Ancestry/Genealogy

There was - to modern eyes - astonishingly little variety of names, and sometimes it seemed that there was only about 10 given names from which to choose, and only a handful of last names. Thus, as a genealogist, one thinks, "Hooray!, an unusual name that will make it much easier to research", only to find that every family had six sons, and everyone named their sons the same things for five generations, and never left the small town. Sometimes it is also amazing how closely related one can be to oneself....

My guess in this case is that there were three brothers, all sons of a man named Vulf. If, as you seem to suggest, this is an Ashkenazi family, typically children are/were not named for a living relative, and that the three brothers all named their next born son after their father. A prominent - and long lived - grandfather would also be a possibility.

There is a family tree on Ancestry.com that suggests exactly this, with Grandfather Vulf dying in 1875. Anyway, even if this is somewhat different, it gives an interesting indication of who your paternal grandfather's grandfather might have been.

I am a bit surprised that there are any records at all given the upheaval in that area over the last 150 years.