AbstractWe discuss a variational ground state wave function for the symmetric periodic Anderson model with commensurate spin density order. The energy of this ansatz is evaluated in closed form. Our approach generalizes a variational treatment proposed recently by Strack and Vollhardt and results in significantly lower energy. Contrary to the Gutzwiller ansatz the wave function recovers the Schrieffer‐Wolff limit for large Coulomb repulsion. We clarify the relation of our approach to unrestricted Hartree‐Fock and present a comparison with existing quantum Monte Carlo calculations for one dimens