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Czechs' hero? The people's choice is a joke By Ladka M. Bauerova International Herald Tribune Saturday, March 26, 2005 PRAGUE He was the hidden Czech genius behind key European discoveries, inventions, and musical and literary masterpieces, forgotten merely because he never made it to the patent office on time. . He served as a consultant to Einstein, Chekhov, Eiffel and Johann Strauss. He was beloved by his countrymen, and still is, judging by the flood of nominations he received when a contest to choose the greatest Czech in history kicked off on television in January. . But the belated triumph of Jara Cimrman (pronounced YAH-ra TSI-mer-mahn), Czech hero, was not to be. . The network running the contest has thrown out his nomination because of what most Czechs would consider to be a petty detail: Jara Cimrman is a fiction. He was an ingenious, well, loser, who never existed, except in theater and film. . A beloved comic character, Jara Cimrman was created in the 1960s by a troupe of actors and writers based in Prague. He has since come to occupy a special position in Czech cultural life, as shown by the initial results of Czech TV's Greatest Czech contest, based on a popular BBC program. . Although Czech TV will not disclose the figures, an executive, Tereza Typoltova, described support for Cimrman as "massive" in the contest's nomination phase, which took place in January. Ten finalists will be chosen, with the winner to be announced on June 11. . Other countries with similar contests using the BBC format have elected war heroes or great statesmen: Winston Churchill was chosen in Britain, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Konrad Adenauer in Germany. . That Czechs preferred a fictional character is perhaps fitting in a country that elected a playwright, Vaclav Havel, as its president and that has produced such masters of the absurd as Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera. . But why would Czechs look up to a man who, real or not, managed to blow every opportunity to become famous in his fictional lifetime? Why admire a bungler - a brilliant bungler, but a bungler nonetheless - who missed becoming the first person to reach the North Pole by a mere 7 meters, or 23 feet? . Of Cimrman's brilliance there can be little doubt. This was the man who suggested to Anton Chekhov that two sisters were not enough for a full-fledged play. It was he who showed Gustave Eiffel how to stabilize his famous tower. . Cimrman's spiritual fathers, Ladislav Smoljak and Zdenek Sverak, were not surprised by their creation's popularity. "He is the perfect type for the greatest Czech," Smoljak said. "He was not appreciated in his lifetime. He embodies the desire of a small nation to be greater, more famous and more respected." . Sverak added: "People chose humor, because humor saved our nation several times already." Indeed, humor was often the only recourse left to a people whose lands were occupied for centuries - by the Hapsburg dynasty, then by the Nazis - and who in recent times lived under a Communist dictatorship. . Perpetual lack of control over destiny creates a special mind-set. The Czechs know what it is to have victory within their grasp, only to see it snatched away. That is why Jara Cimrman, a misunderstood genius who never received his due, strikes such a chord here. . Czechs, wary of grand nationalistic gestures, preferred to turn patriotism into a joke. But this did not mean they would not fight for their hero's rights. . After Czech TV announced that it could not consider Cimrman a candidate, his fans started an Internet petition drive, collecting more than 38,000 signatures. Finally the BBC stepped in and allowed the creation of a special category for fictional characters for the Czech Republic, one of eight countries where the format has been licensed. . In addition, Czech TV promised to prepare a documentary about Cimrman modeled on those being produced about the 10 finalists. . This solution leaves many Cimrman supporters dissatisfied. "I think all historical figures are fictional," said Jiri Rak, a historian and author of the book "Former Czechs: Czech Historical Myths and Stereotypes." . "All those great figures are of their time," Rak said, "and the different epochs projected their own ideals onto them, violating the real people in the process. History as such is a fiction that we keep rewriting every day." . Comparing a medieval monarch with a 19th-century artist or a modern-day scientist is simply nonsense, added Rak, a fan of Jara Cimrman. In his view, the Czechs identify with a loser because, throughout recent history, they were always on the losing side. . The Jara Cimrman Theater emerged from the heady cultural brew of the 1960s. As the hard-line Stalinist doctrine began to lose its grip on Czechoslovakia, a new generation of writers, actors and comedians emerged. Among them was an all-male group of "Cimrmanologues," headed by Smoljak and Sverak, who declared themselves devoted to "discovering" and "rescuing" the legacy of a forgotten 19th-century genius. . The Jara Cimrman Theater became an immediate hit. Its gentle, brainy humor, spiced with historical references, resonated among the chronically pessimistic Czechs. Performances always follow the same pattern: The first act is devoted to "scientific" seminars, where straight-faced Cimrmanologues, clad in business suits, reveal their latest discoveries of the genius's exploits. The seminars are followed by a one-act play written by Jara Cimrman himself, a part of the rich oeuvre taken from the man's "posthumously discovered" estate. . Today, with most of the Cimrmanologues in their 60s and older, the Jara Cimrman Theater remains extremely popular; its performances are generally sold out months in advance. . Sverak, known to Western audiences from the Oscar-winning movie "Kolya," which won the Best Foreign Film award in 1996, said he was a bit surprised that his theater remained so popular after the fall of Communism in 1989. "I guess freedom brings different disappointments," he said. "We were, of course, very pleased that so many people consider Jara Cimrman to be the greatest Czech." . Smoljak thinks that people turned to Cimrman partly because the current Czech political scene doesn't inspire much patriotism. "I think if Czech TV ran this contest during the Nazi occupation or the Russian one, people would turn to someone like Masaryk," he said, referring to Czechoslovakia's first president. "But now? People voted for Cimrman in protest against our current so-called celebrities." . 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