(a)
Mayor of a
German municipality, with senior executive and judicial powers. The name is also used in
Switzerland and
Austria.
In Germany, their mayoral responsibilities are taught to them at university courses devoted to municipal management, and as such burgermeisters are professionals in their own right. Burgermeisters are usually appointed by an elected body of town councillors for considerably long terms - including in some cases for life. They typically rise from the town hall bureaucracy before donning their mayoral robes for the first time; after that the next logical step in their career is to become mayor in a town more important than their heimat.
(b) A hamburger occasionally produced by McDonalds that has nothing to do with German local governmental affairs.