Pérák, the Spring Man of Prague

Pérák, the Spring Man (Czech: [ˈpɛːraːk]), was an urban legend and rumour most popular in the Czechoslovak city of Prague during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in the midst of World War II.

According to historians Callum McDonald and Jan Kaplan in their book Prague in the Shadow of the Swastika: a History of the German Occupation 1939–1945, "the Springer" was said to leap out from shadowy alleys and startle passers-by.

[1] Oral tradition suggests that some of Pérák's leaps were of an extraordinary magnitude, including the act of jumping over train carriages, similar to England's Spring-heeled Jack.

This does not mean that such rumours might not have circulated; however, it would have been impossible to include [them] in the reports without tangible proof.In 2015, a social activist claiming the identity of Pérák fronted a guerilla media campaign to commemorate the former site of the Lety concentration camp.

A Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture" by Czech folklorist and anthropologist Petr Janeček published by the Lexington Books offers a comprehensive survey of the Perak phenomenon, tracing a history from the figure of Spring Heeled Jack in England during the early 19th century through to Czech folklore before, during and after World War II, and then into popular culture via a succession of speculative fiction novels, comic book treatments and other works of fiction.

Pérák taunted German Army sentries, the Gestapo and, particularly, a Hitleresque Nazi collaborator before escaping in a surrealistic, slapstick chase across the darkened city, ultimately freeing a number of incarcerated citizens of Prague.

Trnka's postwar interpretation of Pérák as a quasi-superhero, defying the curfew and the authority of the German occupying forces, formed the basis for sporadic revivals of the character in Czech science fiction and comic book stories.

In his 1997 biographical essay on Weiss, Vilém Kmuníček speculated that the inspiration for this story was in response to Nazi propaganda:[6] In 1968, the issue of the Mladý svět magazine, published after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, included a four-strip comics titled Pérák and the USSR.

First, he wrote a screenplay to movie, but in 2008 only a book with its fictionalized version was published by the author, portraying him as a World War II-era costumed superhero who battles the Gestapo with the aid of various weapons and mechanical spring-powered boots.