He is! At the latest since he has seen Egon Gnther's amazingly innovative and brilliant "Abschied / Farewell" on the big screen and some of the socialistic westerns with Gojko Mitic (A already mentioned them) on TV. Too bad that there are only very few DEFA-Films on DVD here - as A said, you seem to have more of them on DVD than we have.

Maybe I'll revisit some of the west German "Winnetou" / "Old Shatterhand" (always played by Lex Barker) and "Old Surehand"- (three times played by Stewart Granger who was the best paid actor in a German production at this time)-Flicks and contribute a few little comments. I adore this cute, naive and incredibly kitschy Adventure films a lot since I grew up with them on german Television every year around Christmas time. And they definitely present the affection of our nation during the early 60ies, the economic miracle and all those things happening then. And - not to be forgotten - those were the most expensive and successful german films ever made to date. Other producers laughed at Horst Wendlandt when he decided to spend 3 Million DEM on "Der Schatz im Silbersee / The Treasure of the Silver Lake" and to produce a "big, international Cinemascope-Epic in colour" - they were awfully wrong and started to prepare their own Karl May-Adaptations very soon when the film hit the theaters, especially mighty producer Arthur Brauner who once was the boss of Wendlandt and couldn't watch the success of his former assistant. His "Old Shatterhand" (1963) probably is the only german 65mm-Film, mainly produced for a young audience. The Karl May Series went down when Wendlandt (in 1967) decided to go in the same direction as the italian westerns. 

Just to give you a little insight (If you didn't already check it out after A's teasing posting), here are a few trailers of those films - enjoy:

Trailer (Winnetou Part 1, 1963)

Winnetou and his Friend Old Firehand (Trailer, 1967) - this was the last film of the series produced by Wendlandt and it has some sort of "Spaghetti Western"-Touch)

The Treasure of the Silver Lake (1962, Trailer)

There were also some adaptations of Karl May's oriental-placed novels with titles like "Wild Kurdistan" or "Im Reiche des silbernen Lwen / In the Kingdom of the Silver Lion" but they never were as successful as the "western"-films (I like them quite a lot).
And in 1988, there were an east German TV-Film, "Das Buschgespenst", which is a rare adaptation of one Karl May-Story set in the Germany of the 19th Century, about a smuggling "ghost" in the mountains at the German-Czech boarder which is also excellent but very rare.

If you want to know anything about those films or the german Edgar Wallace-Films - both are probably two of the strangest and most successful phenomenons in Germany's film history - just ask me, I know (almost) everything about those films and own two great books about them. 
I'll also try to post another index including the ones available with english subtitles. 
I also need to buy them on DVD by myself as I still haven't seen most of the films in their original Aspect Ratio of 1:2,35.