The delay was due to the Kulturkampf (culture struggle) taking place in Prussia between the government under Otto von Bismarck and the Catholic Church, primarily over issues of clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments.

The experience contributed to Hertling taking a leading role in the 1876 founding of the Görres Society, a learned association for the cultivation of science in Catholic Germany.

From 1909 to 1912 he was chairman of the Centre's parliamentary group, advocating the reconciliation of German Catholicism with the predominantly Protestant and Prussian-influenced national state.

[2] The appointment of a representative of the majority party in the state parliament to the office of head of government was a first and indicated the beginning of Bavaria's parliamentarization.

Social issues were among the most pressing problems in politics, and in 1913 the Bavarian government drew up plans to provide state support for the unemployed, but these failed in the upper chamber.

After the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914, the situation in the Balkans did not come up as an issue at the meeting of the Bavarian Council of Ministers on 15 July.

When the minister president of Württemberg, Karl von Weizsäcker, suggested that a Bundesrat committee be convened to find a common position for the smaller federal states, Munich waved it off.

Frederick Augustus II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg, as a spokesman for those who wanted Germany to annex foreign territory following a presumed victory in the war, suggested to the Bavarian King Ludwig III in March 1915 that he demand from Emperor Wilhelm II, on behalf of the German princes, the dismissal of Bethmann Hollweg, who in his opinion was too weak and stood in the way of a "German peace" – i.e., one with annexations.

The simmering conflict between farmers and city dwellers caused by food shortages during the war was also played out between the parties in the Bavarian parliament and led to ministerial resignations in December 1916, although Hertling remained minister president.

Only after the failure of Bethmann's successor Georg Michaelis did Hertling, who was 74 and physically frail,[4] take over the offices of Reich chancellor and minister president of Prussia on 1 November 1917.

Hertling belonged to the right wing of the Centre Party, which in contrast to its left rejected parliamentarization – that is, having ministers responsible to parliament rather than the emperor.

Under his Reich chancellorship, the direction of the Centre and of the left-liberal Progressive People's Party, both of which wanted to show consideration for the special rights of the German states, prevailed.

[7] During Hertling's term in office, some important steps were taken toward parliamentarization and democratization, such as an envisaged electoral reform with elements of proportional representation.

When the Supreme Army Command also demanded a broader base for the government on 28 September – probably in order to place the responsibility for the defeat on the democratic parties – Hertling had no way out.