The chapter focuses on civil servants in the position of heads of district authorities, called district captains (Bezirkshauptmann) who held their office in Bohemia in 1875 and 1910. Its aim is to compare individuals from both cohorts and verify whether their social background (both their father's and father-in-law's social position) or nationality significantly affected their professional career, assessing whether these factors influenced the age at which a person attained the post o district captain.
The findings show that the position of district captain lost its exclusivity after 1900 and became open to the people coming from the lower social strata, especially in the case of Czech-speaking officials.