The emergence of the discipline of folklore is intimately connected to nationalism. This is especially clear with the founders of the discipline, the brothers Wilhelm (1786–1859) and Jacob (author of the Grimm's Law of comparative Indo-European linguistics) Grimm (1785–1863). The purpose of their famed project of collecting folktales from the German peasant population was primarily to (re-)create a strong German culture that could free itself from dependence on \"foreign\" cultures. One step in this project was to show that there existed a rich \"German\" mythology that could successfully compete with classical Judeo-Christian traditions. The fact that the brothers Grimm had to look for mythical histories among the contemporary peasantry was connected to the state of the source material: there were almost no texts about an ancient \"German\" mythology.