HDFView does not show file contents

I've installed the HDFView program to view HDF5 files. The program starts and allows me to open a file, but does not show anything about the contents and structure of the file. As test files, I used samples from the HDF Group:

https://support.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/examples/files/exbyapi/h5ex_d_alloc.h5
https://support.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/examples/files/exbyapi/h5ex_d_checksum.h5

When I launch hdfview from the terminal, the program starts but produces an warning which may be related to the problem:
[warning] /usr/bin/hdfview: No java runtime was found
When choosing Help / Java version inside the program, it reports:
Compiled at jdk 1.7, Running at 9-Ubuntu

I have installed the openjdk-8-jre package and java --version reports:
openjdk 9-Ubuntu
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 9-Ubuntu+0-9b181-4)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 9-Ubuntu+0-9b181-4, mixed mode)

Ubuntu release: 17.10
Package version: apt-cache policy hdfview
hdfview:
  Installed: 2.11.0+dfsg-2build1
  Candidate: 2.11.0+dfsg-2build1
  Version table:
 *** 2.11.0+dfsg-2build1 500
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

The same problem is described in this Askubuntu discussion thread:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/907159/hdfview-working-in-ubuntu-17-04

I am using the same workaround, HDFView-3.0.0. downloaded directly from HDF Group site. That works, and HDFCompass (from Ubuntu package hdf-compass) works too.