Vom unwilligen, unfähigen Schulzen zum kompetenten Bürgermeister?

This article considers the role of the local village mayors in East Elbian Prussia and Bavaria during the second half of the 19th century. These actors played an important part in the process of state expansion, but it is still unclear how the unpaid mayors were able to meet the challenges of everyday action between the local community and the state. This problem is explored in this paper on the basis of administrative and local sources as well as different kinds of contemporary instructions. It is shown that long-term learning processes as well as the growing autonomy of local communities made it more likely that village mayors became experienced ›players‹ in meeting the everyday administrative and political demands.