Nuremberg leaflet from 1561
The Nuremberg Sky Spectacle of 1561 is an unusual event that is said to have occurred over the city of Nuremberg on April 14, 1561 . The incident was recorded by letter painter and printer Hans Wolff Glaser both in writing and in pictures on a colored leaflet (known as the Nuremberg leaflet of 1561 ).
The Nuremberg leaflet from 1561 shows and describes an alleged celestial phenomenon in front of the rising sun, in which numerous spherical , cross and cylindrical objects in the sky are said to have "fought" with each other. The report is discussed among historians and meteorologists , but also in frontier and protosciences . Ufology in particular shows keen interest in the leaflet, as in the report it contains, in their opinion, a sky battle between unknown flying objectsis described. Meteorologists, on the other hand, see the painting as an artistically interpretive representation of a natural halo appearance. Historians suspect a pictorial mixture of several historical and natural events that occurred independently of time. They rate the report written by Hans Glaser as a hearsay report embellished with religious interpretations and warnings . Hans Glaser's Nuremberg leaflet is not the only one of its kind, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries , leaflets with reports on alleged "miraculous signs" and " heavenly spectacles " were widespread and popular.
Description of the leaflet
The upper half of the leaflet is dominated by a hand-colored , large-format woodcut, the lower half is occupied by the accompanying text in old German script . Both the illustration and the text are from Hans Glaser.
The illustration shows the city of Nuremberg on the left and the St. Leonhard district on the right, which was still independent at the time . The picture shows the church of the same name “St. Leonhard “in flames, cannonballs seem to crash onto the roof. A cannon protrudes from a house directly behind the church, and two thick columns of smoke rise from it. In the background, further districts that were independent at this time can be seen. The rising sun implies that the viewer is looking to the east and thus turning his back to the west. In the middle of the picture is the sun with a human face, her eyes looking slightly to the right. Two crescent moon shapes can be seen behind the sun, and numerous spheres, crosses and tubes or cylinders are loosely arranged around the sun . The cylindrical formations alternately contain three to five spheres, some of these spheres just protrude from the cylinders. Under the sun, shifted slightly to the left, an oversized, pitch-black spearhead can be seen, the pointed end of which points to the left, towards the city.
The leaflet is now kept in the Zurich Central Library ( Switzerland ). For unknown reasons, it was cut into two parts and mounted on two sheets of paper. According to the library, it comes from the private collection of Johann Jakob Wick and was originally part of his Wickiana leaflet collection .
Place of events
The center of the events is said to have been the city of Nuremberg , the report comes from Hans Wolff Glaser. According to him, the spectacle began in the early morning of April 14, 1561 around six or seven o'clock and lasted just over an hour. The apparition was visible to a large number of local witnesses in and around Nuremberg.
Event description
According to the leaflet, a frightening apparition was observed in the sky over Nuremberg on the morning of April 14, 1561 around six or seven o'clock:
Original text
Anno MD LXI. On the XIIII. April day in the morning between Aim go and the next / that is in the morning between 4 and 5 at the small clock / is a very frightening face on the sun as it appeared in the rise / and in Nuremberg in the city and in front of the thor and seen in the country by many mañs and weybs people. First of all, the sun is semicircularly streaked with two blood colors / uniformly where the monn appeared and was seen in the lower / in the middle of the sun / and in the sun / above / below / and on top there were blood colors / and one of the most naked or eyed colors also black color round ball stood / same same on bayden seytten and ringscheyben around the sun / its blood red like that / and the other ball in number a lot / about three inside the length / among weylen four inside a square rod / also several aintzig / And between such balls he also saw some blood color Creutz and between such creutz and balls his blood color streyme hinden thick / and out front / a little more supple than crouching rhor / been mixed with one everywhere / sampt among other things two large rorn / one to the right / and the other one to the left is standing / in which small and large rorn / to dreyen / there were four or more balls. This all started to streak with each other / the ball was so first light in the sun / out on the / so to be both stood / felt / so the ones who were so out sampled the balls out of the small and big rorn / inside the sun Farned into it / to that the Ror have just as much fought the ball among each other / and fiercely fought and fought everything with each other / When a good one paused / And as the Streyt the one weyl in the sun in / and out in turn most fiercely outwards and frowned / so dulled with each other / Is it all as forgiven from the sun / from the Hymel down to the earth regardless of whether it all burned / and with a great steam down the earth afterwards passed. According to all of this, a black spear / that creates from the rise / and the points to the lower course has been seen in a large, thick and long way inside. But what such zeychen mean / is God only knows / but we briefly on each other / so much and many zeychen have on the Hymel / that Almighty God / of our sinful life / so that he would like to punish us and lure us / reads to appear / so we are leyder so indefatigable / that we despise such high zeychen and miracle work of God / also speak mockingly of it / and inn winds beat / provision it will be God for the sake of our indecision / send a horrible taut / but the god-fearing will in no way Despise / but all this warning of your gracious father in the hymel / mend your life / ask God faithfully / that he will turn away his cheap anger / sampt the well-deserved punishment from us / so that we all his children here time / and live there forever may God help us all / amen.
- Bey Hanns Glaser letter painter / to Nürmberg.
Translation into modern New High German
In the year 1561, on April 14th towards morning, between daybreak and afterwards (between four and five in the morning on the small clock), a terrible face appeared in the sun, just as it was rising, and in Nuremberg in the city, seen in front of the gate and in the country by many men and women. At first, with the sun, two blood-red, semicircular lines appeared behind it, arched and like the waning moon, shimmering through the sun above and below and blood-colored on each side. Around the sun numerous spheres, some of them bluish or iron-colored, as well as black, round spheres could be seen. More of them were blood red and positioned in a ring on either side of the sun. Still others appeared in rows of three, others were arranged in squares. Blood-red crosses could be seen between the latter. And between all these balls and crosses were blood-red welts in the background. Sleek, hollow pipes also mingled in this picture. There were also three large pipes, one on the left hand, one on the right, and a third above the whole. And there were four or more balls seen in those tubes. All this has started to quarrel with one another: the bullets first flew into the sun, then out again and hit each other, and soon the big pipes also began to fire bullets and shoot each other. For a good hour everyone argued and fought violently with one another, climbing up and down in front of the sun and struggling to the point of exhaustion. Finally - as it was reported - all objects slowly sank down from heaven to earth, as if they wanted to set everything on fire and finally they went to the ground with a lot of steam and dissolved. After this spectacle, a uniform, large and thick black spear, with a shaft to the east and a point to the west, was seen in the sky. But what such signs mean only God knows. But since we have so many and different signs in heaven in quick succession that Almighty God lets appear - as if he wanted to stimulate and entice us to repent because of our sinful life - we are unfortunately so ungrateful that we have such signs and miracles of God despise, talk mockingly about it and ignore it. It is to be feared that God will send us a terrible punishment for the sake of our ingratitude. However, those who fear God will by no means despise him, but rather all those will heed the warning of their gracious Father in heaven, improve their lives and faithfully serve God, so that he may avert his righteous anger and the well-deserved punishment from us. So that we as his children may live here temporarily, there forever.
May God help us all in this. Amen.
By Hans Glaser, letter painter in Nuremberg.
Interpretations and interpretations
Ufological interpretations
In ufology, the Nuremberg leaflet is repeatedly used as an indication or even proof of alleged UFO encounters and visits by extraterrestrials in earlier times. The background to this are the alleged descriptions of the numerous "witness reports", understood as "violent appearances" and "fighting events", which are supposed to suggest UFOs fighting in the sky.
The UFO researcher , astronomer and skeptic Jacques Vallee contradicts this and points out that it is conspicuous that the numerous premodern reports on "miraculous signs" and "heavenly spectacles" sometimes give the same description of the event. The reports with their always the same content would not change in their basic structure even over the centuries and the objects involved in the event were always the same. It is always about spheres, balls and / or disc-shaped objects of astonishing maneuverability , which fought against the sun in the sky and in space . Likewise, the formation of the objects , described in the same way, and the very long duration of the events are thought-provoking. In addition, in the numerous texts, although they come from different decades and centuries , the same clichés and phrases are always used to describe the events. And each of these events was reported to religious , administrative and scientific authorities and published on leaflets.
Jaques Vallee asks himself on the one hand whether it would be right to ascribe all these reports today for the sake of convenience to various natural phenomena and to leave it at that, since alternative interpretations could not easily be ruled out. On the other hand, it is unlikely that the technology behind the supposed extraterrestrial flying objects will not develop further in the reports over the centuries and that the extraterrestrials involved always seem to be the same. In addition, neither the purpose nor a motive for such sky battles are apparent.
Historiological interpretations
Skeptics and historians , such as Ulrich Magin , first draw attention to two serious inconsistencies in Glaser's woodcut: for example, it is not clear why the famous Imperial Castle is missing from the depiction of the city, although it was the emblem of Nuremberg in Glaser's time. On the other hand, the woodcut shows the St. Leonhard Church in flames, although it was completely destroyed in a fire in 1508 and only rebuilt in 1560. According to the Nuremberg city documents, Hans Glaser stayed in the city between 1540 and 1571; he must have known this historical event. According to Magin, the historical and chronological discrepancies in the woodcut reinforce the assumption that the Nuremberg leaflet mixed several events and natural celestial phenomena that took place at different times. The text, embellished with religious warnings, suggests that Glaser was apparently never an eyewitness to the miracle himself, but rather drew partly from hearsay , partly from natural history reports and documents.
A frequently recurring motif can also be seen in the presentation and Glazer's report: that of the apocalyptic horsemen and the “heavenly armies”. It is about two hostile armies of divine origin who appear in heaven to wage a wild battle in front of the eyes of all believers until one of the armies is defeated. Then the victorious army miraculously disappears and the report closes with a religiously instructive admonition. Heavenly armies and apocalyptic horsemen were (and are) seen as harbingers of approaching doom, or as the announcement of the end of the world and the Last Judgment .
For comparison, Magin refers to early modern leaflets in which very similar "miraculous signs" and "heavenly battles" are described, for example in a leaflet by Leonhardt Kellner from the year 1551. What they all have in common are above all the "flying balls, crosses and spearheads" that are mostly seen near the sun and that, according to eyewitnesses, attack each other, “as if they were at war with one another,” as the famous Basel leaflet of 1566 puts it. According to Magin, Hans Glaser had merely adapted the representation of such a "sky battle" to his time, both technologically and appropriately: instead of horses, riders and swords, he lets modern cannons and their projectiles fight each other in his leaflet. What all leaflets have in common is that they either mix actual, historical events with natural sky phenomena (for example halos and northern lights ) or simply parody them in a religious form . The “flying pipes” from the Nuremberg leaflet therefore do not show “mother ships” or “UFOs”, but actually what they depict: cannons filled with bullets and firing bullets. In the pictures they are only shown floating in the air to show the symbolic reference to God and heaven.
Magin finally points out that reports of alleged "sky battles" were already very popular in antiquity and especially in the Middle Ages and were written down in surprisingly large numbers and distributed on leaflets and woodcuts . At this time the Christian religion had a great influence on everyday life and the worldview of ordinary people and interpreted celestial phenomena of all kinds as "divine miracle signs" or as "warning signs of God". Correspondingly, the images are also strewn with Christian symbols. Through such leaflets and miracle reports, pious people saw themselves “exhorted by God” to confess to him and to remain faithful to him. Therefore, a report like that of Glaser would not be surprising, since the people in his day would have known how to interpret the leaflet correctly.
Other skeptics, such as Wiebke Schwarte , also urge people to look at leaflets about “miraculous signs” with caution. It is not advisable to take the reports contained therein literally, since most of them are warnings commissioned by the Church. Its purpose was less scientific education and more ecclesiastical propaganda and manipulation , and its popularity was exploited by the church. The urge to repent and confess can be easily read from the admonishing and instructive final texts. This is underpinned by the often strong exaggerations in the event descriptions as well as the unnecessarily polyscenic representations, which may point to natural natural phenomena, but themselves seem exaggerated. Early modern leaflets such as the Nuremberg leaflet are therefore sometimes more comparable to today's tabloids .
Meteorological interpretations
The meteorology is concerned with early modern leaflets on which "heavenly miracles" can be seen. The background to this is the observation that real celestial phenomena of all kinds are depicted in many representations. The most common of these sky spectacles include halos, sunsets, solar eclipses , lunar eclipses , northern lights and falling stars . According to meteorologists, the famous Nuremberg leaflet from 1561 very likely recorded a morning halo phenomenon including several suns . According to Frank Johnson, this is supported by the two “crescent crescents”, which were probably moved behind the sun for reasons of space, and the fact that, according to the report, the event dragged on silently for over an hour. The large black "spearhead" is possibly due to so-called cloud rays (also called "twilight shadows"). Since Hans Glaser mentions an increase in “heavenly miraculous signs” in “recent times”, it is also conceivable for Johnson that several celestial phenomena perceived at different times were artistically combined in the painting.
Similar events
Ulrich Magin and Carl Gustav Jung refer to very similar reports about “terrible signs of miracles” and “heavenly spectacles”, which are also recorded on colored and black and white leaflets and woodcuts and all from the years 1550–1570 and even later.
Plecher heavenly spectacle
On June 1 , 1554 the local resident Leonhardt Kellner as well as the parish priest and "the whole community" observed a blood-red "stripe" over the rising sun over Plech in the early morning . Then "blue balls and stars" appeared, as well as "riders" who fought against each other with long " lances ". As in the Nuremberg leaflet, all observed objects are said to have slowly sunk into the horizon, then the riders and the stars came down "to the Markgrund" and rose again with a loud rustling towards the sun. Then the riders fought on for more than two hours and "gradually passed".
Basel sky spectacle
Somewhat better known is a leaflet that was printed by Samuel Apiarius in Basel around 1566 and reports about a "strange figure in the sky". The picture shows the Münsterplatz with the Antistitium . The main witness was a "writer of the holy scriptures and art student in Basel" named Samuel Coccius . According to tradition, are on three days (on 25 and 28 July and on 7 August ) of the year 1566 have been observed over Basel "whimsical" each sunrise and sunset: the first time the sun was "blood-colored" and " without shine and shine ”, the moon rising the following night also turned blood red. The second time the sun was rising again, it was so red that everything it shone on looked like it was "bloody". On the morning of August 7th, “many large, black balls in the air” ( vil big black spheres in the air ) were seen before the rising sun and appeared in front of the sun. The black balls would initially have moved in front of and next to the sun, but then they would “have flown back and forth with great speed and speed and crashed into one another as if they were fighting a fight. Some of them became red and fiery, disintegrated and then went out “( with great rapidity and speed they resented one another, as it were, those who were fighting / whose quite a few were raw and forfeited / subsequently perished and extinguished ). The Basel report also ends with a Christian warning.
Further comparison pieces
Oxford meteorite fall of 1628
A colored woodcut from 1628 which was made in Oxford ( England ) and reports of a meteorite fall. On 9 April of that year the residents heard in and around Oxford a loud bang like a cannon shot after "brighter than three suns tail" saw a man fall from the sky. According to Ulrich Magin, the color woodcut is so remarkable because the decline of the meteorite itself has been compared to a heavenly host of riders and gunners fighting and the painting actually shows two cannons in the clouds shooting at each other with bullets. In the center of the image, armed riders can be seen attacking each other under three suns.
Northern lights
The northern lights were also regarded as a “terrible warning sign of God” in Central Europe until the late 18th century. Since the Nuremberg leaflet of 1561 was created at a time when apparently many "miraculous signs in the sky" were observed, it is hardly surprising for historians that the reports about the northern lights (for example about Basel, Nuremberg, Milan and Strasbourg ) also include these rewrite with "armies fighting in heaven" and "fiery splendor" and the texts are concluded with Christian-Biblical warnings. This scheme coincides well with the Nuremberg leaflet.
literature
- William J. Birnes: The Everything UFO Book: An investigation of sightings, cover-ups, and the quest for extraterrestrial life . Adamas Media, 2011, ISBN 1-4405-2647-8 .
- Robert Greenler: Rainbows, Halos and Glories . CUP Archives, Cambridge (NY) 1990, ISBN 0-521-38865-1 .
- Carl Gustav Jung: A modern myth: of things that are seen in the sky . Rascher-Verlag, Zurich / Stuttgart 1958.
- Wiebke Schwarte: Northern lights . Waxmann, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-89325-785-3 .
- Jacques Vallee, Chris Aubeck: Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times . Penguin Books, 2010, ISBN 1-101-44472-X .
- JC Vintner: Ancient Earth Mysteries . AEM Publishing, Portland 2011, ISBN 1-4662-5524-2 .
Web links
- Short article with pdf link on ufo-information.de (German).
- Another article on ancientaliensdebunked.com .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b William J. Bulbs: The Everything UFO Book . Pp. 19-21.
- ↑ a b Robert Greenler: Rainbows, Halos and Glories . Pp. 106-109.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ulrich Magin: A UFO in 1561? - PDF document (German).
- ↑ a b Wiebke Schwarte: Northern Lights . Pp. 88-99.
- ↑ a b c d Carl Gustav Jung: A modern myth . Pp. 94-97.
- ↑ Wiebke Schwarte: Northern Lights . Pp. 7-9.
- ↑ Notes: Long s (ſ) and round r (ꝛ) are rendered like s and r ; u and v have been adapted according to the sound (e.g. and instead of vnd , so much instead of souiel ).
- ↑ a b Jaques Vallee: Wonders in the Sky . Page 125.
- ↑ Wiebke Schwarte: Northern Lights . Pp. 23-26.
- ↑ Frank Johnson: Nuremburg 1561 UFO "Battle" debunked on ancientaliensdebunked.com ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
