Space Wars Over Nuremberg: Hans Glaser’s 1561 Art On Alien Space Craft Wars

On April 14, 1561, the residents of Nuremberg awoke to a bewildering spectacle in the predawn sky, an event immortalized just ten days later in a broadsheet crafted by the local printer and artist Hans Glaser. Measuring approximately 26 by 38 centimeters, this single-sheet publication featured a dramatic woodcut illustration depicting a chaotic aerial melee: spheres, cylinders, crosses, and blood-red arcs clashing across the face of the rising sun, culminating in the descent of a massive black triangular form and billowing clouds of smoke as exhausted combatants plummeted to earth beyond the city walls.

Glaser’s accompanying text, rendered in vivid Gothic script, recounted how, between 4 and 5 a.m., “many men and women” witnessed the “dreadful apparition” emerge from the sun’s glow, interpreting it as a divine portent amid the religious fervor of the Reformation era. Printed as one of the era’s proto-newspapers, the broadsheet served not only to document the sighting but also to sell copies, blending eyewitness testimony with moral exhortation to repentance.

Today, Glaser’s work, preserved in Zurich’s Zentralbibliothek, captivates ufologists who envision it as evidence of an extraterrestrial skirmish.

Revived in modern discourse through Carl Jung’s 1958 analysis in Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, the Nuremberg broadsheet endures as a testament to humanity’s enduring gaze toward the heavens, where awe, faith, and fear converge in equal measure.