When the sky disk aligned with the setting sun behind Kyffhäuser hill—the only one of the three alignment peaks we could see with the naked eye—it indicated the beginning of planting season. I wanted to return to the Saxony-Anhalt region and photograph the disk where it was first found and align it in the same way with Kyffhäuser hill. That meant taking the picture on May 1.
Even though Dr. Harald Meller had given me permission to take the disk and was initially excited about my idea, he was reluctant when the time came. May 1 is Germany's International Workers Day, when workers gather for rallies and speeches. Neo-Nazis turn out in large numbers to demonstrate in the town of Halle, close to where I needed to work, so Dr. Meller was worried that local police would be too busy with them to escort me. But after talking to the police and determining that the rallies would be over by the time I needed to take the photograph, Meller again agreed.
On May 1 two police officers arrived with semiautomatic rifles to escort me to the site. Everything went off without a problem, and the sunset was beautiful. (See a photo of this shoot in Zoom In.)
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I wanted to get a landscape photo of the Unstrut River Valley, but it was pouring rain by the time I settled on a location to shoot from. I couldn't work in those conditions, and I was running out of time; I had to make a 600-mile (960-kilometer) drive to Vienna the next day. So I decided to try again early the next morning.
It was windy and still cloudy when I got to my location. But I noticed a couple of breaks in the clouds, so I waited. After an hour I still had nothing. My frustration was mounting. Then I saw a big hole of blue sky moving toward the sun. If I waited another ten minutes, I'd have the right light to get the shot. Then it happened. It started to rain. I was ready to throw up my hands and give up, but something told me to hold out a little longer. And it was a good thing I did. A perfect rainbow arced over the entire valley and gave me what I needed for a fantastic image. Despite all the problems, I learned once again that you make your own luck by persevering. (See the picture in Zoom In.)
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Dr. Meller found himself working a deal in a sting operation to get the disk away from the looters, who were trying to sell it illegally. He needed to make them think that the Bronze Age artifacts they carried—including two bronze swords—were actually forgeries, so he had his chemist put together a test kit that would give him the desired results. If the solution smoked when it came in contact with a scraping from the sword, it was an authentic piece from 1600 B.C. If it didn't, the sword and other artifacts were fakes. Of course, there was no smoke.
Once Meller got the smugglers to show him the sky disk, he was supposed to discreetly push a button on his cell phone to alert police officers upstairs to make the raid. But the transaction was taking place in a hotel basement café, and when the moment arrived he couldn't get a satellite signal. But that didn't stop him. He quickly excused himself to go upstairs to the men's room, inconspicuously watching his phone for a signal. Once he got it and sent the alert, the police swarmed the place.
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