I should think just about every young writer - which I was at the time - would be influenced by HPL. As an American writer of weird fiction, he was at the top of the class.
He commented that maybe I could write a mythos tale for a book he would soon edit, called Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Of course I got to work on it right away. Hey, I mean, this should happen to every aspiring writer!
German readers are much like Brits or Americans: They read for the thrill of it, the occasional shudder down the spine, knowing it`s not real - but looking over their shoulders anyway, just in case.