researching my great grandfather and his brother in Langenöls, Germany, now Oleszna, Poland.

Hello Claudia, maybe you can upload a picture of Reinhold Walters birth record so that we can try to read the birth place?

Sabine

I would be happy to!

Thank you for the records. I assume you searched already the usual genealogy pages so that I skip those here in my answer.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be a place Groß Bese but north east of Langenöls close to a place called Bohrau are two little places called Klein Besra and Groß Besra. Here is a link how to find these places: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/10237103

When you click on the map it will switch to a map with the German names of all places. You can navigate over the map and also try to find other places with similar names. There is also a search where you can find other places. This webpage can be very useful to locate potential places of ancestors. 

Your records also show that Reinhold Walter lived in Zottwitz before moving to Breslau and that he was of catholic religion. Fortunately there are marriage records and death records from the catholic church in Zottwitz available online under https://www.martin-opitz-bibliothek.de/de/sammlungen/digitale-sammlungen/familienforschung/kirchenbuecher/kirchenbuecher/zottwitz-schlesien

I did not go through the books but it might be that Reinhold Walter can be found in the records, maybe with his own marriage or maybe as a witness or maybe there are other family members who lived in Zottwitz.

When you search in the digital library for Zottwitz https://www.martin-opitz-bibliothek.de/de/elektronischer-lesesaal?keyword=Zottwitz&index=TAF&zeilen=20&t_acindex=ignore&t_acindex=Recherche+starten&lang=de&db=voe

there will more publications coming up you could search for names.

A marriage, birth or death could have been also registered in the civil records in the Standesamt. As far as I understand the Standesamt for Zottwitz was in Seiffersdorf. There could actually now help the Polish archives under  https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/strona_glowna. Unfortunately it looks that records for Zottwitz or Langenöls are not scanned yet and not available online yet. The search in these archives can also be a little bit tricky. I always try all kind of spellings of places and also the Polish version. I just copy these versions from the internet and paste them into the search bar since sometimes the Polish language has special letters.

Another chance to find someone or places are the European Archives webpage and newspapers:

Here are several links where you could try:

https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/

http://czasopisma.fbc.net.pl/?s=newspaper_title%2520asc

https://wiki.genealogy.net/Digitale_historische_Tageszeitungen#Schlesien

https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/search/simple

https://www.europeana.eu/en/themes/newspapers

In general for German ancestors I also would refer to

https://meta.genealogy.net/?lang=en

And to find places which may not be well known it can be a good idea to search all kinds of names and variants here

https://books.google.de/

https://www.hathitrust.org/

https://archive.org/

These pages often come up with old official administration books, like the Amtsblätter or Adressbücher or Urkundenbücher, describing places and the surrounding area or with personal information about the people who lived there.

I know it is not much that I can help directly with your family but from my own experience I can say that I sometimes found information in very unexpected places. When traveling is not an option we have to become creative in finding sources or ideas online to make progress.

Sabine

thank you very much for your help! I will sear all these sites and hope I find something of the Walter and Seidel families!! Thank you , Claudia