Rudolf Schuster

Rudolf Schuster ( born January 4, 1934 in Košice, Czechoslovak Republic) is a Slovak politician Carpathian German origin. He was mayor of the city of Košice (1983-1986 and 1994-1999) and from 1999 to 2004, the second President of Slovakia.

Family

Schuster was the son of Carpathian German forest worker Alois Schuster and also comes from the mother of Hungarian ancestry. He had a brother who was a carpenter. Schuster married in 1961 Irena Schusterová, born Trojáková ( 1937-2008 ). He had two children, Peter and Ingrid.

Professional life

Rudolf Schuster acquired the qualification for Abitur at the mechanical engineering technician school in Košice ( Kassa ) and then took a degree at the Technical University of Bratislava, where he received his diploma in civil engineering in 1959. 1960-1962 he worked at the hydrology and hydraulics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. From 1963 to 1974 he was Speaker, later Technical Assistant to the Director of the East Slovakian Steelworks in Košice ( VSZ ). In 1984, he earned his CSc in the area of ​​environmental protection.

Political career

In 1964 he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Schuster was Deputy Mayor 1975-1983 and 1983-1986 mayor of his native city of Košice.

1986-1989 he was chairman of the National Committee of the East Slovakian district. In the course known as the Velvet Revolution political changes in November 1989, he joined the opposition and was in the transitional period for a few months Chairman of the Slovak National Council ( Parliament Speaker ).

From 1990 to 1992 he was Ambassador of Czechoslovakia in Canada. After the division of the country on 1 January 1993 Schuster initially worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia. In 1994 he was again mayor of Košice.

In 1998, he was founder and chairman of the moderate- left party of the bourgeois understanding (SOP - Strana občianskeho porozumenia ) and was elected as a candidate of the united opposition on 29 May 1999 as president. He took office on 15 June 1999 as a successor by Michal Kováč. In the election of 3 April 2004 he ran again, but received the first ballot only 7.4 percent of the vote. New President of Slovakia was on 15 June 2004 Ivan Gašparovič.

Honors

2003 awarded him the University of Wuppertal ( Germany ) an honorary doctorate in the Department of Civil Engineering. In 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa ( Canada).

Hobbies

As a child he grew up on the farm in Medzev ( Metzenseifen ) near Košice and enthusiastic early for photography and cinematography. His father and his cousins ​​were also amateur filmmakers and undertook in 1927/28 an expedition through the Brazilian jungle. The pictures of the trip to Brazil form the origin of a museum with its collection of photo and film art of the 19th and 20th centuries, which he donated to the State. In the farm buildings is an ethnographic collection of testimonies of the medieval German settlers. He also works as a writer and travel book author. 1991 and 2001 he was even in Brazil and turned over for television documentaries.