Profiles activated in settings.xml can't be deactivated for release

We are having a development profile in settings.xml to sign the jars.
For releases the release profile shall be used to sign with an official key.
I can't convince the release plugin to deactivate the development profile active as default in settings.xml
I tried various combinations but nothing works:

• specify profiles configuration: <arguments>-Prelease,!development</arguments>
• specify profiles configuration: <releaseProfiles>release,!development</releaseProfiles>
• adding -Darguments="-Prelease,!development" -Prelease,!development release:prepare
• adding -Darguments="-Prelease,!development" -Prelease,!development release:perform
• combinations of the above
  Running deploy with "-Prelease,!development" uses the correct profile and signs with the correct key.
  It looks like the disabled properties are not propagated to the actual build but just removed and then inherited from settings.xml again.
  This affects both the release:prepare and the release:perform