I think you could work around this by setting up a reverse proxy in front of openhab (see here) but add a location block for this particular item:
location /rest/items/luftdaten {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/rest/items/luftdaten;
proxy_buffering off;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
# Change Content-type passed to openhab
proxy_set_header Content-type text/plain;
}
Kind of a dirty hack, but I don’t believe you can change anything inside openhab without changing the source code, and I guess it’s the same for the luftdaten server.