Debian 9 (Stretch): Thunderbird mistakenly creating folder ".icedove" when starting

I am a victim of this bug: Thunderbird not start with .icedove folder - Debian 9 #1686 ---------- **Description:** When starting Thunderbird it automatically creates a directory named .icedove. If this directory is not getting deleted manually after each session, Thunderbird will complain about the existence of .icedove at every startup. I am using neither Firejail nor other Add-ons. How can I prevent Thunderbird from automatically generating the directory .icedove during Thunderbird's start process? It seems like the recommended solution on GitHub is only valid in case of usage of Firejail. However, without Firejail installed the mentioned file /etc/thunderbird.profile does not even exist on my system. Do you have any ideas on how to solve this issue?