The problem seems to be kernel version 6.1.30; Just writing image file 'Armbian_23.5.1_Nanopineo_bookworm_current_6.1.30_minimal.img' to SD-card gives the following output via serial console:
U-Boot SPL 2022.04-armbian (May 27 2023 - 19:27:28 +0000)
DRAM: 512 MiB
Trying to boot from MMC1
U-Boot 2022.04-armbian (May 27 2023 - 19:27:28 +0000) Allwinner Technology
CPU: Allwinner H3 (SUN8I 1680)
Model: FriendlyARM NanoPi NEO
DRAM: 512 MiB
Core: 33 devices, 12 uclasses, devicetree: s
'Armbian_23.5.2_Nanopineo_bookworm_current_6.1.30_minimal.img' now works as expected.
However, going to nightly again on my existing installation still the same hang with a kernel file named '6.1.30-sunxi' as well.
So I did a brute-force overwrite of the relevant kernel files from the Armbian_23.5.2_Nanopineo_bookworm_current_6.1.30_minimal.img on the existing installation, then the boot succeeds with:
[ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0
[ 0.000000] Linux version 6.1