This commentary focuses on the personal and historical context of Jacobi’s early years in Munich: It provides explanatory material on his circle of acquaintances, the operations of the reorganized Bavarian Academy of Sciences, which Jacobi presided over as president beginning in the summer of 1807; the controversy between Bavarian scholars and the newly appointed »North German« scholars; the debate surrounding Schelling’s philosophy of nature; and the turbulent political events marked by the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalition Wars and Bavaria’s alliance with France