Jára Cimrman
The fictional personality is presented as a universal genius, and one of the greatest Czech playwrights, poets, composers, teachers, travellers, philosophers, inventors, detectives, mathematicians, and sportsmen of the 19th and early 20th century.
[2] Cimrman made his first appearance on a regular radio programme Nealkoholická vinárna U Pavouka ("The Non-Alcoholic Wine Bar chez Spider") on 23 December 1966.
In 2005, Jára Cimrman won a public vote for the title of "The Greatest Czech" (he was subsequently disqualified due to being a fictional character).
[3] One show featured a guest interview with a musicologist who claimed to have discovered, during a renovation of his cottage, a tranche of documents relating to a forgotten Czech polymath who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, named Jara Cimrman, the first mention of the character.
[3] On subsequent shows the joke was extended as more and more documents, detailing other aspects of Cimrman's life and his theatrical work, were found in an increasing variety of places.
[3] Cimrman's character and stories were located in the Austria-Hungary era as a pastiche of Czech nationalism, but also to allow the writers to criticise the contemporary communist regime without detection.
In 1967 Jiří Šebánek, together with Miloň Čepelka, Ladislav Smoljak and Zdeněk Svěrák, founded the Jára Cimrman Theatre [cs].
Additionally, in 1987 the authors made a film An Uncertain Season (Czech: Nejistá sezóna), a mostly autobiographical bittersweet comedy about the theatre's difficulties during the Communist normalization era.
[3] Of possible Jewish heritage, Cimrman's name was originally spelt "Zimrman", like the German surname "Zimmermann", and he changed it later on as a mark of his Czech patriotism.
[3] Due to the family's poverty, Cimrman's parents dressed him in second-hand clothes from his sister Luisa, and sent him to a girls' school, hiding his identity from him.
His internet basically consisted of an old circus tent where the maestro arranged the telephone apparatus for various pensioned high school teachers to answer all kinds of questions people asked.
Most of the pedagogical work of Jára Cimrman is presented in the play Vyšetřování ztráty třídní knihy ("Investigation of the Loss of a Class Book", 1967).
As a teacher, he was putting his pupils under controlled exposure to stress in order to improve information retention of the germane parts of the curriculum —he either snapped his whip hard against the floor or removed his wig ("úlek oslněním" – "fright by daze").
These plays include Posel světla (English "Herald of Light"), featuring his own comic vision of the future world where people are all good to each other and so a person may act as a complete heartless monster without any remorse.
Cimrman never received great fame as a playwright in his lifetime, often because of his innovatory practices, such as changing the length of the play in several successive performances or presenting new ideas.
Another man, whom Cimrman is said to have surprised with his works was Jacob Durman, director of the Royal Chamber Theatre in Haag, who, after reading his play Prázdniny s kanibalem Dufkem ("Vacation with cannibal Dufek") is said not to "come out of astonishment."
When the actors, or Cimrman himself sensed the danger, two members of the ensemble started making seemingly irrelevant comments that there's a wind picking up on stage.
However, this version of Hamlet usually did not meet with favour from the audience, and the ensemble had to employ the abovementioned "Vichr z hor" to safely leave the scene.
