The Burgermeister, Germany's Chief Municipal Magistrate

The title bürgermeister first appears in German municipal history during the early part of the thirteenth century, but the exact nature of the tasks imposed upon the official at this period still remains obscured in the darkness of the Middle Ages. We know that there were such officers, and we know something as to the method of their election, but very little as to the extent of their real power. Probably, however, as Von Maurer suggests, the bürgermeister had originally no other duty than that of presiding over the civic council, a simple function, to which came later to be added a general oversight of current affairs and the enforcing of city ordinances.Considerably more, however, may be learned as to the duties of this officer in the seventeenth century, when the franchise had become more and more restricted and the number of town officers much smaller, and when, partly as a result of this decrease and partly in consequence of the awakening industrial life of the period, there had come to be an increase in the importance of town officials, and naturally among the rest in that of the chief magistrate.