I found out more about the history of my German SPRINGER family. My grandfather was born in Thuringia but his father Robert Karl SPRINGER was born in a small town in lower Silesia, then part of Germany but which became Poland after WWII. The SPRINGERs there lived near to Breslau and the oldest known ancestors were Gottlob SPRINGER, Johann-Georg SPRINGER and George SPRINGER who was born around 1760. There is also mention of a Christian SPRINGER in the Catholic churchbooks there, who died in the town of Rogau-Rosenau in 1703. SPRINGER was a fairly common name around those parts.