The lithographs that he created in 1913 are among the highlights of Nolde's oeuvre of prints. Along with the present “Junges Paar" (Young Couple), it is also the “Tänzerin" (Dancer) and the "Heiligen drei Könige" (Three Kings). These large-format sheets are among the most sought-after ones on the auction market. His graphic works are those of a painter. He refuses to work with transfer paper and draws directly on the litho stone with a brush. The direct, immediate design and, above all, the indefinitely free use of color inspired the painter and encouraged his desire to experiment. For Nolde, the graphic techniques of etching, woodcut and lithography were not subordinate to oil painting and watercolors. The color lithographs in particular enabled him to render the motif in almost unlimited ways. He printed about 68 different copies of the "Junges Paar". "I was able to do as I liked. I rubbed the colors in, and I always stood there drawing, etching, grinding, mixing, weighing, switching between colors and bringing out the large pictures from the press, almost all of them in the most varied of nuances and states ." (Emil Nolde, Jahre der Kämpfe, 1967, p. 261) For this very intensive study of lithography, Nolde rented a room at the Flensburg printing workshop Westphalen. He presumably found inspiration for the motif of the "Young Couple" in the metropolis Berlin, where Ada and Emil Nolde had their first home after they got married in 1902. They spend the summers in Jutland and Flensburg. In May 1903, the couple moved into a fisherman's house in Alsen, where they lived until 1916. Nolde maintained a studio in Berlin and so the couple spent a lot of time in Berlin enjoiyng its diverse nightlife. Due to the financially precarious situation of the young couple, Ada worked as a singer in a variety show. Emil Nolde may have found inspiration for the lithograph "Junges Paar" during an evening out in Berlin: the young couple in stately attire - he in tails, she in a kimono - could be on their way to a party or they may have been actors at a theater. The actual identity of these two is secondary. The theme of the present work is the tension between the two sexes and the different emotional readings, as suggested by the different color combinations. In just eight weeks of collaboration with the Westphalen lithography studio in Flensburg, Nolde created his most important and most beautiful lithographs, which are among the most important work of expressionist print art. [SM]