**Darstellung eines fantastischen Luftschiffs aus dem Hochzeitsfest Kaiser Leopolds I., Illustration aus: Sieg-Streit deß Lufft und Wassers Freuden-Fest, Wien, 1667** © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek

A UFO in 1665
The Air Battle of Stralsund

05.05.2023 to 27.08.2023
Kunstbibliothek

In April 1665, six fishermen witnessed an aerial battle in the skies above the Baltic Sea near Stralsund. As evening broke, a dark-grey disk appeared high above the city centre. With reference to contemporaneous visual and textual sources, this exhibition reconstructs the way this event was portrayed in the media over the years. From our historical distance, we can recognise certain paradigms and communications strategies that centuries later continue to determine the reporting on unexplained celestial phenomena. The recent reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs) released by the US military also form part of this cultural and media context. UFOs and human imagination seem to be inextricably linked with one another. This exhibition is the first of its kind to focus on this historical sighting, and is centred around books, drawings and printed matter from the Kunstbibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

A special exhibition by the Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

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