Ivan Gašparovič

Gašparovič married Silvia Benikova, in 1964. Together, they have two children: a daughter, Iva, and a son, Denis.

Ivan Gašparovič was born on 27 March 1941, to Roman Catholic parents, in the town of Poltár, in the south-central Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia, just south of the Tatra mountain range. At the time of Gašparovič’s birth, Poltár belonged to the first Slovak Republic.

His father, Vladimir Gašparovič was a secondary schoolteacher and headmaster. He was an immigrant from Rijeka, Croatia, who moved to Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War.

In 1959, Gašparovič moved from Poltár to the capital city of Bratislava to pursue a degree in Law at Comenius University, Slovakia’s foremost university; he finished his degree in 1964.

Upon completion of his studies, Gašparovič worked in the Martin District Prosecutor’s Office and at the Bratislava Municipal Prosecutor’s Office.

In 1968, he was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Slovakia, supporting the reforms of Alexander Dubček. By August of the same year, following the Warsaw Pact invasion, the party expelled Gašparovič.

Between 1968 and 1990, Gašparovič taught law at his alma mater, Comenius University. He was a Law Faculty at the Department of Criminal Law, Criminology and Criminiological Practice.

In February 1990, Gašparovič was made the deputy vice-chancellor (also known as “prorector”) of Comenius University.

He was one of the authors of the Constitution of Slovakia

In 2006, Gašparovič penned his first autobiographical work, entitled ‘I Think Nationally, Feel Socially’.

In 2009, Gašparovič wrote two books: ‘A Dignified Life for All’ and ‘About Us: Slovakia, Europe, Earth’, publishing the latter in both English and German through the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.