An April 1561 broadsheet byHans Glaser described a mass sighting of celestial phenomena orunidentified flying objects (UFO) aboveNuremberg (then aFree Imperial City of theHoly Roman Empire).Ufologists have speculated that these phenomena may have beenextraterrestrial spacecraft. Skeptics assert that the phenomenon was likely to have been another atmospheric phenomenon, such as asun dog,[1] although the print does not fit the usual classic description of the phenomena.[2][3]
Abroadsheet news article printed in April 1561 describes a mass sighting of celestial phenomena. The broadsheet, illustrated with awoodcut and text byHans Glaser, measures 26.2 centimetres (10.3 in) by 38.0 centimetres (15.0 in). The document is archived in the prints and drawings collection at theZentralbibliothek Zürich inZürich,Switzerland.[4]
According to the broadsheet, around dawn on 14 April 1561, "many men and women" of Nuremberg saw what the broadsheet describes as an aerial battle "out of the sun", followed by the appearance of a largeblack triangular object and exhausted combatant spheres falling to earth in clouds of smoke. The broadsheet claims that witnesses observed hundreds of spheres, cylinders, and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead. The woodcut illustration depicts objects of various shapes, including crosses (with or without spheres on the arms), small spheres, two large crescents, a black spear, and cylindrical objects from which several small spheres emerged and darted around the sky at dawn.
The text of the broadsheet has been translated by Ilse Von Jacobi as follows:
In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates and in the country – by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth 'as if they all burned' and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen. By Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg.[5]
 | You can helpexpand this section with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (April 2023)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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According to authorJason Colavito, the woodcut broadsheet became known in modern culture after being published inCarl Jung's 1958 bookFlying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, a book which analyzed the archetypal meaning of UFOs.[6] Jung expressed a view that the spectacle was most likely a natural phenomenon with religious and military interpretations overlying it. "If the UFOs were living organisms, one would think of a swarm of insects rising with the sun, not to fight one another but to mate and celebrate the marriage flight."[7]
A military interpretation would view the tubes as cannons and the spheres ascannonballs, emphasize the black spearhead at the bottom of the scene, and Glaser's own testimony that the globes fought vehemently until exhausted. A religious view would emphasize the crosses. Jung thinks the images of four globes coupled by lines suggested crossed marriage quaternities and forms the model for "the primitive crosscousin marriage". He also posited that it could also be an individuation symbol and that the association of sunrise suggests "the revelation of the light".[7]
Inufology, the broadsheet is repeatedly cited as evidence or proof of UFO encounters andvisits by extraterrestrials earlier in human history. Alleged descriptions of numerous witness accounts, interpreted as "violent appearances" and "fighting" are used as reasoning to suggest that UFOs engaged in conflict in the sky.[8]
