Un-paged commit messages in git filter-branch's commit-filter?

Hello,

I am trying to do a major cleanup of the repository in one of my projects (and switch from git-svn to native git). I have developed a commit-filter script over the last months that massages partially dreadful commit messages into something acceptable. While I am not 100% sure I think that upgrading git has broken it partially. AFAICT since the update the commit-filter does not get the original message anymore but at least the subject/first paragraph is run through a pager or something similar: The first line is broken into multiple lines (i.e. some line breaks are inserted about every 72 characters where none have been before).

I have tried to run "git --no-pager filter-branch ..." to no avail. I have briefly looked at the source but could not find any proofs... Any hints would be appreciated. This is how I run my script:

tmpvar="$(</home/.....sh)" ; git --no-pager filter-branch -f --commit-filter "$tmpvar" --tag-name-filter cat -- HEAD