JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The Munich-based Jugend magazine (1896-1940), founded by Georg Hirth, was host to an entire generation of art nouveau artists, lending its name (“Jugendstihl”) to a movement of expression of German Art Nouveau. In the April 25, 1896 issue we find an unusual image of extraterrestrial life within our own solar system, drawn by the artist and illustrator Arpad Schmidhammer. It depicts life on a planet beyond Saturn–complex life, complete with what we’d imagine automobiles of the future from 1935 to look like, as well as cities, and large crowds very engaged in receiving an object from a world alien to their’s. The commotion seems to be a space-shell of some sort, and of course it carries issues of Jugend magazine. There is all manner of action around the magazine in the foreground, and slightly beyond that we see another large group of people crowding around a telescope, hoping for a view of the Earth, while another dense crowd farther in the background swells around another Earth-intent telescope. It is intended as a humorous scene, no doubt, but the fact is that there weren’t all that many scenes of alien life forms taking an interest in a floating Earth in the background. Perhaps Wilhelm Roentgen’s newly-discovered X-rays helped an image like this along with the idea of entirely unseen worlds made visible…
[This image found thanks to an image-share by the Ephemera Society USA. Image Source: University of Missouri libraries, http://muspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/144371190257/jugend-1896-no-17-katya-s-jugend-mu-nchen utm_content=buffera68da&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer]
And just for the record, “extraterrestrial” finds life in English as far back as 1868:
