A Chat with June’s Profile, Justus Bauschinger, president/owner of Lilliput Motor Co. & Deutsche Optik

CS: And for Deutsche Optik?
JB: Well, Mike Rifkin started that in San Diego and I guess that company’s close to the same age. I don’t remember exactly how old it is — maybe 16-years-old, 17-years-old. Out of San Diego. He started it buying a container of surplus binoculars. They came from East Germany when that whole thing ended. That was in ’89; I guess when the reunification happened. Or the wall came down. Or whatever. And they were Zeiss glasses that the Nazi army used, and they were like a seven by 40 glass, which is still today considered one of the best binoculars ever made. So he started with a little drawing also. It’s very funny actually to look at his earliest catalogs and look at mine.