The Nuremburg Space Battle in 1561
- wumbo william
- Sep 9
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 11
I wanted to start my writings in the more conspiratorial sense with a good example of a genuinely unexplainable phenomenon that occurred in history. Most people tend to think that all alien or UFO stories are just extrapolations of naturally occurring events, and while this does tend to be true, there are a few outliers that people gloss over. One of the outliers I'll be discussing today is the Celestial Phenomenon that occurred in 1561 Nuremburg. The story is complicated, so I'll throw you into the deep end to start.
I think the best way to explain this story is to let one of the only public resources for it that exists, explain the situation itself.
"As the sun rose on April 14, 1561, over the German city of Nuremberg, the residents saw what they described as some kind of aerial battle take place in its glare — complete with the erratic dance of orbs, crosses, cylinders, and the appearance of a large and mysterious black arrow-shaped object — all followed by a crash-landing somewhere beyond the city limits."*
Here's the text from the broadsheet translated into English:
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 Hans Glaser, letter-painter of Nuremburg.
Now, this is a pretty fantastical story with a lot of elements that shroud it in mystery. The people who witnessed this event took it directly as a sign from God, but as shown in the broadsheet, they were not fully sure what it meant. Even Glaser himself seems to remark on how meaningless this event felt compared to something like a natural disaster, or disease, which had been turned into religious phenomena in that era. People clearly "discarded" these signs, with many people "ridiculing" them. Glaser seems to want people to respect these signs as indecipherable messages from God. The "wrath" seems to be something people questioned, but they didn't feel it was socially acceptable to do so.
Now I'll move onto the skeptical viewpoints of this event and explain why each one bends logic to fit into this story. The first one is that this event was natural, and was actually a "sundog", a light phenomenon. This is an example of a "sundog":
As you can see here, there is an argument to be made about this event being a sundog. The arcs shown in the broadsheet could've been interpretations of the arcs shown here in the light, with the spears and movement being illusions of perspectives of the sky. However, there's something that throws a pretty deep wrench into this idea. I'm going to zoom into the broadsheet to show this.
In the broadsheet image, and the text description, the major element that is left out is how the spheres "became fatigued and fell to the ground and wasted away with immense smoke". I find it hard to believe that if this event was a sundog, that the people of 1561 Europe would extrapolate a crash landing. It seems like this would be an extremely specific detail to just create out of thin air, especially when relating to something that could be "alien" technology. Or some kind of higher life interacting with us.
Another skeptical viewpoint is relating to a book that was published a year earlier (it was published multiple times in different locations) by Vannoccio Biringuccio, that is considered the first book in Europe about Metallurgy*. The article about the space battle by The Public Domain describes a theory that maybe someone in Nuremburg might've been experimenting with rocketry, explaining the "falling to the ground in smoke", and the various shapes described "fighting". And I guess it is a decent explanation, as it ties everything together in a neat bow.
But I think it's odd to read the broadsheet text, envision that the entire city witnessed some ancient rockets get launched, and think that those rockets could've appeared like godlike magic. If the logic here is that a socially influential book about rocketry being published in Europe means it can relate to any type of unexplainable phenomenon, then I find it unexplainable why the citizens of Nuremburg didn't recognize it as so. If this book could've been the explanation for this, then to believe a random citizen created this event, is to believe any random citizen could've known about the book itself. It seems paradoxical that they'd identify this event as a large, religious moment that everyone in the city could see.
Another argument to be made is that it was just a meteor shower. But generally, meteor showers don't present as described in the broadsheet as illustrated. The crashing down to the earth and burning up could make you think of a meteor shower, but generally most meteors never make it to Earth any bigger than a sand grain*. Even if this was a larger meteor shower, the event described arcs, spheres, long cylinders, and black spears "moving in and away from the sun", which likely means that they were moving close to Earth, covering the sun in a back and forth motion. Also, there are records of meteor showers going all the way back to 600 BC. It was common for people to take religious interpretations of weather phenomenon, but even in this case, the people seemed confused. It almost reads in the broadsheet as if people are used to seeing certain messages from God, but this message confused them.
You could make many arguments that what truly happened is unclear, as many weather events in Europe were personified into art. The smiling sun in the broadsheet was something seen a lot:
Even Hans Glaser, the illustrator of the broadsheet, could be an unreliable source. He also depicted "blood rain", a sign of the apocalypse. This turned out to be rain affected by iron and sand deposits, and is a common phenomenon around the world.
However, even when looking at this, there is cultural and political context to be brought up. The image shown here is a lot less insane looking, to be quite frank. He did take a religious interpretation of a natural event, but that was Europe at the time. Many of them did this, and often times it was for personal reasons. What's important to do here is to see through the lens of murky information, and see the human behavior. People questioned God when they saw the space battle. People were confused and had no idea what they were seeing. The blood rain was a typical sign of the apocalypse depicted in religions, and is a lot less out of that era's comfort zone of understanding. If aliens or UFOs really did exist, ancient Europeans would absolutely see them as a sign of God. It sounds like very understandable human behavior.
I'm not suggesting a religious explanation either, not necessarily. I think something really did happen here that isn't well explained by any of the current versions of the story. What is interesting to note, is that there are more examples of things like this story in various ancient art pieces:
The point that I'm making here is that UFOs have a historical precedence long before the modern age. They were not seen as aliens, but often as some kind of spiritual interaction with God, or higher beings. There is a real argument to be made without forcing a conclusive answer on top of it. I'm not sure exactly how this all connects together, but what I do know, is that something happened many times throughout history with this phenomenon. UFOs, or whatever appears to be UFOs, have been around on Earth for a long time. Or, maybe people have just been seeing the exact same optical illusion or making the exact same shape and story up hundreds of times throughout history, and thousands of times in the modern age.
If you ask me, I think human perspective is skewed. They viewed it as a religious phenomenon, and saw it as a violent space battle. If I'm being elaborate, maybe it was some fabric of higher reality interacting with our own. I don't know exactly what happened, and I don't think it's the little green men from movies that did all of this. But whatever appears to be UFOs is a lot more real than people want to believe. At the very least, it has a historical precedent.
In the future, I'll go into the modern age and explain some of my favorite stories and evidence. I'm certain my evidence will not satisfy many people, but we're dealing with a subject shrouded in lies and cultural perspectives throughout history. There's bound to be alien and UFO stories that aren't true, but maybe within all of that bullshit, there's some ounce of truth.
Sources (not in order idc):