The writer is Klabund [real name Alfred Henschke].The pages are hand-coloured by Seewald. Images and poems reflect that cheery optimism and bravado that marked European culture in the months culminating in the beginning of the First World War. Seewald was born in 1889 and died in 1976.He was training as an architect in Munich until he decided to make his living as an artist/illustrator, contributing drawings to Jugend, Meggendorfer's Blatter (Munich) and the Die Lustigen Blätter (Berlin). His attitude to the War must have been a complex one, he was exempted from military service because of his tubercular condition, and in 1911 had travelled to London to marry his fiancée.

The later part of his career saw him associate himself with Mediterranean culture, and his own Foundation is today based at the Ascona Museum of Modern Art, near Lake Maggiori.