Dear list
After extensive contact with the ESRI support team we figured out, that the above mentioned approach is not working. In case of modeless forms, the Application.Idle event never reaches the form. This happens only in case of modal forms.
The only workaround is to use the Update-method of the calling AddIn or ICommand. Within this method you could call a public method OnUpdate of the form. That works quite well, but unfortunately, there is a certain delay when Update() is called from ArcMap.
Best regards,
Yvo