He found that he preferred singing the local Volkslieder (a genre of German folk music), which led him to become a star in East Germany.

In 1996, Hertel, along with his daughter, released the joint single Kleine Fische werden groß ("Little Fish Get Big"), a cover version of Vader Abraham's Als je weggaat, in which he sings about his daughter's early love, and the dread of her leaving her girlhood home.

On 29 November 2008, Hertel marked his 70th birthday at the Adventsfest der 100.000 Lichter ("Advent Festival of the 100,000 Lights") at the Congress Centrum Suhl.

Hertel was always setting himself to work on charitable goals, and thus he organized in August 2002 a benefit concert for victims of the flooding in Saxony earlier that year.

[7] They had four children, among them singer, media presenter and musical theatre performer Stefanie Hertel.