He accepted the chair in the newly created discipline of History of Art (Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte) in Berlin in 1872[1] and remained there the rest of his life.

Grimm's art history writing is characteristic of the period consolidation of standards following the unification of Germany, known as the Gründerzeit.

Grimm's Beiträge zur deutschen Culturgeschichte, essays about important cultural personalities, appeared in 1897.

This approach to art history is shared by other historians of his time, including Carl Justi, but was personally savaged in the lectures of Anton Springer.

Perhaps because formal analysis and the sanctity of viewing the original work of art mattered so little to him, he was among the first to use lantern slides (reproductive images) in his lectures.

His emotional approach to art-historical debate, as evidenced by the Holbein Madonna incident, proved his allegiances were usually closer to nationalism than art history.

In Germany, his concept of the [German] hero as a mover of history was embraced by the Nazis, who saw to it that new and repackaged versions of his writings, such as Vom Geist der Deutschen (1943), appeared up until the war's end.