The Weimar Republic was a federal state, consisting by the end of its existence of 17 "Free States" with their own autonomous governments and regional parliaments - Landtags. The largest parties had a nationwide character. In some Free States, there were local parties, but they did not have a significant influence on imperial politics.

The exception was Bavaria, which was the second most important German state after Prussia.

The Kaiserreich was a loose federal structure in which individual German monarchies retained their own armies, tax sovereignty, and legal systems. Moreover, Bavaria even maintained a separate foreign ministry.

During the empire, in most Bavarian districts, candidates from the Catholic Center Party won elections to the Reichstag. In the 1870s, the Bavarian government, like Otto von Bismarck's government in Prussia, conducted the "Kulturkampf" – restricting the rights of the Catholic Church. Priests were forbidden to engage in political propaganda, church appointments were now dependent on state officials, the Church was ousted from the sphere of education, civil marriages were introduced, and the Jesuit order was banned. Under the pressure of repression, confessional solidarity united followers of the Roman Church throughout Germany.

The revolution of 1918 – 1919 threatened the federal character of the German state, as within the ruling "Weimar Coalition" there were strong sentiments in favor of greater centralization and unification of the Reich. As a result, the imperial government was able to take away the military, tax, and diplomatic sovereignty of the states. Nevertheless, the regions retained domestic political autonomy with their own governments, parliaments, and laws. However, to many Bavarians, even such autonomy seemed insufficient.

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly in January 1919, Bavarian Catholics still acted in a single bloc with the all-German Center Party. However, by 1920 they had finally separated into a distinct Bavarian People's Party (BVP), which defended the principle of federalism. Dominating Bavarian politics, the BVP also participated in national parliamentary elections, consistently gaining 3 – 4% of the votes.