Hi! Installing libc6 into /usr/lib solves this issue, as one would expect. Adding some debug code to dpkg-shlibdeps shows this the issue is - as expected - shlibdeps calling dpkg-query on the wrong path in /usr instead of /lib.
I'll create a clean chroot next to see if the issue can be reproduced there as well, but so far my older Tanglu and Debian Sid chroots all exhibit this behavior when being usrmerged. Cheers, Matthias