Georg von Hertling

Georg Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Hertling was born 31 August 1843, a Catholic intellectual in a Prussia long suspicious of both. He rose through Bavaria's political ranks in the Centre Party, serving as foreign minister and minister president before Berlin called. On 1 November 1917, with the war grinding toward collapse, he became imperial chancellor and Prussian minister president - the first politician, not general or bureaucrat, to hold both posts. But Hertling belonged to the Centre's conservative wing: he believed power flowed from the emperor, not parliament, and he refused the reforms that might have steadied the throne. By 30 September 1918 he was out, the government fell, and two months later so did the Reich. He died 4 January 1919, the old order already gone.