LEGEND has it that he advised Edison, Eiffel, Einstein, Chekhov and Tchaikovsky. He corresponded with George Bernard Shaw, came up with the idea for the Panama Canal, invented yogurt and only narrowly missed becoming the first person to reach the North Pole (he was seven metres off, the day before Robert Peary). Add to that reorienting the periodic table of elements, creating the first ever puppet show (in Paraguay, no less) and fathering an entire philosophical school (Externism), it’s no wonder that a 2005 public poll found Jara Cimrman to be the greatest Czech of all time.

Foreign readers could be forgiven for never having heard of this playwright, sportsman, inventor, poet and philosopher because “the Master”, as Cimrmanologists often refer to him, has never received the credit he deserves. In fact, the very thing that makes this fictional character a modern folk hero is that, “he personalises the feelings of a small oppressed nation that is convinced, that if it weren’t for the big guys, they would be able to show their extraordinary qualities to the world,” says Zdenek Sverak, one of Cimrman’s creators.

The eponymous theatre group dedicated to celebrating Cimrman is now entering its 50th year, and their silly, satirical and substantive work still has appeal. The first performance before friends and family on June 19th 1967 went well enough to prompt Mr Sverak to suggest investing in costumes—but chaotic enough to see his wife Bozena respond with shock that there would even be a second performance. “We did not think he would grow this popular and that his quotations would become part of daily communication,” Mr Sverak says.

Indeed countless performances and 15 original plays followed. They are still regularly staged at the home theatre in the Zizkov district in Prague and throughout the Czech Republic. Though some prominent members have departed or died in recent years, including co-founder Ladislav Smoljak who passed away in 2010, much of the original all-male company still performs. Though their age spurs doubts about the future of this unique cultural phenomenon, a new English language troupe that took their show on the road earlier this year to New York, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore shows the Cimrman character has a life of his own.

As the Cimrman myth goes, after a trove of lost documents were discovered in the fictional town of Liptakova in 1966, Cimrmanologists set about correcting the record to give this “spiritual titan” his due. “We created a theatre to introduce his story to audiences that fell into forgetfulness,” says Mr Sverak, who, among a bevy of other artistic exploits, wrote and starred in “Kolya” (1996), an Oscar-winning film.

A single Cimrman play is composed of two sections: the first is a faux-academic seminar analysing his contributions to civilisation, and the second a single act related to an adventure. A Bohemian by blood, the Master was born at some point in the late 19th century in Vienna (the exact year is unknown: the local registrar drank too much), and by setting his life during the Habsburg Empire, performers avoided censorship as they took coded swipes at the communist regime. “We were mostly inspired by naïve artists of the time who were creating, convinced of their own talent, and suffered denial by publishers and galleries,” Mr Sverak says. “We yoked the artistic and folk form of the Czech language in the service of comedy.”

Cimrman’s defining characteristics—“resilience, a desire to stand out, to be prosperous for humanity, but also feelings of injustice and that he goes unrecognised,” as Mr Sverak puts it—embodied the emotions of a country occupied by Austrians, Nazis and Soviets in the 20th century alone. He became such a symbol of national identity that Czech state television eventually had to ban Cimrman from its 2005 attempt to name the most important figures in Czech history. Otherwise, in a survey of the general public, the likes of Vaclav Havel, Franz Kafka, Martina Navratilova and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV might not have stood a chance.

A full half-century after his creation, ample secrets surrounding Cimrman’s biography remain. The theatre troupe offers a prosaic explanation for their longevity. “The fathers of the character, Smoljak and Sverak, associate the extraordinary stability of the ensemble with the fact that there are no women,” says David Smoljak, the late Ladislav’s son. He adds that his comment—like Cimrman himself—is only “half serious”.