In the early hours of April 14, 1561, as the sun prepared to crest the rooftops of Nuremberg, the citizens of that venerable Free Imperial City were met not with the usual glow of morning, but with a spectacle that would become one of the most curious and enduring entries in the annals of pre-modern anomaly. What they saw, or believed they saw, was a celestial conflict—a cosmic battle fought in the skies above Franconia. It was a time when Europe was still bleeding from the Reformation, when broadsheets were the closest thing to a Facebook post, and when the heavens were more than just weather—they were judgment, prophecy, and, sometimes, a stage for terror.
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In 1561, Nuremberg was a place of layered identities. It was staunchly Lutheran, fiercely independent, and culturally sophisticated, with a thriving artisan class and a printing industry that punched above its weight. Yet it remained tethered to the spiritual anxieties of its time. The Protestant Reformation, barely four decades old, had shattered religious consensus. The Catholic Church no longer spoke for all, and Luther’s followers were themselves factionalizing. Apocalyptic expectations ran high, and comets, eclipses, and blood-red moons were not simply meteorological events—they were divine warnings.
Enter Hans Glaser, a letter-painter by trade, who did what every content creator from Cicero to cable news has done: he saw an audience hungry for explanation and delivered. His broadsheet, a woodcut printed in April 1561, is an arresting blend of image and text. The graphic shows spheres, crosses, rods, and a large black spear-shaped object hanging in the sky, all seemingly engaged in aerial combat. His accompanying description—rendered in blood-red terms both literal and figurative—tells of flying globes clashing for over an hour, crashing to the ground in smoke, and a final ominous appearance of the aforementioned black spear pointing westward. He concludes, in the tone of a street preacher rather than a neutral observer, that the spectacle must be a sign from God, warning a sinful and ungrateful humanity to repent.
The broadsheet was a one-off. No follow-up, no official inquiry, no mass hysteria in its wake. It faded into the stacks of Zurich’s Zentralbibliothek until the 20th century, when Swiss psychologist Carl Jung resurrected it in his 1958 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Jung, to his credit, did not argue that it was a space battle. He viewed the broadsheet as a psychological artifact, a collective projection of religious anxiety, rendered in the visual grammar of the 16th century. But like many well-meaning footnotes in the history of ideas, his inclusion of the broadsheet inadvertently gave it new life. Ufologists pounced. It soon featured in documentaries, internet forums, and ancient alien theory books, promoted as evidence of early extraterrestrial contact.
The claim that the people of Nuremberg witnessed a UFO battle is not just implausible—it is built on a foundation of misread art, misunderstood context, and wishful thinking. To accept it at face value, one must believe that extraterrestrials traveled across the galaxy to exchange laser fire in formation above a town known more for sausages and stained glass than for interstellar significance. One must also believe they chose a time and place where no telescope could follow them, and no camera could capture them, leaving only a woodcut by a man who was, essentially, an advertising artist.
More rational explanations exist and hold considerably more water. Atmospheric optics—especially the phenomenon known as a parhelion or “sun dog”—can produce multiple bright reflections near the sun, often forming arcs, halos, and even cross-like shapes. These are caused by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Add to that the potential influence of pyrotechnics—given that Vannoccio Biringuccio’s De la Pirotechnia had recently circulated, detailing the use of fireworks for both warfare and display—and it is not difficult to imagine how a dramatic display might have been artificially enhanced or misunderstood.
Skeptics like Jason Colavito and Frank Johnson have pointed out that Glaser’s broadsheet shares key features with other sixteenth-century depictions of astronomical or meteorological events. Woodcuts from this era frequently used symbolic shapes—crosses, globes, weapons—to make sense of natural phenomena or to deliver moral commentary. The artistic conventions of the day did not require realism, and Glaser was not illustrating what he saw personally. He was illustrating what others claimed to have seen, filtered through the lens of religious messaging, civic anxiety, and the commercial incentive to produce a broadsheet that would sell.
Still, the Nuremberg event endures. Why? Perhaps because it sits at the crossroads of myth and history, religion and science, fear and awe. It tells us more about ourselves than about what happened in the sky that day. In an age where people post videos of glowing orbs on TikTok and conspiracy theories bloom faster than spring mold, the broadsheet resonates. It reminds us that before there were smartphones, there were sermons; before Photoshop, there were printing presses. The impulse to turn the unknown into the extraordinary is not new. It is a habit as old as language.
Glaser warned his readers that ignoring the signs from God could bring wrath and punishment. Today, others warn that ignoring signs in the skies might blind us to truths more cosmic in scope. Yet both warnings share the same DNA. They appeal to our sense of importance, our place in the universe, and our hunger for narrative. Whether it is a divine message or an alien dogfight, we remain—as ever—eager to cast ourselves as the intended recipients.
And that, perhaps, is the most enduring mystery of all.
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