Htaccess Password Protection Does Not Work

This is the first time I try a password protection with htaccess. For that tas k I have mainly copied exapmles from the documentation pages

The problem is however, that apache seem to ignore the .htaccess File completely. I am not asked for a password, nor is anything related to that in the logfiles

.htaccess:

Code:
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Password Required"
AuthUserFile /home/matthias/www/matthias/pwd/users
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
Require user photos
with the file users, created with htpasswd. It exisits and the path is correct
photos:EdlmuAi1RSkTM

commonhttpd.conf

Code:
<Directory />
Options*-All*-Multiviews
AllowOverride*All
Options*FollowSymLinks
<IfModule*mod_access.c>
Order*allow,deny
Allow*from*all
</IfModule>
</Directory>

AccessFileName .htaccess
httpd.conf

Code:
## Virtuelle Server (Matthias)
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName*www.local-matthias.de
DocumentRoot*/home/matthias/www/matthias
</VirtualHost>

Any Ideas what to do ?