org.w3c.dom.Element - No xsi:type sent

[John Hauf]

Hello,

I tried to build a webservice returning an org.w3c.dom.Element. When the
  Element, that is returned, is empty, i get the following soap-body:
<soapenv:Body>
<ns1:getElementResponse
soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/";
xmlns:ns1="urn:[myUrn]">
<getElementReturn xsi:type="ns2:Element" xsi:nil="true"
xmlns:ns2="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap"/>
</ns1:getElementResponse>
</soapenv:Body>

When the Element has content the soap-body looks like this:
<soapenv:Body>
<ns1:getElementResponse
soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/";
xmlns:ns1="urn:[myUrn]">
          <getElementReturn>
                <search/>
             </getElementReturn>
          </ns1:getElementResponse>
       </soapenv:Body>

As you can see: In the second example the xsi:type is missing. How can I
get Axis sending the xsi:type. (It works fine with any other datatype
like Strings or Arrays)

Thank you for your help in advance!

Greetings
John