Looks like the issue was with the NULL values in your field, and the query in the MakeFeatureLayer function was slightly off. Try the following:shp = "WaEinbauten"
with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(shp, ["GelaendeH"]) as cursor:
for row in cursor:
if not vertexElevation > 0:
vertexElevation = 0
else:
vertexElevation = row[0]
arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(shp, "pts_lyr", "GelaendeH = " + str(vertexElevation))
arcpy.Adjust3DZ_management("pts_lyr", "NO_REVERSE", vertexElevation)