Hello again,

@Durro, thanks for your invitation. Yes, I am a bit intruder-like in my approach. My reaction to this thread was very spontaneous. I thought: they need an accurate translation to reason about, help them out (late at night). I am still not quite sure what this website is all about. I haven't even read anything else beside this thread - so be a bit patient with me, please. I will consider writing more about my mental infrastructure in a "Here, I am noob"-thread. Just let me say: I am a heavily tortured soul, splitted by classical romanticism of wonderous worlds of the unknown and unexpected, big fan of everything weird, phantasmagorical and highly spiritual in a cosmic sense, I fight one-dimensional positivism whereever I can. I believe firmly in multiple layers and dimensions of cosmic intelligence in holarchical orders. I love Ken Wilber. The other side in me always say: calm down, dude ! Look at the "facts", bare-boned, naked FACTS. I want facts, not conjectures and speculations (that's what the social sciences are composed of - like a bloated romantic poem of just WORDS ... frustrating ). I want to hold the Roswell UFO nanometallic material in my OWN HANDS, rubbing, tearing, biting it. Something like that.

To sum up this website in a few words:

- Politics
- Science
- Religion
- Philosophy (stay away from there )
- Economics
- Skepticism

And lots more, there is a big section for social and fun threads.

@Ihavenofingerprints, cool, thanks ! So this website is nearly about EVERYTHING. I should concentrate on just ONE topic for now .

@tnjrp, thanks for your appreciation. I will have not much time the next days to dig into this any further. I just found this very diligent analysis of the case by a German in German (sorry!):

http://www.rafa.at/29ufos.htm

The location studies are very interesting. I have to this. If this was really a Tie-Fighter battle, there should be much material left in the fields (or today: city streets ?).

Short snippet out of the chronicle of Weinsberg:

"1561 spätes, kaltes und nasses Jahr, mit vielen Nebeln und Honigthau"
= 1561 late, cold and wet year, with much fogs and honeydew

I am no stratospherical expert, but I think, halos and sundogs are not sufficient to explain this phenomenon. At least I have to look at tons of halo pics to recognize something like this complicated setup of shapes, colors and forms. If I had to describe a Star Wars battle as a 16th century chronist from my limited Christian viewpoint and down-to-earth agricultural senses, I would choose the words of Hans Glaser.

There could be a more theological approach to this topic:

1. the meaning and "culture" of "reading signs in the sky" by ordinary people in mid-16th-century Gemany (one Glaser report e.g. could be about giant mecha/robots duking it out in the sky (really!) - or just an allegorical vision of lunatic civilians with anything possible, "reading" the patterns of clouds like crazy - cause the End of the World is near and God is angry etc.)

2. the meaning and symbolism of abstract shapes (cylinders, orbs, crosses) in Christian worldviews at that time. Though Glaser clearly states, that only God knows the meaning of his signs - and some people are laughing about the events. I will translate the rest of the woodcut text sooner or later ... .

Hmh ... .

Ok. @tnjrp, your halo theory seems to be VERY plausible, considering very wet and cold conditions in April 1561 in Germany.

To summarize the important passages of the brilliant study of the German guy:

1. Nobody else than the great JUNG published a book in 1958 ("A Modern Myth - about Things Seen in the Sky", Rascher publishing house) debunking modern post-war ufomania as archetypal projections of the modern, rationalized soul. I don't want to dig into this, as JUNG is a controversial theorist in himself (though I love his conceptions (partly)). In this book he referenced our woodcut print from 1565 as a late medieval example of frenzied projection in a Christian context. Maybe JUNG's publication was responsible for the widespreading of this "source" in ufology circles ?

2. The graphical representation of halfmoon-circles in the sun is STEREOTYPICAL for the depiction of SUNDOGS and other HALOS in the time we are talking about. There are dozens of other prints and paintings of that era with very similar forms.

3. Extremely cold and foggy atmospheres can produce alot of weird structures in the sky. I could imagine a firework of halos in the ice-crystalized air where the red sun is rising in the early morning. April is a month with common unusual weather phenomena, because of the overall fast changes of temperature. Most medieval newspapers are referring to events in the sky around this month. (Transparent ?) tubes with alot of orbs inside ? Orbs in a pattern or row ? Symmetrical crosses ? Left, right, under, above symmetrical structures ? Parts moving inside and outside the SUN ? I think, that are halo patterns moving with the rising of the morning sun and the heating of air. Dissolution of the vision in "smoke" ? Morning FOG as the sun is still climbing ... . Just my imagination. I have never seen a sundog in motion.

4. There is one source cited from Gerhard Hirschmann, "Die Kirchenvisitation im Landgebiet der Reichsstadt Nürnberg 1560 und 1561" (Neustadt a/d Aisch, 1994) - an academic research paper about church politics in the rural areas of Nuremberg 1560/61. Monks are writing, that there were more Heavenly Signs of God IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS than in the past - and that in the past people have NOT PAID MUCH ATTENTION TO THEM, but NOW THEY DO (I paraphrase). The numerous phenomena would have been recorded in the numerous newspapers and books of recent times. Well, this sounds to me like a paradigm shift in interpreting nature. The late Renaissance (German) Christian opens his eyes to strange stratospherical phenomena in the sky along with the renaissance of ancient astrology and astronomy. Suddenly the sky is high and full of symbols (God's language in Nature). There must have been an INDUSTRY of books about horrible signs in the sky at this time.
Just one word: COPERNICUS („De revolutionibus orbium coelestium“, 1543). The SUN is much more powerful since him. People are frightened and unsure about the future. Too much change in too short time.

Thanks Stapledon, this was interesting information! You've already proven you can bring something of worth to a tiny part of this forum -- not bad at all for a confessed woohead

As to the "Halo theory" (which of course isn't mine precisely), in the light of what the conditions can be assumed to have been it doesn't indeed sound at all far-fethced. It's unclear from the article I think if the writer was in fact among the eyewitnesses so there may have been some exaggeration involved as well.

Isn't it possible that a rift in the fabric of spacetime caused a projection of a WWII aerial battle to appear in the sky over Nuremberg ?

Sure! Everything is possible!

Wait no, that's not quite it...

My first thought - "1561- late, cold and wet year, with much fogs and honeydew...."

Acid or rather LSD

You're welcome, tnjrp! The honor goes to the German researcher(s) I have pointed at above. But I am proud of my Copernicus hint. It's the key to understand the "reading the sky"-phenomenon about 1550. What's a "woohead" ? My dictionary failed me. Some kind of dizzy daydreamer ? Yes, I am ... . Alien Crap Stuff usually makes me high. But I am quite skeptical, if scientific interpretation of historical source material is the task. I cannot stand myths in academical History. By the way, academical History is full of (written) myths. Myth-weaving is the real core discipline of academic History since its beginnings in ancient times. Big problem: multiperspective, subjective, biased myth-creation. There are no coherent theories in academic History - nobody can explain the evolution of mankind in all its cultural aspects sufficiently.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Glaser

Correction of myself: our discussed woodprint is dated 1566, not 1565. Yes, he could have been an eyewitness of the event. He is enrolled in the official town books as a "formcutter, letterpainter and letterprinter" since 1538 until his death 1573 in Nuremberg. He is a very important and informative source for German history for his era, well-known and collected in museums/libraries all over Europe. We should take his accounts seriously.

Some Renaissance Halo phenomena prints/paintings:

http://www.meteoros.de/halo/halo1.htm

@twistor59, no way, as the description would have been totally different. Unless there were gigantic motherships, carriers of ball-shaped fighters and Imperial Dreadnoughts in the skies of WWII - but, boy, what a story ... .

@byofrcs, maybe "Schwarzes Bilsenkraut" (Hyoscyamus niger) at that times. Highly toxical "witch" ingredient. You'll see the Madonna in da Sky for sure . People mixed it with beer in Germany (since 1516 illegally) on a regular basis in the times we're talking about .

I'm going to go with Merlin having to use the Ancient weapons system in Antarctica to deal with a nosy System lord extant at the time.

@Alan C, nice try, but Merlin was dead at least 1000 years in 1561. Unless he's a magical (of course) LIFE-PROLONGER or even UNDEAD. I should consider that, you're right. Do you mean, the NAZIs fleeing to their prebuilt Antarctica-bases in 1944/45 knew they could reactivate the GREAT MACHINE OF THE OLD ONES, if they find a way to clean it from nasty Shoggoths ? Explain ... .

just fifty years later, considering the technology of the time, the King James Bible was ready for distribution...