Although having some experience with leaflet before, it took me 5 hours to find out how to
(1) change the background color and
(2) re-center my map after the popup was panning the map  basically out view. Here is my solution

leaflet(options = leafletOptions(
 zoomControl = FALSE,
 minZoom=6, maxZoom=6,
 centerFixed = TRUE) ) %>%
addPolygons(data = ds,
 fillColor = ~pal(AnzahlFall),
 color="black", weight = 1,
 fillOpacity = 0.7,
 label = ~name_2,
 popup = ~www,
 popupOptions = popupOptions( autopan=FALSE, keepInView = TRUE ) ) %>%
htmlwidgets::onRender("
 function(el, x) {
  var myMap = this;
  myMap.dragging.disable();
  myMap.on('popupclose', function(e) { myMap.panTo( {lon: 10.26, lat: 51.1} ) });
  var e = document.getElementsByClassName('leaflet-container');
  e[0].style.backgroundColor = 'white';	    
}")