The chapter examines Jacob Grimm’s political biography and presents his long government service in German principalities, punctuated by dramatic displays of public political commitment. Faced with the conflict between rigid, patriarchal rule by monarchs to whom he was often tied as a civil servant and his own vision of the nation as a natural community of love, Grimm hoped for the eventual appearance of a loving king genuinely attached to one national people. The resulting harmony between the people and the king would, Grimm believed, resolve a key political tension of his day, namely the one between princely sovereignty and popular influence. The chapter also reconstructs the curiously thin nature of Grimm’s political beliefs. While he was confident and at times strident in debates over the territorial shape of the nation, he was less vocal on other, domestic political issues, including discussions of rights and the distribution of vital goods in a society increasingly dominated by the so-called social question. In these areas, his nationalism provided no guidance. Grimm concentrated on one dimension of political legitimacy – national self-determination – and had little to say about other aspects of governance.