It wasn't added, per se, it was there in 1920. Silent films like this and Nosferatu were often tinted as a less expensive process to using color. Daytime scenes were normally yellow with night scenes blue and other tints used to produce moods, like sepia and green. However, once silent films became old hat thanks to "talkies" starting around 1929, studios lost interest in their old silent catalogue and most subsequent screenings were straight-up black and white prints that were often projected too quickly (silent films usually ran 15-18 frames per second, and the industry settled on 24 frames per second once sound came along because this frame rate produced higher sound fidelity), so the result was the films looked comical and sped up.
Only recently with the advent of film preservation societies and serious interest in restoring these classics have efforts been made to recreate the original tints the films had upon their release, often after painstakingly tracking down old release prints that are in bad shape and doing comparisons.
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