The Greifswald Lights

Summer 1990. The Berlin Wall had fallen, but the GDR still existed. German reunification was about six weeks away. Off the coast near Greifswald, the sky over the Baltic still belonged to the Warsaw Pact. It lay inside Luftschießzone II, Air Firing Zone II, a military firing area over the sea.

Friday, 24 August 1990. Evening. Around 20:30, lights appeared north-east of Greifswald, over the Greifswalder Bodden and the Pomeranian Bay. Seven glowing spheres. Brilliant white to reddish-white.

They came in two groups. One formed a Y-shape. The other was a cluster that witnesses kept comparing to a bunch of grapes. In Zinnowitz, Herr Bitterlich counted four lights on top and three below, "each brighter and larger than a star." In Ückeritz, Frau Michalek saw seven points "far away over water" with a "gentle swaying motion." In Wolgast, Marion Dörfer watched them move slowly towards Rügen.

In Greifswald-Eldena, the Soviet interpreter Waleri Winogradow filmed them. To the naked eye the lights stood still. In the viewfinder they moved slightly. "One side had light, the rear side remained dark." In Trassenheide, Rainer Ladwig saw spheres leave the Y-group, fly away, hover for several minutes, then fly back. Jürgen Luchterhand filmed smaller lights approaching the group. The cluster later formed a ring of seven. At 20:47 came a flash four times larger than a single light. Around 21:00, the lights faded one after another. Silently.

Witnesses stretched from Rostock to Neubrandenburg, from the harbour at Lauterbach on Rügen to the beaches of Usedom. MUFON-CES and Illobrand von Ludwiger gathered six videos and 11 photographs and interviewed more than a dozen witnesses. Sight lines from Greifswald and Rügen placed the Y-formation about 30 km from Greifswald, spanning 6,500 m in height. The analysts estimated a sphere diameter of 12 ± 2 m and rejected tracer ammunition and mirages. Von Ludwiger argued the duration and flight behaviour did not fit flares.

Werner Walter of CENAP saw something else. After a witness appeal on N3 television in September 1994, Dr Lüder Stock came forward. The former NVA officer had been sailing near Greifswalder Oie. He said he saw the spheres fired up by small rockets from a warship, then sink slowly on oversized parachutes. They were targets for infrared-guided missiles. Insiders called them "Christmas trees." Another witness spoke of illumination targets launched from Peenemünde and then shot at.

Official letters followed. Sweden's Defence Ministry said Russian air forces had probably exercised east of Rügen with infrared target flares. The BWB in Koblenz wrote that relevant trials were carried out on that day. In 2012, Dennis Kirstein reported that a Czechoslovak exercise had used SAB flare bombs, seven flares each. GWUP declared the case closed.

The dissent never went away. Military historian Marius Kettmann said NVA archives show no exercise on 24 August 1990. Critics argued that neither the features of the objects nor their burn time match such ammunition. And the sources still blame different forces: Soviet, Russian, East German, Czechoslovak, or West German trials.

BILD ran the story under a headline about nuclear physicists filming glowing white saucers in formation. Television came back to it again and again, from BR3 in 1992 to an ARD documentary in 1994. For Walter, it became "ein deutscher Klassiker", a German classic. For von Ludwiger, it was a Class B UFO report. The footage still circulates. Seven lights over the Baltic, still waiting for an answer everyone accepts.