Introduction

The introductory chapter traces the origins of the author’s quest for the Detmold story and places this story in the context of the late nineteenth to early twentieth-century ‘Golden Age of Illustration’. Though the lives and work of the Detmold twins – Charles Maurice (1883‒1908) and Edward Julius (1883‒1957) – have attracted growing interest in recent years, confusions and lacunae in accounts of their lives persist. The chapter examines the challenges of researching their biographies and considers the important light which their artistic work sheds both on key themes in the cultural life of early twentieth-century Europe, and on broader, and continuingly relevant, issues of art, nature and war.