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We tried a few things should have helped, but nothing got us any further. What we did try

TRUNCATE ui_bookmark;

still the same problem

SELECT * FROM catalog_product_entity WHERE sku IS NULL 

result is zero.

We are also working with an admin account, so it can’t be a permission issue.

Pointers in any direction are appreciated.